Empowered Woman | Entrepreneurs

Are you using YouTube to promote your business, your website/blog, or simply to raise your personal profile? YouTube is a great promotional platform with a huge user base of over 1 billion subscribers. And they watch billions of YouTube videos every day about every possible subject you can think of.

Just take a look at these statistics:

• YouTube is the second most popular site in the world after Google.
• Every single day, YouTubers spend over a billion hours watching video content on the social media platform.
• More than 90% of people say they have discovered new brands and products either on the YouTube website or the YouTube App.
• 80% of shoppers said they watched a YouTube video related to a planned purchase at the start of the shopping process.
• YouTubers are 3x more likely to prefer watching a tutorial video on YouTube to reading a product’s instructions when it comes to understanding how new products work.

However, building and growing a YouTube channel is a task that’s challenging and time-consuming. If your knowledge on tips and tricks for YouTube  isn’t up-to-date, you can waste a lot of time and energy without achieving significant results.

Disclosure: Please note that a few of the links in this article are actually affiliate links. This means that if you click on them, I will get a commission, without any extra cost to you. So, feel free to check these out as I only recommend products or services that I personally tested and highly recommend.

And in this guide you’re going to learn exactly how to get more views and subscribers.

Let’s dive right in.

YouTube Tip #1: Socialize and Engage

At the end of the day, YouTube is a social media network. With a focus on the “social” that means in order to grow your YouTube channel, you need to engage your fans and subscribers. And respond to the comments you get in a timely manner.

A lot of marketers invest all of their time and energy into just creating videos. But you need to understand that YouTube content creation is only half the job. If you want to grow your YouTube channel, you need to invest time into getting engagement.

You can use your YouTube videos and your video descriptions to ask your audience questions. And to give them reasons to want to engage with you.

Make your subscribers feel that their observations, comments, and suggestions are welcome. A common YouTube trick to get more engagement is to give your subscribers the kind of content they’d like to see on your YouTube channel.

YouTube Tip #2: Commit to Posting to YouTube Multiple Times Per Week

Recent reports have shown that YouTube channels that post more than once a week are performing much better and getting more recommended views. If possible, post a video to YouTube three or more times per week, especially if you’re just starting out and trying to build an audience. Keeping a regular schedule with multiple posts per week can quickly raise your channel in the algorithm.

Creating a ton of content in the beginning on similar topics will help your channel perform well in the algorithm, and also create a library of content that will usher viewers from one video to another, boosting your watch time and giving them a reason to subscribe.

YouTube Tip #3: Begin Each Video With an Interesting Hook

How you hook viewers depends on you and your content. If a video features a project of any kind, show the end result first. A stunning result makes people more interested to see how you achieved it. This approach is great for DIY and makeover videos. For instance, Cute Girls Hairstyles always begins by showing the end result before explaining how to create a hairstyle.

Stories are another way to pique viewers’ interest. People are hardwired for stories. When you start your video with a story, people will naturally want to stick around to see what happens. Plus, personal stories endear the presenter to the viewer and can often provide a helpful segue to more complicated ideas.

YouTube Tip #4: Create Custom Thumbnails for All of Your Videos

Your video’s thumbnail is your chance to leave users with a solid first impression. Let’s face it: users judge your YouTube videos by the thumbnails you use.

Good video thumbnails can either leave them wanting to watch YouTube videos or your channel  or cause them to scroll away. Obviously, you don’t want the latter to happen.

So, here is a tried-and-tested YouTube tip for you: create custom thumbnails for all of your videos.

Custom thumbnails take minutes (even seconds once you have a template set up!) to create. And they can make a world of difference to your success on YouTube.

That’s because the random thumbnail you get is boring, sometimes unflattering, and rarely eye-catching. But a colorful and well-designed thumbnail will attract people’s attention and will help your videos stand out in a list.

Plus, as I mentioned before, they’re very easy to create. You just need a free tool like Canva or Crello.

YouTube Tip #5: Create Long Videos to Improve Watch Time

Although you want to keep your credits short, make your actual video content as long as makes sense for your topic. Making long videos seems counterintuitive, given the famously short attention spans online. Indeed, shorter videos were considered better. But today, longer videos equate to more watch time, which boosts your content in the algorithm.

Ultimately, the right length for a video is just long enough to get all of the information across without padding your video. Don’t make a video longer just for the sake of making it longer because you’ll lose viewers. But you do want to develop your video content with longer videos in mind. In general, videos from 7-15 minutes tend to perform best.

YouTube Tip #6: Create a Posting Schedule – And Stick to It!

It’s very difficult to grow a YouTube channel if you’re not posting new content consistently – and frequently. So, one of the best tips and tricks for YouTube is to create and post content regularly.

Of course, that’s easier said than done. But I’ve got a YouTube tip for you that will help you stay disciplined in your approach: plan in advance.

Create a YouTube content schedule so that you can space out your uploads. While creating your content schedule, consider the time you will require to create and edit your content.

Not only do you get to reach more people the more videos you have, but your subscribers will know exactly when to expect a new video from you.

Take the time to put together a schedule ahead of time:

• Set the days of the week (preferably, multiple days of the week) and the exact time to upload your videos on each day
• Plan a diverse content strategy with multiple types of videos: how to videos, animated videos, listicle videos, and so on

YouTube Tip #7: Optimize Your Videos for the YouTube Search Engine

As mentioned earlier, it’s the second most popular website in the world, with hundreds of millions of people using it on a daily basis. And they are actively searching for videos so you need to make sure that they can find yours too.

To get more visibility on things like Google Trends, you optimize your blog posts and site for SEO. Similarly, you need to optimize your videos for YouTube analytics. If you want to grow your YouTube channel, this is one of the most important YouTube tips.

There are several important elements that factor into YouTube video optimization.

Some of the most important ones, though, are the keywords and tags you use. Just like you would with blog posts, use relevant keywords in your headlines and video descriptions and add relevant tags to every video you post.

To help, you can use a tool like TubeBuddy, which is a YouTube-certified browser extension with several useful features, including video SEO features. It can help you:

• Find out what keywords and tags your competitors are using successfully in their videos (or any YouTube video).
• Get tag suggestions as you type your video description and headline.
• Track your videos’ rankings.
• Find the most used tags for any topic/niche.

Before you begin working on your SEO, here is a YouTube tip for you: understand how the platform works and which metrics are crucial for you.

YouTube Tip #8: Go Live on YouTube

Live streaming is a great way to pump out content without spending a ton of time on it. Although live streaming has a definite learning curve, after you’ve mastered the format, live video is the easiest way to create video content.

Live streaming is heavily supported on all social media platforms. (On YouTube, the live video feature is YouTube Live.) This video format provides excellent engagement opportunities because you can communicate directly with your audience. Live video also has long watch times.

To start sharing live videos, you can use your smartphone or webcam for live broadcasts. Even relatively inexpensive webcams can still provide high-quality video.

YouTube Tip #9: Collaborate With Other YouTubers

Collaborations are videos that are shared among multiple content creators and are one of the most effective ways to expand your audience on YouTube. Whether you’re a brand or a YouTuber (or both!), working with another content creator will expose your channel to people who likely would never have heard of you.

Social proof has a strong influence on people. When a content creator collaborates with another creator, it’s an endorsement to their audience. It can be just enough for a viewer to check out your channel, and if they like your content, you’ve got a new subscriber.

But you can’t collaborate with just anyone. You need to consider some finer points of collaborations when looking into this tactic to grow your channel.

Find Channels With Similar Audiences But Different Content

You want collaborators who have similar audiences but different content. Ask your viewers who else they enjoy watching and look for names and shared videos in the comments.

Also, tools like Social Blade can help you identify a channel’s size and demographics and find who’s serving the same audience as you. The metrics you want to look for include age, gender, interests, location, and engagement.

YouTube Tip #10: Replicate Topics or Tactics From Top-Performing Videos

There is no substitute for nose-to-the-grindstone research. Take a deep dive into your analytics to find out which videos get the most subscriber conversions per view. Look for patterns among them, such as subject, delivery, or editing style. Then make more videos like that.

Conclusion

To grow a YouTube channel, you need to develop YouTube content with your viewers and the algorithm in mind. For viewers, make sure your thumbnails grab their attention and deliver what you’ve promised. Start your videos with a strong hook and edit the content to keep it interesting. Overall, you want to create an experience that keeps viewers watching.

Fortunately, attracting clicks and keeping viewers interested also raises the visibility of your videos and thus your channel via the YouTube algorithm. Interesting content that people click, and that leads to a good watch time and session duration, can boost your videos’ visibility throughout YouTube. Playlists, collaborations, series, and end screens also improve your odds.

What do you think? Have you tried any of these tips or tactics in your YouTube videos? What did your results look like? Please share your thoughts in the comments.