Know Your Brand, Know Your Content

The great thing about having a successful YouTube channel is that you can make it a completely unique viewing experience, and cater it specifically to the topics in which you or your audience are interested in. The first thing you should do is ask yourself why you want to make a YouTube channel. Is it for growing your brand? Sending people to your product? Pure entertainment?

Remember that people are primarily coming to YouTube to be entertained, inspired, or educated, so take a minute to look at each one of these end goals and prepare your workflow and content schedule to accomplish one or all of them.

Optimize & Market It

In order to enhance your channel’s ability to be seen, you need to spend some time on optimizing it. This means using relevant keywords (not too many), an enticing title, and a captivating thumbnail that isn’t misleading. Choose a still image from the video from your thumbnail, or find a nice stock photo from Pond5 and add some text on it that complements the title of your video.

YouTube also gives you the ability to add cards throughout your video and at the end, so maximize the time that viewers are watching your video by linking them to other videos, your website or other outside links, or inviting them to subscribe (a “call-to-action” or CTA). Keep the cards and end screens to a minimum, because too many options can lead to 0 interactions.

YouTube videos can be embedded pretty much everywhere, so put it on any social media network or website that you own or operate. Create playlists of your related videos to keep eyeballs on your content and boost watch time.

Repurpose the full length video into smaller, social-friendly bits that are specifically designed for different platforms.

Collaborate With Other Channels

Want to get exposure from an audience that has not heard of you?

Then, collaborate with other creators. Cross-promotion is a great way to expand your audience quickly. The mechanics are simple. When a creator with a similar audience (and likely different content) vouches for your content, then it creates instant social proof. It persuades their audience to check you out.

Conduct A Contest Or Giveaway

Conducting a contest is a great way to mobilize your community and increase the activity on your channel. Besides driving engagement, they also expose you to a new audience for your channel as the participants like to share their entries with their personal networks.

REPLY BACK TO AS MANY COMMENTS AS YOU CAN.

This used to be standard advice for blogs, and for some reason people don’t follow it on YouTube. If someone takes time out of their day to comment on your tiny YouTube channel, you owe it to them to at least thank them. It will get harder as you grow, but in the beginning, reply to every single comment. Plus, the YouTube algorithm hugely favors user engagement, so commenting and replying back also increases your rankings.