It might surprise you to learn that every day, consumers watch one billion hours on YouTube. That adds up to 8.4 minutes per person every day!
Given its widespread appeal, it’s tough for marketers to ignore this video marketing channel. But when something is this popular, competition is fierce. With so much video content available, how can you stand out?
We’ve all gone on an endless cat video binge at some point in our lives. There’s nothing to be sorry about! So, to get more people to watch your own YouTube channel, how can you divert attention away from these well-known cats? Implementing effective strategies to get more YouTube subscribers is key to growing your audience and standing out in the crowded platform.
Table of Contents
#1 Optimize Your Channel
1. Create a Compelling Channel Banner and Icon
Creating eye-catching YouTube banners is super easy with a free online graphic design tool like Canva. I love it because it has tons of free layouts and you don’t need any design or coding skills to use it. Both modern and simple styles are available, so you have plenty of options.
The interface is really user-friendly, and the navigation is straightforward, which means anyone can quickly make awesome graphics. Plus, you can easily add text and images to your banners using the drag-and-drop tool.
You can also make your own YouTube banner template with Canva’s pre-installed fonts, color schemes, design elements, and themes.
2. Crafting an Engaging Channel Trailer to Attract Subscribers
The secret to drawing in new viewers is to make a compelling channel teaser. Give a brief overview of your channel’s goals at the beginning. To accentuate your distinct style, highlight the finest portions of your text.
To keep people’s attention, keep it brief—no more than one or two minutes. Use music and images that are consistent with your brand. Finally, invite viewers to sign up for more content. To keep your trailer interesting and full of new content, update it frequently. Recall that your greatest resources for expanding and retaining an audience are authenticity and creativity.
3. Write an Effective Channel Description
A compelling YouTube description can grab your viewers’ attention and lead to longer watch times, more views, and even new subscribers. Plus, it helps with YouTube SEO by making it easier for the platform’s algorithm to understand your content and recommend it to new viewers, boosting your YouTube stats. Here are the two main types of descriptions you should know about:
YouTube Channel Descriptions: These are found on the “About” tab of your channel. Use this space to tell viewers why they should subscribe and what they can expect from your brand.
Video Descriptions: These follow every video. They help people find your content and encourage them to watch. You can also include links and other important info here.
Tips to Write an Effective Description:
Give Specifics: The keywords you choose for your YouTube channel and video descriptions are important. They help YouTube’s algorithm understand, classify, and show your content. The more focused your keywords, the better.
Do Keyword Research: Use tools like Google Trends and the Keyword Planner in Google AdWords. For example, Google Trends can help you see if a keyword you’re thinking about is trending. It also shows which keywords are searched more often.
Include Links to Useful Resources: Adding links to your descriptions can make them more valuable. You can include subscription links, hashtag links, social media links, and links to relevant playlists, blogs, or videos.
Include Timestamps: These help viewers quickly find specific parts of your video, which is great for longer videos. YouTube automatically creates “chapters” when you do this, making it easy for viewers to rewatch different sections.
Optimize for Click-Through Rate (CTR): Start your description with something interesting to draw in viewers. Highlight the main issue or topic, like buying a laptop, and encourage viewers to watch the video to learn more. YouTube also highlights the keywords you use in the description in search results.
Save Time with Default Descriptions: If you have info you want to add to all your video descriptions, like social media links, you can save time by using YouTube’s default description settings. This feature automatically adds important channel info to every video you publish.
Using these tips, you can make your YouTube descriptions more engaging and effective, helping your channel grow and reach more viewers.
4. Organize Your Channel Layout
Use of playlists and sections
Using Playlists to Tell a Story: Ensure that all of your videos are arranged chronologically when you create playlists. You cannot utilize random films in random places if you want to convey a tale that develops as users scroll through the list. You need a theme for your playlist.
Eye-Catching Thumbnail: To entice visitors to click on your playlist, it must have an eye-catching thumbnail, much like regular videos. The most effective YouTube thumbnails feature vivid graphics, bold typography, and an easy-to-understand layout.
Boost Playlist Visibility with SEO: YouTube The process of making your material more search engine-friendly is known as SEO. Thankfully, there aren’t many differences between optimizing a playlist and a standard video. All you need is a description for the video, a catchy playlist title, and appropriate hashtags.
Playlists on Your Channel Page: Adding a playlist to your channel page is one way to increase its popularity. Don’t just stop at one, either! There can be a combination of recent uploads, playlists, live streams, shorts, and other content in the twelve featured sections that YouTube permits.
Share Your Playlists: Although YouTube constantly suggests material to its users, there are other methods to increase playlist views. One option is to post it on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
#2 Create High-Quality Content
Write for your readers, not yourself
Making sure your content has the information your audience is seeking is the first step in producing high-quality content. You must perform appropriate keyword research in order to determine the information that your users are searching for.
This will assist you in deciding what topics to write about and what terminology your target audience will use. As more visits and fewer bounce rates inform Google that your page is a good result to show in their search results, keyword research also benefits your rankings.
Make your content readable and engaging
Organize Your Text: Make sure to use headings and paragraphs. Too much material without breaks can turn readers off. Clear organization gives your readers a chance to breathe while they read.
Choose Words Wisely: Limit the number of difficult words you use and pay attention to sentence length. Using too many complex words or long sentences can make your content harder to understand and slow readers down.
Add Variety: Keep readers interested by varying your writing. Use synonyms and mix up long and short sentences.
Have Fun: Most importantly, enjoy the writing process! Write with a personal touch. This helps readers get to know you and your company, and it allows you to create high-quality content that stands out from your competitors.
#3 Engage with Your Audience
1. Interact with subscribers
Even though YouTube videos are one-way, avoid “talking at” your viewers. Make connections with the audience to grow relationships. Inquire about your industry or what kinds of videos they would like you to produce by asking them questions. anything that strikes up a discussion.
Sure, all those comments will increase your engagement, but what’s really crucial is that you’ll receive insightful criticism and ideas for new videos. Naturally, that also entails keeping an eye on your comment area and answering as many as you can. At the very least, limit your attention to reactions in your most recent video, as this can easily spiral out of control across several films.
2. React to trends
Participating in a trend has two benefits:
- More people are looking for such kinds of films, which increases the likelihood that you will draw in new viewers.
- There’s no need to come up with a novel concept. Rather, concentrate on mastering the trend and emphasizing your distinct brand and individuality.
Various sectors and content categories will have different definitions of trends; “experts react” videos are one such example.
3. Collaborate with other channels
Together, we can realize the dream. Cheese warning, but it’s real. What motivates you to watch the YouTubers or businesses that you follow? Obviously, you enjoy their content and find it to be either entertaining or useful—ideally both. But trust is ultimately what matters.
Collaborating with other individuals presents you with a fresh, focused audience and inherently establishes a connection between your competence and reliability. As a creative, collaborate with other relevant but non-competitive creators to increase your audience in a way that benefits both of you. Businesses can invest in YouTube influencer marketing or adopt a similar strategy with complementary business partners.
4. Host Giveaways and Contests
Organizing a YouTube giveaway contest is an excellent method to draw in new viewers, maintain their interest, and expand your community from 0 to 1,000 to 100,000 to 1 million members.
Additionally, I’ll provide you with the top giveaway contest ideas in this post so you can expand your YouTube channel. Here are some important things you should pay attention to:
- To enter the giveaway promotion, it must be free.
- Establish clear guidelines outlining when a submission is invalid and disclosing any sponsorship.
- Your contest should be run in accordance with your rules, and prizes should be given out as specified in them.
- A privacy policy outlining how you’ll utilize the information you collect should be linked to.
- You have to make it clear that YouTube is not responsible for your giveaway and does not sponsor it.
Keep in mind that this is only a summary of the YouTube policy. Thus, review the rules yourself to make sure your contest complies with all necessary regulations. When you’re ready, let’s get started with our list of contest ideas for YouTube giveaways
#4 Promote Your Channel
1. Share on Social Media
Examining the platforms you already utilize should be your first step. Although there are many other sites that you can use, Facebook and Instagram are excellent places to start.
Include the link to your YouTube video in any posts you make on Facebook. Utilize Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms in the same way.
2. Leverage Email Marketing
Reaching a wider audience is not the only benefit of promoting your new films with email marketing platforms like SendX. It also provides you with a way to motivate viewers to engage in meaningful ways. By using email to encourage particular video engagements, you may immediately improve the most important YouTube metrics.
Buffer claims that YouTube is searching for items such as:
1. The rate of click-throughs
2. Time of day
3. Favorites
4. Clicks on “Not interested.”
You might give away coupons or freebies to email subscribers who share, like, and comment on your most recent videos in order to influence the algorithm. These benefits encourage social interaction, which improves a video’s ranking in YouTube’s algorithm. Email follow-ups guarantee that viewers act upon seeing them.
#5 YouTube Analytics
You can discover which content is failing on your channel and what is succeeding with YouTube statistics. This can assist in directing your approach so that, over time, you can expand your channel more successfully.
In order to better understand your subscribers and create content that meets their needs and wishes, YouTube analytics also provide demographic data about your YouTube audience.
Views on your entire channel: The total views it received during the chosen time frame.
Channel watch time: the total number of hours that viewers have spent watching every video on your channel in a specific time frame.
Subscribers: The total number of people that have signed up for your YouTube channel.
Subscriber growth is the total number of new signups less the total number of cancellations.
Real-time: A performance report covering the previous 48 hours or 60 minutes in real-time. This is a useful method to see how recently posted videos perform right away after they go live. Additionally, you may determine the peak number of views on your YouTube channel, which will help you decide when to publish.
Top posts: A summary of the content that has received the most views during a specific time period. You can determine which of your videos are your all-time top performers by changing the timeframe to lifetime.
Impressions: The quantity of times YouTube users see thumbnails for your videos. External impressions from social media shares and website embeds are not included in this.
Impressions click-through rate (CTR): The proportion of viewers who accessed your videos on YouTube by clicking on a thumbnail.
Average view duration: the amount of time the typical viewer spends watching your movies before leaving.
#6 A/B Test Content and Thumbnail
You post two to three distinct thumbnails for a single video while using AB testing. A fraction of viewers are shown each choice on YouTube. Going on, the top-performing thumbnail will receive more impressions. This makes choosing thumbnails less of a guessing game. How Thumbnail Testing on YouTube Operates. This is a basic explanation of the procedure:
1. Add two to three thumbnails to your new video post.
2. YouTube divides impressions between the settings 50/50 or 33/33/33.
3. Based on measures, the best performer “wins” after a trial period.
4. The winning thumbnail is displayed to all future viewers.
The tool in Creator Studio that is labeled “Test & Compare” is being gradually distributed by YouTube. Long films, streaming, and podcasts are compatible with it.
The new tool from YouTube complies with A/B testing guidelines. You are able to upload two or three thumbnails for the same video. Following that, YouTube shows these thumbnails to various audience segments for creators, giving each one an equal amount of visibility.
The objective is to ascertain which thumbnail performs better in terms of viewer engagement. Additionally, YouTube has chosen “watch time share” as its preferred benchmark, a new metric. This is not the same as average view duration, which is the typical length of time a viewer spends on a certain video.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, building your YouTube subscriber base depends on proper planning, continued effort, and the creation of engaging content. By implementing these five strategies effectively, you are going to pull in more views, increase your subscriber count, and build a loyal audience. Remember, success on YouTube does not happen overnight; it requires patience and perseverance.
Banking on quicker growth, associating with a focused company working in YouTube marketing means customized solutions that will upgrade and elevate the performance of your channel. Do it the right way and you will be transforming your YouTube channel into a community growing along with sustainable success.
Komal is a dynamic and results-driven digital marketing professional with a passion for leveraging innovative strategies to drive business growth. Her expertise spans across social media marketing, content creation, SEO optimization, and data analytics, making her a valuable asset in the ever-evolving digital landscape.