With YouTube being one of the most-used search engines, growing an audience around your own channel should be a breeze! While many viewers spent countless hours playing video after video, you might be wondering why your subscription list doesn’t seem to be getting any higher. Whether you are a new blogger or using YouTube as part of your marketing strategy growing your youtube audience doesn’t have to be stressful or time-consuming, just follow the advice below. Here is a quick guide on how to grow your audience on YouTube.

Growing your Audience on YouTube

Attention-Grabbing Title

You not only want your video title to grab people’s attention you want to optimize it so you actually get more clicks and views. To ways to optimize your title:

• Use relevant keywords at the beginning, you can use the YouTube search tool to identify trending words or titles being searched for the most.  
• Keep them short.
• Make them direct and to the point.
• Include emotional triggers.
• For “Best of” lists or serious include the year, and power words like “Awesome”, “Incredible” and “Best”.
• Capitalize on video tags. 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

If you haven’t given much thought to search engine optimization for you videos you definitely want to take a  minute to do so, WHen you search for just about anything on Google there is a good chance that in your search results you are going to find a list of videos that relate to the search item. If you are not setting your videos up with SEO you are missing out on this vital pool of new viewers. Here on some tips on how to bump up your SEO: 

• Include keywords in your video titles and description. 
• Mention keywords in the video itself. 
• Engage in the YouTube community. Likes, comments, and views your video gets are taken into consideration when it comes to the search ranking your video received. 
• Use relevant tags that relate to the category your video falls in as well as tags relating to the specific content discussed in the video. 
• Don’t just keyword stuff your video. Take the time to research the best keyword that fits your video and content.

Engage With Other YouTubers

While not necessarily a social platform there are ways that YouTube has many similarities to other social networks such as being able to like, comment, and subscribe to channels. Since engagement is crucial for your videos overall ranking you want to encourage this type of interaction between viewers as well as other YouTubers. You can simply add a call to action at the beginning or end of your video that asks the viewer to “thumbs up” your video or leave a comment to a question you might ask. You can also ask them to leave a comment with their own additional tips or experiences.

Social Sharing

You want to have a community outside of YouTube where you can share and allow others to share your video content. If you do not have another social media platform to share your work then you need to start one. It is super simple to start a facebook group, Instagram profile or Pinterest account to share your content. These different platforms will allow you to bring in more traffic to your YouTube channel and can grow your subscriber list significantly. 

Another thing to strongly consider is to start a blog that relates directly to your YouTube channel. This will allow you to easily transcribe and plug in the related videos into your blog posts. This provides you with another opportunity to share your content to a new audience and can help you find more places to share through comments on other blogs as well. When someone does leave a comment you need to be diligent in your response to these comments. Always take the time to leave a reply to the comments left on your video and answer questions.

Create a Video Series

Video series provide you with an excellent way to promote your channel. Series should relate to one specific topic that addresses different aspects, features, or problems related to that topic. You can also simply do a series where you post something similar each week like “Thoughtful Thursday.” “Sharing a recipe Saturdays”, or “wish list Wednesday”, (where you share a review of a product) or any other themed type topic. This is to give your viewers something they can look forward to, it also makes it easier for you to come up with fresh content each week.

Playlists

Playlists are an ideal way to organize your videos and make it easier for viewers to see the most relevant videos for what they are searching for. Playlists are easy to create but there are some tips you might want to consider to make your stand out. 

• Include a keyword in the playlist title 
• Make the playlist meaningful.
• Add a detailed description of the playlist you create and include keywords in the description. 
• Create your playlists by group similar videos together. 
• You can list the same videos in more than one playlist. 

Playlists are an ideal way to get your videos more views because the entire playlist can show up in searches.

Know Your Audience!

This should be obvious, but you would be surprised by how many YouTubers create videos just for the sake of having more videos. Instead, you want to cater the videos you create based on what the audience wants. The best way to gain more traffic, views, and attention to your channel is to be consistently putting out content that your audiences want to know more about. Take the time to learn what your audience is interested in and what problems they may be having. Then create the right content that will give them the information they have been searching for in a new exciting way or provide them with a solution to the problem they have. 

Customize Your Video Thumbnails And Create Infographics

Thumbnails are the tiny pictures that come up along with your video when viewers search for relevant topics. These Thumbnails should have a minimum width of 640 pixels and should ideally have a resolution of 1280X730. They should be under 2MB have an aspect ratio of 16:9. Knowing these dimensions will allow you to customize the thumbnail and help you stand out among other suggested videos.

Quality

When it comes to video quality is an important aspect to consider across many areas. You need to ensure your picture is clear, the sound is audible, lighting balanced and any affects you use are edited seamlessly into the videos. The quality of your videos makes them stand out your viewers will come to expect certain effects, music, and lighting techniques to be used in all your videos.

Read More: