How To Help Grow Your Channel

I'm not a big YouTube channel I'm small to moderate I would say and I'm very happy with it. I see a lot of posts about people bemoaning subs and views so here be some small tips to help grow yours.

Subscribers
From my own experience with subs, people that sub to you will not watch every video and may just click and choose the videos they decide at the time. So dont get to wound up about subs, views are more important IMHO.

Engage with subscribers and Comments
Reply to comments and click that thumbs up on some. This is important, if a subscribe thinks they are appreciated they will watch future videos.

Thumbnails
Make them good and to the point. (no boobs, will work once maybe and get a nice flag or two)

Title
Make it short but relevant, honestly its important to keep them short.

Descriptions
Do put something relevant in them ;)
Also put in your @twitter Facebook Webpage etc accounts in every one and again a YouTube subscriber link.

Tags
Again put relevant keywords in

Why bother spending time on Descriptions and Tags? Well a lot of external sites and search engines use this information for filtering your videos.

End of video plug
At the end of your videos have a 5-8 second plug for your other videos, if someone just stumbles upon your videos they may then continue following the breadcrumbs. (I often get people say they watched the entire London Motorbike Encounters videos in one session once stumbling upon one (43 videos and counting)).

End of video Subscribe button (add one)

Intro / Branding
Get a good distinctive Logo / Brand that can be scaled up and down and still be recognisable. Use it in your intro but keep your intro short 4-6 seconds is considered good by most (honestly ask around).

Use your logo/brand on the Subscribe icon you can add to all videos.

Make friends with bigger vloggers and comment on their videos, just by commenting on videos your engagement stats will increase and when you get a reply you will get some new subscribers who follow the conversation. Don't spam though, quick way to get a ban.

Work together, this game is just that a game. Collaboration videos are a great way to get your name out there. Help others out with their designs and graphics if your good. Good at sound effects or music... you get the idea.

Twitter and Facebook are your friends... beware Facebook will close your account at some point unless you use your real name and even IF you use your real name they will still close it when it grows fast and demand you send them ID (I hate facebook).

Twitter, use it the same way you comment on videos, make friends with other vloggers and join in the conversations, your leach some new followers and subs along the way.


But the biggest tip of all is the content, if your best mate/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/cat/dog says its dull, it probably is. If your chasing views and subs do take the critical reviews of people with a pinch of salt but read them. Even if you do not agree with them there maybe some good ideas within the critic.

All said and done, there is a lot of luck as I said at the start. There are some great vloggers on here that deserve way more views and subs than they are getting.

For those of you new to this it can take a year or two to get established unless you're very lucky or have a unique way of doing things. So the last tip is, take a look at the big names out there, why are their videos popular? Content? Time invested? Style? etc. Watch and learn from them.

Good Luck!
 
Excellent post T71, I posted recently about Subs vs Views and how they didn't tally, they used to line up better!

To me the best part of YT is the comments and interactions under the video, and I seem to have a relatively decent core of people who do comment, probably get 20-50% comments vs views within a month of release as a rough guide.

I think the saying is true, if you're enjoying it, then the numbers don't matter so much, although I'm pretty certain that most of us would like to see some sort of expansion.
 
I think the saying is true, if you're enjoying it, then the numbers don't matter so much, although I'm pretty certain that most of us would like to see some sort of expansion.

I think this is why people love to see their subscriber base increase. Yes its a nice gauge to see your popularity but you shouldn't get too worked up over it. If you have fun making the videos, most likely someone will have fun watching them.

Also forgot to say Gimmicks are good ;)
 
I've tried looking at the deeper analytics bit it's hard to make sense as there's a lot of people not watching the whole vids, although this could be down to them being rubbish, or new people who decide my "style" (cough splutter) isn't for them. And fair enough, few vloggers I've tried and been bored in seconds of them, yet the view figures in their vids are significant.
 
I've tried looking at the deeper analytics bit it's hard to make sense as there's a lot of people not watching the whole vids, although this could be down to them being rubbish, or new people who decide my "style" (cough splutter) isn't for them. And fair enough, few vloggers I've tried and been bored in seconds of them, yet the view figures in their vids are significant.

Attenuation the bain of all of us!
Yup, some of the top bike vlogers out there I find very boring but that does not mean others do, we all have our tastes. A good way to keep your viewers is when starting a video keep the topic strong and keep it throughout the video, so the entire video is on topic.
Another way is keep them short and use that edit button a lot... no one wants to hear the erms... ;)

Always try and have a strong ending or always be leading up to an ending. Like a joke where your waiting on the punchline.

Another trick is the gimmick ending. So all your videos end with some sort of gimmick. This in turn keeps the regular views until the end to see if you have a new gimmick at the end. This does take a lot of work though.
 
Good tips ...I have started to do it because I talk to myself anyway lol ..my ambition (which are generally low) was 10 subs by March ..I have 12 :-) so over the moon ..which will probably halve when I start talkies
 
I'm not a big YouTube channel I'm small to moderate I would say and I'm very happy with it. I see a lot of posts about people bemoaning subs and views so here be some small tips to help grow yours.

Subscribers
From my own experience with subs, people that sub to you will not watch every video and may just click and choose the videos they decide at the time. So dont get to wound up about subs, views are more important IMHO.

Engage with subscribers and Comments
Reply to comments and click that thumbs up on some. This is important, if a subscribe thinks they are appreciated they will watch future videos.

Thumbnails
Make them good and to the point. (no boobs, will work once maybe and get a nice flag or two)

Title
Make it short but relevant, honestly its important to keep them short.

Descriptions
Do put something relevant in them ;)
Also put in your @twitter Facebook Webpage etc accounts in every one and again a YouTube subscriber link.

Tags
Again put relevant keywords in

Why bother spending time on Descriptions and Tags? Well a lot of external sites and search engines use this information for filtering your videos.

End of video plug
At the end of your videos have a 5-8 second plug for your other videos, if someone just stumbles upon your videos they may then continue following the breadcrumbs. (I often get people say they watched the entire London Motorbike Encounters videos in one session once stumbling upon one (43 videos and counting)).

End of video Subscribe button (add one)

Intro / Branding
Get a good distinctive Logo / Brand that can be scaled up and down and still be recognisable. Use it in your intro but keep your intro short 4-6 seconds is considered good by most (honestly ask around).

Use your logo/brand on the Subscribe icon you can add to all videos.

Make friends with bigger vloggers and comment on their videos, just by commenting on videos your engagement stats will increase and when you get a reply you will get some new subscribers who follow the conversation. Don't spam though, quick way to get a ban.

Work together, this game is just that a game. Collaboration videos are a great way to get your name out there. Help others out with their designs and graphics if your good. Good at sound effects or music... you get the idea.

Twitter and Facebook are your friends... beware Facebook will close your account at some point unless you use your real name and even IF you use your real name they will still close it when it grows fast and demand you send them ID (I hate facebook).

Twitter, use it the same way you comment on videos, make friends with other vloggers and join in the conversations, your leach some new followers and subs along the way.


But the biggest tip of all is the content, if your best mate/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/cat/dog says its dull, it probably is. If your chasing views and subs do take the critical reviews of people with a pinch of salt but read them. Even if you do not agree with them there maybe some good ideas within the critic.

All said and done, there is a lot of luck as I said at the start. There are some great vloggers on here that deserve way more views and subs than they are getting.

For those of you new to this it can take a year or two to get established unless you're very lucky or have a unique way of doing things. So the last tip is, take a look at the big names out there, why are their videos popular? Content? Time invested? Style? etc. Watch and learn from them.

Good Luck!
Great tips, really useful, thank you
 
Great advice, T71.
My first couple of videos were long, boring, full of pauses and just plain sh1t. In hindsight, the fact I was unable to watch them anymore before I uploaded them, should have been a warning sign. Now I edit the crap out of them, then let my wife watch them and give me honest feedback. Invariably she points out more footage that I can remove. I also try to keep my vids below 5 minutes. People are more likely to click on a shorter video from a vlogger they've never heard about, than they are a 15 minute video.
 
This is some damn good information, I'll start using some of it tonight when I edit my next video :)
 
It's pretty much all stuff that I have been doing since day one. I remember a year ago sitting below 100 subscribers. Look at me now... ~790. Unfathonable. I am not a motovlogger, I am a CarVlogger. But yet people still take an interest in my stuff.

I saw the following comment come back here, and it is something I preach on other forums. You do YouTube because it's fun, not because you want views, subscribers or DAT YouTube cash. It's not a way to measure your internet genitalia. Join up for any of those aforementioned reasons and you will most likely fail horribly.

Have fun creating content and conversing with like minded people. Don't sweat the numbers, for they only serve to put you down. Not to say that I don't notice more comments or views. Hell yeah I notice. But it is not the reason why I started doing YouTube.
 
It's pretty much all stuff that I have been doing since day one. I remember a year ago sitting below 100 subscribers. Look at me now... ~790. Unfathonable. I am not a motovlogger, I am a CarVlogger. But yet people still take an interest in my stuff.

I saw the following comment come back here, and it is something I preach on other forums. You do YouTube because it's fun, not because you want views, subscribers or DAT YouTube cash. It's not a way to measure your internet genitalia. Join up for any of those aforementioned reasons and you will most likely fail horribly.

Have fun creating content and conversing with like minded people. Don't sweat the numbers, for they only serve to put you down. Not to say that I don't notice more comments or views. Hell yeah I notice. But it is not the reason why I started doing YouTube.

I agree. I just make videos for my own fun and about topics that are important to me. Although I only have 40 subscribers and my videos rarely get more than 30-40 views, I'm absolutely satisfied, because I know there are people out there that actually watch what I've created. I always try to have good quality videos and to keep them short and interesting.
 
great post I've been doing a lot of research on this subject different classes and courses and the like, and this is a nice chunk of the information.
 

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