Did you know that the most important part of your channel is not how good you are at making your videos?
I know that sounds crazy because we’re so used to hearing about filming and editing. But I’m going to share three secrets that will revolutionize the way you look at growing your YouTube channel. (This is the actual strategy I’m using to grow mine!)
And keep reading till to the end for a checklist of 10 YouTube growth hacks that’ll get you even more views and subscribers.
5 Steps to On How to Grow a YouTube Channel from 0
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First, figure out why you want to grow your channel.
Seriously, why do you want to do it? Do you want to be a vlogger? Are you trying to be Casey Neistat or Peter McKinnon? Do you want to be YouTube famous? Those aren’t good reasons.
You should be growing your channel because it’s something you can’t not do. There should be something you want to see in the world that’s not out there yet—and you want to make it happen.
Secret #1: Find a way to get discovered by a new audience every single day.
Create content that gives YouTube a reason to promote your videos, based on what people are searching for. The most successful channels have grown their audience by creating evergreen tutorial content that’s both highly shareable and makes people want to click.
Take Peter McKinnon. If you look at back at where Peter started, it was all vlogs. Initially, they didn’t get any traction—and then he hit on an instructional video. So he took what he learned and he applied it again and again. Now, most of his successful videos are in this tutorial format. They bring new people into his ecosystem every single day.
Secret #2: Create content around a central theme to build your channel’s authority.
If people are confused about what your channel’s about, they will start to ignore you. Click-through rate and watch time (two of the largest factors in ranking!) go way up when audiences know exactly what kind of tempo and content they’re going to get from a channel. So do subscriptions—and eventually, leads, customers, and clients.
Secret #3: Dull instruction or vlogging does not turn viewers into customers.
You can catch people’s attention with the first two secrets, but you keep it by being personable and relatable. (The reason I started my channel is because most SEO instructional video channels have the personality of a wet blanket!) You also do not earn customers with vlogs. It seems cool, but it sucks as a business model.
Adding in relatable intros and outros can help turn a subscriber into a customer. People want to do business with people they like, so be personal—especially before tutorials.
Plus, here are my top 10 YouTube growth hacks:
After you’ve mastered my three-part strategy, you can dive into this YouTube growth checklist. You can implement these tips and tricks straightaway to instantly see more views and subscribers with your next video. They’re based on some of my most successful videos plus popular YouTube.
Basically, this checklist is like hiring the smartest SEO team of all time to create your videos for you.
- Have awesome thumbnails. Search to find the top results for the topic that you’re making a video about. Then, model your thumbnails after those images.
- Write a title that makes people click. I use YouTube Autocomplete, Ahrefs and TubeBuddy to break down each one.
- Make your intro speedy. Here’s how I do it: In 15 seconds, I include a preview that will keep them watching, a quick bio, and then another reminder of what’s coming up in the video.
- Tell them what’s coming up every chance you get. An example from this post: We’re only on number four of the top 10 youtube growth hacks, and I think number nine is easily the best.
- Hack watch time. Try to get 50% of your viewers to make it to the 75% mark of your video to make it more likely for YouTube to flag your content as highly relevant.
- Create desirable content. I check 10 channels like mine and I write down the top 10 most popular videos for each channel—and now have 100 ideas for my next 100 videos.
- Slim down your tags. Don’t try to keyword stuff in your tags.
- Create lots of playlists. If you have more than 50 videos, create playlists for a guided experience. Plus, it keeps people clicking through to another one of your videos instead of another creator’s recommended one.
- Use closed captioning. Closed captioning may not have value for your intended keyword, but it could have splash effects for all of the other keywords and all the other topics you mentioned in your video.
- The description matters! Include links in your description on YouTube to help grow your audience and drive them to more videos.
BONUS TIP: Play your cards right. By adding cards into your video, you can offer a link to viewers to another video of yours, an approved merch store, or further interaction with your audience. That’s where cards can be gold.