Growing Your YouTube Channel (4 Key Strategies)

If you’re a content creator on YouTube, you likely know how challenging it can be to grow your audience and subscribers. Despite your best efforts, it’s easy to feel like you’re struggling to gain views and subscribers. That’s because growing a YouTube channel requires a strategic approach, but this part is easy to overlook if you’re focusing all your energy on creating engaging videos. YouTube promotion isn’t a new concept, but with so many creators on the platform – you’ll need to work hard to get noticed.

Fortunately, with the right tactics, you can significantly increase your visibility and attract more viewers. You can easily do this by leveraging social media, using content marketing, and more. These methods can help you establish yourself as an authority in your YouTube niche and build a loyal community around your channel.

In this article, we’ll explore three key strategies for growing your YouTube channel. We’ll also share essential tools and knowledge along the way. Let’s get to it!

1. Create a Website For Your YouTube Channel

Creating a dedicated website for your YouTube channel is highly important – you can leverage it to grow your channel, your subscribers and view count. Creating a website helps you to establish a professional brand behind your channel.

If you’re serious about growing your YouTube channel, you’ll probably want to establish a brand name as early as possible in the process. This includes designing your thumbnails in a consistent way, adding your logo all around, and also use your own brand name and URL/domain whenever possible.

Think about that for a moment – when people randomly reach your YouTube video, it’d be quite hard to get them to stick around. Would they remember the name of your channel? If you’re using a brand name, and also direct them to your own URL – there are better chances that they come back.

With a website, you are no longer a limited to YouTube’s power – you can add more types of content like blog posts, custom pages, etc. You can sync all of your YouTube videos, but can also upload your own videos off of YouTube.

Viewers won’t be distracted by “related” videos made by other creators, and actually people would be able to stumble upon your website via SEO – this can double or triple the potential videos of your videos, and if you embed videos from YouTube on your website – it’d count exactly as a regular YouTube viewer.

Furthermore, a website gives you a better way of communicating with your audience. Your’re not limited to the YouTube comments anymore – they can reach out via a contact form, submit comments directly on the website, or you can use opt-in forms or other widgets to increase their engagement.

The most valuable aspect of your business is your subscribers or audience – keep that in mind and make sure you have more control over that asset. Down the road, you’ll have more options to monetize your website via ads, subscriptions, eCommerce, donations and more. These are essential to grow the business side of your YouTube channel alongside growing the channel itself.

2. Use Social Media to Promote Your Channel

Social media is one of the best ways to promote pretty much anything. If you’re savvy, you can use social media to get your channel attention it might not otherwise get just from YouTube searches.

Moreover, social media enables you to engage with followers in a more direct way than YouTube comments. For instance, it’s much easier to establish new conversations. Plus, a Tweet or a TikTok video that goes viral can go a long way to helping you funnel traffic toward YouTube.

To make the most out of social media, you’ll need to choose the right platforms for your content and audience. For example, if you’re a fashion Vlogger, Instagram may be the best platform to promote your content, as it’s visually driven and popular among fashion enthusiasts.

In our experience, it’s best to focus your efforts on one or two social media platforms. That way, managing social media won’t distract you too much from your YouTube channel. If you want to use social media effectively, always keep the following in mind:

1. Post consistently. Consistency is key when it comes to social media marketing. Make sure you’re posting regularly to keep your followers engaged and attract new ones.
2. Use relevant hashtags. Hashtags are a great way to make your content discoverable by people who are interested in your niche. Use relevant hashtags in your posts to increase your reach.
3. Engage with your followers. Respond to comments and messages, and take the time to build relationships with your followers. This can help you create a loyal community around your brand.

Additionally, if you have little to no social media following, you’ll need to engage with other accounts in your niche to start gaining traction. That means replying to posts that might interest your audience and perhaps even reaching out directly via DM to see if an account might be willing to give you a shoutout.

3. Publish Videos Viewers Are Looking For

The real ‘secret’ to success on YouTube is understanding what viewers are looking for – and then catering to them. That’s called content marketing, and it applies to nearly any type of creative endeavor online. From blogging to social media, and even videos on YouTube, you need to appeal to your audience.

Content marketing is a crucial aspect of growing a successful YouTube channel. At its core, content marketing involves creating valuable, informative, and engaging material that resonates with your target audience. By doing so, you can attract more viewers to your channel, establish yourself as an authority in your niche, and build a loyal community around your content.

Here’s a quick overview of what a solid content marketing strategy requires:

1. Identify your target audience, pinpointing their needs and interests.
2. Create high-quality videos that provide solutions to their problems, answer their questions, or entertain them in a way that aligns with your brand’s personality.
3. Focus on providing value to your viewers, rather than simply promoting your brand or products.
4. Use storytelling, humor, or educational content to grab their attention and keep them engaged throughout the video.
5. Maintain consistent formatting and style to establish your brand and expertise.

If you take a look at the most successful YouTube channels, you’ll notice they have very strong brands. They publish specific types of content consistently because that’s what their audience wants:

Tapping into a unique niche and figuring out what kind of content this sub-group wants is the true ticket to success on YouTube. Depending on how big that niche is, your subscribers and views should go up over time as you continue to publish content.

4. Create Better Titles and Thumbnails

If you use a search engine to find any kind of information, you’re much more likely to click on the first results. Barring that, you’re more likely to pay attention to the results that are more eye-catching or have better descriptions.

With YouTube, things are similar. The first results get the most attention, but since YouTube is so visual, users may be more open to scrolling down and looking at videos that seem interesting:

That gives you a golden opportunity since you can stand out from channels with more subscribers, simply by looking appealing in searches. The way to do this is to focus on creating better video titles and thumbnails. Here’s how to do that:

1. Use attention-grabbing elements. To make your titles and thumbnails stand out, use attention-grabbing elements such as bold fonts, bright colors, and high-quality images. This can help set your videos apart in search results and attract more clicks.
2. Test and iterate. Try different variations of your titles and thumbnails and see which ones perform best. You can use YouTube analytics to track your views, engagement, and click-through rates and adjust your titles and thumbnails accordingly.
3. Find a formula and stick to it. Consistency is key when it comes to creating titles and thumbnails. Use uniform branding, fonts, and colors to help your audience recognize your videos. This can help you create a strong brand identity and build a loyal community around your channel.

When it comes to titles, we recommend you avoid clickbait. It can work in some cases, but it can also put off a significant number of users. Plus, these days, audiences are much savvier when selecting what content to watch, so you need to treat them with respect in order to build trust.

Conclusion

Building a successful YouTube channel requires a strategic approach. Focusing on the content you want to create is fine, but it may not be the most successful growth strategy. To gain a large following, you need to understand what your audience wants and figure out how to deliver it.

There are a lot of ways to grow a YouTube channel organically. However, these are the three most important strategies for long-term growth:

1. Create a website for your YouTube channel. Leverage search engines and SEO to grow your YouTube channel and establish a more appropriate brand behind your videos. Communicate directly with your audience and add a shop, a blog, or other pages!
2. Use social media to promote your channel.
3. Publish videos that viewers are looking for.
4. Create better titles and thumbnails.

You can easily sync or import your YouTube channel to your website by using a website builder like Podcastpage.io. Another excellent way to grow your YouTube channel is by starting a podcast. This is super easy when you create your show’s site using Podcastpage. As a result, you’ll be able to tap into a whole new audience and boost your site’s visibility with minimum effort!