YouTube is a powerful platform for creators aiming to build a lasting audience and deliver quality content. We'll focus on how to grow a YouTube channel by producing high-quality videos, optimizing your content strategy, and giving your videos the best chance to succeed.
Overview
If you want to create content for audiences outside of Gen Z, YouTube will be one of the keys to your success as a creator. It has a great content distribution algorithm, and if your videos are consistently high-quality and well-branded, they will get noticed.
What you'll be known for
Making one high-quality video is better than making 20 low-quality videos. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that you must produce many videos to grow your channel quickly. That can't be farther from the truth. There are channels with hundreds of videos and only a handful of subscribers - simply because their videos are low-quality. Nobody wants to watch subpar stuff when there is an infinite supply of perfectly produced alternatives. Even if a poor channel makes a good video once in a while, viewers won't subscribe and won't be coming back because when they check out the whole channel, they see a lot of low-quality videos. The one good video will be considered sort of an accident that probably won't be regularly happening again and again.
On the other hand, there are many channels with 10 or 20 videos and a subscriber count reaching 50k. This is because people see the videos are great, the creator puts a lot of effort into them and only releases good stuff. If your schedule doesn't allow you to post more than two quality videos per month, so be it.
The life span of content on other social networks is very short - you post something, it lives its social life for a while, and then it dies. It's very unlikely someone will scroll through your posts or images to see something you published 6 months ago. On YouTube, that wouldn't be unusual. You can be more comfortable creating quality content because you know that people can easily find it in your profile and search results even after a couple of months.
Some videos on YouTube even get popular a long time after publishing - that's almost impossible on other social networks. Most sensible content on YouTube has some substance, and the search bar makes it easy for people to find what they are looking for, no matter when it was published. And they search a lot.
Post templates
We covered content templates in the previous module, but we want to make a quick point about them here, too. Using these templates is as important on YouTube as on any other social network. Apart from making it easier for you to produce the content, they give your videos and channel a certain structure.
When people like your video, a reason they subscribe will be to see more similar content. They'll often check your videos to see whether they find any. If the videos are created using content templates, viewers will be able to easily find more videos similar to the one they like and quickly recognize it among others.
Ask for like & subscribing
You probably wondered why YouTube creators always ask you to like and subscribe. It sounds very trivial, and you may think it's useless. After all, if someone likes the video or the channel, they will like & subscribe anyway. Well, not really. Research showed that asking people to do these two things dramatically increased the number of both likes and subscribers. We don't recommend doing it right at the beginning, where you should try to get to the point of the video ASAP - it's better to sneak it somewhere towards the middle.
Titles and thumbnails
One of the secrets of professional creators is to test multiple thumbnails and titles on newly released videos and compare how they perform. It's not a coincidence that these creators will tell you that titles and thumbnails can make or break your video. They will usually add a story of how their video with 1000 views went to 50k after rewriting the title and changing the thumbnail.
💡 Keep in mind
Relying on your intuition or judgement is nonsense. The easiest way to learn to create titles and thumbnails that work is to study successful creators.
Comments
One of the indicators YouTube started to use more prominently to evaluate the viability of a video is the number of people who commented. Maybe you noticed that rather than asking viewers to like and subscribe, some creators ask them a question and want them to write an answer in the comments.
If you have some important information you want to convey to your viewers after they watch the video, the first thought may be to use a description section. That would be a bad choice - nobody reads that. It would be much smarter to post it in the comments and pin your comment to the top. The viewer's main action while or after watching the video is to scroll down and check out the comments, where your pinned one will be waiting.
Watch time
If you'd like to eventually start making money on YouTube, the main factor isn't really the views - it's the watch time. The same goes for the algorithm - if many people click on your video but quickly go away, it's a bad sign and it won't be recommended as much.
Timestamps
If your videos cover more topics or you address multiple aspects of a given topic, create timestamps that the viewer will see in the progress bar. If he's getting bored or just wants to hear a specific point, adding timestamps is the only way to retain him - otherwise, he'll simply leave.
💡 Keep in mind
The tricks only work and make sense if you have great content. You can trick people into clicking on your videos but not into watching them.
Remember
👉 You can grow your channel quickly even with only a few high-quality videos.
👉 YouTube content can stay relevant and searchable for years.
👉 Using post templates keeps all kinds of your videos consistent.
👉 Asking viewers to like, subscribe, or comment significantly increases engagement.
👉 Testing and refining titles and thumbnails is the only way to find the one that works best.
👉 Watch time, not view count, is key to both monetization and algorithm success.
Homework
1️⃣ If you already have published videos on YouTube, go through all of them and improve their titles and thumbnails. It can improve their views and be a good practice session that you'll capitalize on when releasing new videos.
2️⃣ Prepare pop-up graphics that will appear on the screen when you prompt viewers to like, subscribe, or comment.
👏 Kudos to you!
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