20 Smart Ways to get more YouTube subscribers in 2015
Another year has gone by and your resolution to re-build that YouTube channel of yours has gone begging. If you are thinking about revamping your YouTube channel starting from now, here are the 20 Smart ways to gain more YouTube subscribers in 2015.
I have had the opportunity to attend a YouTube fan-fest with a VIP invitee, thanks to my wonderful acquaintances, and a little interaction with them shed some light on how these things work out exactly. I have another associate, who happens to be my peer student, had a tremendous growth in his YouTube subscribers and viewers within a span of two years. Although his numbers might not be too great, they are well above a million views in all, to justify his efforts that went into the making.
By collaborating with a few other proud YouTubers, here are a few of the smart ways to gather more YouTube subscribers, without being hard on your relatives a friends. Here are working tips which you can use to gain more Youtube subscribers.
The first step in getting started on your YouTube journey is to plan what your channel is going to be all about and the structure of the videos en route. Decide what it is that you love creating and focus on developing related skills, do not mimic trending YouTube channels, doing what you love is more important for a successful YouTube channel. A video tends to perform better if it has its own script and moreover it helps you in organizing your videos efficiently and keeps you on track. The plot of your video will keep you guided on your path till the final conclusion, without sneering off the main theme of the video. This script will also ensure a perfect flow of events as planned and the end result is a well-focused video for the audience.
Include as much details as possible into your video script, including the exact dialogues you are going to say, the actions you will be taking between video, your call to actions, etc. Decide on the language and the phrasing that you will be using in the videos, as they usually vary depending on your target audience.
If are well into making engaging videos and willing to invest more time and efforts understanding cinematography techniques, I recommend you getting yourself The Five C’s of Cinematography: Essential tips for film making. It has some great cutting-edge techniques for both the novice and seasoned cinematographer.
Produce top-notch content off your maximum efforts and resources. Create content that is engaging, informative and entertaining. Losing the hook into the middle of the video will likely see you losing a potential subscriber and a long-term audience. If the script is well structured, chances are less that you lose a subscriber. Upload videos that are either entertaining or informative, or if possible, integrate them together for one heck of a great video that will surely make the viewer hit the subscribe button.
Upload a combination of Burst and Evergreen videos. Burst videos will be all the rage for a limited time, get you instant hits but will fade away as time passes by. Evergreen videos are the ones that will get you archived views and will remain relevant irrespective of the time. If you are fear the wrath of the camera and do the talking, try publishing ‘Screen-casts’. But whatever you do, just before you hit the publish button, make sure the videos are highly engaging and will be of value to your audience.
Now this is easier said than done, but you cannot ignore what’s being said here. The main reason someone hits the subscribe button is because they admire the works of the publisher and love to hear more often from them. YouTube subscribers usually do not like channels that are not regular. Consistency is the key here to develop a long-lasting relationship with your existing subscribers and developing new ones.
Release your videos in a timely, recurring and structured fashion. Try to publish a video in a week or at least once or twice in a month. Stick to your schedule and do not upload videos as and when you feel like doing it, it will hurt your reputation. Whatever you do, make sure that your schedule is prominent and upload videos accordingly.
This is the most important aspect of your YouTube success. Being distinguishable plays a major role in getting the views that your channel needs. Drive curiosity to your videos with offbeat video titles. You will also need to dive into the SEO part of online marketing to get some eyeballs on your videos, by including your keyword in the title itself. Here are a few tips for optimizing your titles for greater reach:
- Use Google Adwords to identify what people are searching for on the web and get a clear idea of your niche. Try to tackle videos with a perfect blend of high volume search and low competition.
- Try limiting the length of your YouTube video title. Google truncates the length of the video down to 66 character mark and adds ‘YouTube |’ before the video, taking 10 characters more. So your ideal video title would be no more than 50 characters.
- Be descriptive in the title itself and give the audience a sneak peek into what the video is going to be about.
- Only include ‘Video’ in the title if your target audience is from search engine, adding ‘Video’ into your title won’t help in YouTube’s search engine.
Be catchy and keep your titles keyword-relevant to help your videos convert better.
If you are to get visitors to trust you as a brand on YouTube, you have to make the most of the customization options that YouTube has to offer. Being visually appealing in a sense that establishes your brand identity is a great way to put forth your efforts in a professional way.
If you already run a blog with some following, make use of similar branding elements for your YouTube channel, making you easily recognizable from some place else. A well-crafted custom channel art for YouTube will help you establish yourself as a brand. You can use this pretty cheap (Only $19) Youtube channel art service which let you create your own Youtube Channel art which is optimised for all the platform.
Make the most of YouTube channel bio and custom URL to finish up your channel customizations. Use a custom personal background header that includes the elements of your blog. Do keep the bio short and to the point, you can always point your visitors to your blog URL for an in-depth bio.
Now this is something many YouTube creators agree upon. Creating custom video thumbnails for each video, instead of letting it with a randomly generated one makes perfect sense. Using annotations and relevant images as custom thumbnails for your YouTube videos will definitely increase your videos “click through rate. A custom video thumbnail with a minor annotation will give the visitors a slight hint about in regard to what the video is all about.
YouTube offers selection of thumbnails from three intervals – One at the 1/4th mark, at 1/2 mark and at the 3/4th mark. Choose the one that perfectly illustrates what your video is about.
Your channel trailer is something you must carefully work upon and constantly improve upon to get the visitors coming in. YouTube offers a great feature called channel trailers that let you automatically play them upon the opening of your channel URL. This is the moment to catch the audiences’ attention, and within no more than 90 seconds. The perfect channel trailer is somewhere between 30 seconds to 60 seconds. Here you will need to provide a reason to your potential subscribers as to why must they visit your channel and what is it that you have to offer to become a repeated visitor. If you are good in front of the camera, let the camera rolling and give a short introduction yourself with a well-structured script.
In your YouTube channel reports check for the viewer retention reports to see if you are killing off potential subscribers with a boring or too lengthy channel trailer and tweak it accordingly.
‘Call to action’ annotations are those annoying popups in video which are actually a blessing in disguise for the YouTube creators. If used in a proper way, you can get more subscribers by making your visitors to click them in-video. Many YouTubers have reported of increased channel subscriptions with annotations added to their every video. A simple link created for channel subscription can be placed as a call to action in your video for more subscriptions.
A graphical button used as a call-to-action within your video could be livened up with an accompanying annotation text asking the visitors to click to subscribe. If done in an unobtrusive way, you will see your channel subscriptions make good progress.
This absolutely makes sense and there’s no reason for you not using it. YouTube provides an option to link to your official webpage and make sure you link yours if you got one. The efforts you put into getting visitors for YouTube channel could be channelized into your website or blog for providing an outlet for your most dedicated and curious followers. Moreover your channel also gets verified as an authentic representation of your brand on YouTube.
Under the channel settings of your YouTube page, add your website’s or blogs’ URL to link your channel and its associated webpage. You may also consider adding your blog/website URL in the channel description itself. Similarly, add ‘Subscribe’ buttons on your blog, at the sidebar to drive more subscribers to your YouTube channel
Although YouTube is home to some many detailed and in-depth reviews and other such content, the highly converted videos are the ones which are optimized for less than 5 minutes in length. Comscore reported in January 2014 that the average length of most YouTube videos was around 4.4 minutes. For content creators who are getting started, this is definitely a golden rule to go and blindly follow it until a serious following is built. Once you have a good following, you can experiment with the video length and see your audiences’ reaction or even consider interacting with them in the video comments section or at the end of your videos.
The best converted videos are not more than 3 minutes. Keep it short, simple, informative, entertaining and under 5 minutes. It is sure a tough challenge, but worth your efforts if you manage to come out of it unscathed.
Your Youtube Intro and Outro not only helps in branding but it will make your video entertaining. How often do viewers remember the brand while watching videos? Having an intro and outro will serve the purpose of branding perfectly. More over, an attractive Intro with a hook will ensure that your viewers stay glued to the video. Wondering what Youtube Intro is? Here is an example from Harsh’s Channel:
Thomas Hawk, a well renowned photographer claims that for every single photograph that he publishes he has ten rejected shots of the same. The same goes with any and all types of editing. Ruthlessly edit your YouTube videos and make sure only your best gets published. If you make haste about strictly inclining to your schedule and publish haphazardly, it will only hurt you and your brand as a whole. Make a lot of recordings while you are shooting a video and make sure only the best parts get selected.
Take multiple shots if you don’t feel confident about the take. Although I haven’t done much video editing on a Macintosh, Adobe Premier will do the work if you are based on Windows. Get the right editing tools to assist you in this painstaking process.
Coming to the SEO aspect of your YouTube videos, the video description is something that offers up a lot of potential to get your videos discoverable on search engines and also providing your viewers a short description of what lies ahead in the video. A brief in-depth description makes no sense as only the first few lines of your description shows up when a video is initially loaded.
Use your keywords wisely and don’t overdo it just for the sake of SEO optimizing, keep it natural and authentic. You can also link people to a ‘squeeze page’ on your website for those of them looking for something more.
Make use of Google Keywords tool for getting more ideas on relevant keywords for your YouTube videos. Add all of the relevant keywords to your videos to be discoverable in both Google and YouTube’s search engines. Overdoing the keywords won’t help as much as a few but well-targeted keywords. Do your homework and research more about YouTube video meta tags to get a better understanding of what works.
Think of all the possible keywords that are relevant to the uploaded videos and add them into it. A low video count may not always be only about poor content; it also indicates a poor discoverable nature of your videos. Metadata plays a major role in getting your videos displayed in search results and let the audience decide for themselves if a visit is worth their time. You can also browse for well converting videos and see what meta tags they are using for getting an idea. Do not just copy and paste meta tags, as that won’t help your cause.
Whatever the nature of your published videos, make sure you end your videos on a high note. Just like the last dialogue before the curtain fall, make sure you end your videos in a memorable fashion. Ask for subscription and like if your audience liked the video, ‘If you never ask, the answer will always be no’. Go all out on your videos and end them on a positive note with a stride of confidence and pleasure in helping and serving your audience.
Create a tail slate or outro with a standard banner across all your videos, with annotations for a subscribe button.
End your videos with a smile and keep your visitors eager for more.
Collaborating on YouTube has become pretty common recently among top content creators. Collaborating on YouTube has its benefits for all the parties involved. The creative process is a constructive one and seeing other YouTubers as your competitors will only impeded your progress and leaves you languishing and loathing about others’ success.
Make sure you reach out to similar users in your field and ask them out for an opportunity to work together on something interesting. Collaborating with other content creators with a unique and loyal fan base will help you find some new followers who are inclined with similar interests.
Social media is all built upon this intangible thread of connecting and interacting with fellow people. It is all about who you care for and who cares about you. During times when social media is becoming an important aspect from every small business owner to Fortune 500 companies for efficiently managing their loyal fan base and customers.
Interact with your audience and listen to their requests in the comments section of your videos. It is true that you may face certain backlash and hate in your comments section but brush it off with stride and listen to your loyal fan base. Reply to the comments under your videos and make your viewers feel connected all the time.
Who doesn’t love giveaways? Offer your audience something in return for all the build-up, engagement, subscribers and following of your YouTube channel. A free giveaway or a video contest will help you easily build up your initial following base to get started on building it further. Popular tech or fashion items could be used for hosting relevant giveaways on your channel to build up the buzz around your brand.
For a big giveaway, many YouTube hosts require users to follow all of their social media profiles to get involved, and that is the best bang for your buck on social media. Keep your winner announcing video short and provide your viewers with something more to keep them involved and interested in your offerings.
In this age of social media, being present and active on multiple social platforms is a pre-requisite. Being discoverable is a must as a brand and being active on multiple platforms is what you will need to establish your presence.
You can create a profile on major platforms like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest and many more; and instil a social media strategy to upload content to multiple social platforms at a scheduled time, using buffer or any other such app. Make the most of Facebook and Google ads to promote further on the web. Use tools like Pay with a tweet, that let users pay for a product with a tweet to even establish your brand further on other social media platforms.
Whatever you do, have an aggressive strategy to get out there and get your first 500 or 1000 subscribers as quickly as possible. The ‘build it, they’ll come‘ attitude won’t work on social media, you will need to promote to your maximum. A channel quickly gaining the buzz will also help you stay motivated to work even harder and create better videos for your audience.
Share with your friends what you’ve been working on and ask for a subscription if they are interested. Remember, don’t keep pestering friends repeatedly, they are not obliged to do so. Get out there on other social media platforms with some personal connections and let them know about your undertakings and ask them for subscriptions or likes if interested.
What worked for someone else might not turn out the same way for you. So, keep experimenting with everything in your control and stick to the one that fits the bill. Keep experimenting with camera angles, backgrounds, video thumbnails and so forth. Keep tracking of your changes and the way it is affecting your audience behaviour and stick to the one that works the best for your brand.
Building something of value on YouTube takes a lot of efforts, time, perseverance and a long-term commitment to reap its benefits.
What are some of the strategies of top YouTube influencers that you thought went unmentioned here? Shout out your thoughts and comments on building YouTube follower list below.
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