How to Make a Successful Youtube Channel in 8 Steps
Monetization
Being a hugely popular video sharing platform, YouTube is the world’s 2nd largest search engine after Google, engaging more than one billion users! If you study YouTube’s statistics closer, you’ll find out that it offers endless opportunities for businesses and individuals to step into the spotlight.
You’ve probably heard stories of people who became popular for posting videos on YouTube. Just like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media, YouTube has nurtured a whole bunch of celebrities for whom sharing video content has turned from a way of self-expression into a profession. Indeed, YouTube has a fascinating record of self-made millionaires who managed to acquire a huge army of followers.
Businesses also steadily realize YouTube’s potential in expanding the public reach and boosting sales, starting to employ highly elaborate techniques to integrate video content marketing into their promotion strategies.
But why exactly is it worth investing time and efforts into YouTube anyway?
Reasons for Starting a YouTube Channel
If creating a YouTube channel is something you’ve been contemplating for a long time but had doubts whether it is even worth your while, consider the following benefits:
- Access to the huge audience
YouTube is visited by approximately 30 million people every single day! Whether you are a businessman or blogger, you just can’t afford yourself losing a chance to reach out to so many potential customers, followers, etc. - Another way to enrich your content
If you’ve been dealing with internet marketing for some time, you know how important it is to create a lot of content to get visible. YouTube gives you an opportunity to provide more content for your customers and strengthen your presence on the web.
Moreover, video content, in particular, is incredibly trendy nowadays. It creates lots of engagement, helps to keep the audience interested, and doesn’t become obsolete as fast as, for example, posts on social media. - Reputation and image building
Quality videos have a lot of potential when it comes to establishing your brand’s image and building a reputation. If the video content you make resonates with the audience and creates a special emotional attachment, the trust to your brand becomes stronger and your relationships with customers get more personal and intimate. - Increase of website traffic and conversion rate
Inserting links in videos and their descriptions, you can redirect users to your own website. What is more, since YouTube belongs to Google, your successful video content has a chance to be ranked among general search results which can considerably improve your visibility on the web. - Extra revenue
You can earn money on YouTube through ads or by making paid videos and posting them on your personal website. For example, if your site is built on Ning, you can upload your videos to YouTube, post them on your website, and set up a paid access. - Creative outlet
If you’re not starting a YouTube channel for commercial goals, you might be interested in expressing yourself creatively. In your videos, you can share knowledge and experience, show off your skills, and try to impart them to others. There are many people out there who might appreciate your talents!
Whether you are starting a YouTube channel for your own business or creative self-expression, there are lots of advantages to enjoy if you do things right.
How to Make Your YouTube Channel a Success
So if the arguments presented above make sense to you, it’s time to know what exactly you should do to create a popular channel on YouTube.
Further in this article, we will review several steps that will hopefully lead you to success and explain how to make money with YouTube. However, be prepared for an exhausting journey because making a popular YouTube channel is far from being a walk in the park. But if you have a clear idea about your goals, creativity required to come up with interesting content, and determination to move forward despite occasional hurdles, you have high chances to become another YouTube star or effectively boost your business – depending on the goals you pursue.
Step 1. Defining your strategy
Before you start a YouTube channel, you should clearly determine your goals and strategy. Without a clear vision, it will be much harder to make any further progress: you will face difficulties with creating appropriate content, use wrong methods of promotion, and target wrong audience.
It will be easier to figure out your priorities if you ask yourself few questions:
- What do you need a YouTube channel for?
- What kind of videos are you going to make?
- What will your videos be about?
- What is the niche you are targeting?
- What audience do you want to engage?
- Are there many competitors on YouTube who do something similar to what you are going to do?
- How often can you release new videos?
- How are you going to shoot your videos?
- How much time do you have available to invest in YouTube?
- How do you define your success?
With these questions answered, you will have a better idea of what your further actions should be.
Step 2. Understanding your audience
YouTube is visited by all kinds of audience. People with various backgrounds and interests use it to search for the solutions to the problems they are facing. But in this diversity, you can’t afford yourself targeting each and every YouTube user simply because it is impossible to cater for everybody’s needs.
But what you can do is determine the audience you are going to work for and tailor the content specifically to their preferences. First, choose the niche in which your contribution will be most useful. Then, try to narrow it down as much as you can. To grasp the attention of your first couple of hundreds of viewers, it is more productive to target the audience with very specific interests. Further on, you will be able to steadily expand your area of expertise and engage a wider audience.
To begin with, build your ideal viewer persona, roughly determining the gender, age, interests, social status, and welfare of your potential subscribers. With that done, it will be much easier for you to decide what content to deliver, how to plan your further marketing strategies, and what communication mode to employ.
It might be also helpful to conduct a couple of surveys among the most typical representatives of your target audience to learn their preferences.
Step 3. Creating your brand
As soon as you make your mind about your goals and audience, it’s time to finally create a YouTube channel. And the first thing you’ll have to take care of is creating your brand.
If you want to get noticed, you have to stand out – the competition on YouTube is fierce. This is exactly why you need your personal brand that will be easily recognizable and memorable. Make sure viewers can immediately identify your video among all others.
There are few things to consider while building your brand:
- Brand name (the name of your channel): it should be unique, recognizable, and catchy; at the same time, it has to convey the main idea of your video content and offer enough information for users to understand what they can expect to see on your channel. If you are planning to use YouTube to promote the brand that already exists, you can just take the name of your company or trademark.
- Brand logo: make your logo visually appealing and pleasant to look at. It should be memorable enough to leave an imprint in viewers’ minds for a long time. A quality logo will make your brand look professional and trustworthy. Again, if you are aiming at promoting an existing brand, simply use its logo on YouTube.
- Brand voice: if you’re seeking to engage YouTube’s audience and come up with frequent uploads, you have to be ready to reply viewers’ comments in the appropriate way. Different kinds of audience require different approaches when it comes to communication. The ways you engage in discussions with professional marketers and beauty vloggers, for instance, would be totally different. Therefore, you have to develop the style of communication that will suit your topic and target audience.
- Brand thumbnails: this one is optional, but your trademark style for thumbnails can make your videos recognizable. Moreover, a well-made thumbnail increases the chances for your video to be noticed. The easiest way to differentiate your video in the list of search results is by putting your logo or captions in a special font style on a thumbnail image. As soon as you become a bit more popular and recognizable, you can start using thumbnails featuring your own face.
When you figure out what your brand image should be like, stick to your initial idea and try to be consistent with it. Find your own “thing” and don’t stray too far away from your concept or topic.
Step 4. Preparing a plan
If you want YouTube to help you achieve commercial or marketing goals, you should be prepared to release new videos on the regular basis. Unless you don’t provide subscribers with something that whets their appetite for new content every now and again, they will quickly forget your channel. Moreover, if you release something interesting regularly, viewers get used to watching your videos at the given time of the day, week, etc., and you steadily become a part of their lives.
To meet the expectations of your audience, it is recommended to prepare a plan or schedule of content you are going to release in the future. It will allow you to meet your deadlines more efficiently and avoid situations when you’re stuck with no fresh ideas in your sleeve.
Step 5. Making quality videos
The first thing that can turn people away from your videos is a bad quality. No matter how informative and engaging your video is, if a viewer cannot clearly discern what is going on on the screen, your video will be skipped immediately. If you don’t want to lose your potential subscribers at the outset, make sure your videos meet the highest quality standards.
Pay attention to things like:
- Video resolution: make your videos in the highest resolution possible. Full HD or 4K will do perfectly.
- Focus: keep objects (or yourself) in focus while shooting videos. There’s nothing more off-putting than a blurry and soapy mess on the screen.
- Lighting: make sure the objects you are filming are well illuminated. The light must come from the right sources and at the proper angle. Insufficient lighting can seriously affect the quality of your video.
- Background: this point is especially important for vloggers. A perfect backdrop is pleasant to look at, yet not distracting.
- Sound: audio aspect matters as much as the picture quality. Unless you’re making silent movies, you should take a good care of the sound of your videos. Make sure your voice is being well heard. If you’re using a background music, adjust its loudness so that it doesn’t interfere with your voice.
In short, make sure your videos look professional. Otherwise, you won’t be able to convince viewers of your authority and credibility. That’s why it is worth investing in a decent equipment like a powerful camera, lighting, backdrops, etc. early on. And don’t forget about editing software!
However, “quality” is not only how your video is made, but also what it is about and how useful it is. Consider a few tips to make your videos a success:
- Focus on the value of your videos, instead of the profits you can elicit. If your video is truly good, the profits will come.
- Make your videos concise. People rarely spend a lot of time watching videos on YouTube. For the most part, they want to get valuable information as soon as possible. So try not to beat around the bush and deliver your viewers what they come for. Experiment with videos of different length and see what works best for your audience.
- Combine usefulness with entertainment. This is a perfect formula that will make your videos popular. Finding answers to your questions and having fun in the process – isn’t that a perfect combination?
- Find ways to embed your products or services in your videos without deteriorating their value. This will increase your chances to convert viewers into buyers.
Step 6. Improving your SEO
Having a bunch of cool videos is great, but what’s the point if nobody can find them? That’s why you need to make your video content searchable. YouTube lets you supply videos with meta tags which enable other users to find them not only on YouTube but also on major search engines:
- Title – a name of your video. It should be concise, yet informative. Try to explain what the video is about in a few words. The title is the first thing viewers pay attention to while choosing a video from the list of search results. That’s why it is important to make your title appealing and intriguing. And don’t forget to insert a couple of relevant keywords to make it more searchable.
- Description – a text that offers more details about the video. Use descriptions to introduce viewers to the context of your video and drop in a keyword or two. The description is also great for leaving a link to your website. If you affiliate with other brands, you can provide links to their websites too.
- Tags – these are basically keywords applicable to your video. Provide a whole bunch of them and don’t target only the shortest and most frequent ones. Longer, more specific keywords can sometimes make it easier for your video to come to the surface.
Step 7. Engaging in communication
Running a successful YouTube channel implies not only making good videos but also keeping in touch with your viewers and subscribers. People will want to comment on your videos, ask questions, and actively interact with you. And they will expect you to react properly.
You will do just fine if you act respectfully, do your best to answer most of the questions asked, and let all of your viewers participate in the discussion on equal terms. Don’t reply to trolls, even if their comments make no sense. However, learn to discern trolling from sound criticism as the latter is a valuable source of feedback you can use to improve your content.
The style of your communication will determine your brand’s voice and how people perceive it. This has a direct influence on your brand’s image and, consequently, your sales.
Step 8. Promotion
There are many ways to promote your YouTube channel and get more views. Here are some of them:
- Asking people to subscribe, like and share your videos
YouTube ranks videos according to several parameters: overall amount of views, rating (thumbs up and down), number of subscribers, number of social shares, and the overall amount of comments. What’s the easiest way to get these? Well, nobody said you can’t ask for them. Do it at the end of your video and think of the ways to motivate people to support you! - Introducing end cards
End cards are interactive call-to-action blocks that show up at the end of YouTube videos and encourage viewers to subscribe, check other videos, visit a website, etc. You can effectively utilize them to get more subscribers, increase traffic to your website, and promote your products. - Using annotations
Annotations are brief text messages or links that appear as overlays in YouTube videos, prompting viewers to subscribe or watch some other stuff. You can use them to your advantage, but make sure you don’t overload your videos with obtrusive and irritating pop-ups. - Employing other social media.
Don’t lose an opportunity to promote your YouTube channel on social media like Facebook, Twitter and others. Through the network of social connections, your video content can reach more people than you could ever imagine. If you have a blog, create a blog post elaborating on your recent video and embed it right in the text. If you have a Ning network, you can integrate all of these options into one solution and promote your YouTube channel across your online community. - Cooperating with other YouTubers
To expand your reach even further, consider contacting other people who make videos on similar topics and share the same audience. You can help each other with promotion by giving reciprocal shoutouts or even create videos together at some point.
Having a successful channel on YouTube is great both for your business and personal development. But creating it and making popular is not easy. This undertaking requires time, patience, and determination. Unfortunately, there’s no specific formula for success because it mostly depends on the competition in your niche, as well as your content, creativity, and of course, luck.
Nevertheless, following the tips offered in this article, you will have higher chances to succeed. Just remember the main rule: focus on the quality of your content first and be passionate about what you do. If you only care about profits, viewers will sense the dishonesty and abandon you. But if your enthusiasm is passed on to them through your videos, your YouTube channel can become anything you want it to be.
