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YouTube is the second-largest website in the world (after YouTube owner, Google.com). Every month it receives more than 14.3 billion visits, which is more than Facebook, Instagram, Wikipedia, and Amazon combined. Since its inception, YouTube has been the number one video platform and the second-largest search engine.
Businesses can take advantage of what YouTube has to offer if they know what they are doing. In this special report, we’ll explain what you need to do to be successful with YouTube.
You have a ready-made audience with YouTube. The video platform is consistently growing because it’s easy to use and there are videos on every subject imaginable. It’s an ever-expanding streaming universe of knowledge and entertainment that’s completely free of charge.
And YouTube videos often rank high in Google and the other search engines for competitive keywords.
By the end of this report (or long article, depending on your perspective), you’ll know how to use YouTube to develop your business and extend your reach across the world. You’ll understand that YouTube can be very effective for brand marketing if you do it right.
There are many advantages to creating a successful YouTube channel. You probably already know what most of these are, but you may not know how to go about setting up your channel for the best chance of success.
Getting started can be difficult because you need answers to the following questions:
- How to brand your YouTube channel in the most effective way?
- Which theme should you use for your YouTube channel?
- How do you optimize your channel correctly so that you get the best results?
- Which are the best content formats to use for your channel?
- How can you grow your channel subscribers?
This report covers everything from setting up your YouTube channel in the right way to attract a loyal base of followers, how to fill your channel with high-quality content that your audience loves, and a lot more.
So, let’s get started, shall we?
Setting Up Your Channel For The Best Results
We’re not going to waste your time and ours explaining how to create a new YouTube account if you don’t have one. Setting up a YouTube account is extremely easy to do with a Google account, and there are lots of resources online to walk you through it.
What is the Focus of Your YouTube Channel?
The most important advice that we can give you about your YouTube channel is that it must have the right focus.
Before you create your YouTube channel, you need to do your homework so that you will have the maximum chance of success. You need to plan out your channel properly, otherwise it is likely to fail.
The first, and most important, question that you need to answer about your channel is – “what will be the main subject?”
You need to have a robust theme for your channel which your audience understands. This will help your channel to grow in the fastest possible time.
This does not mean that you can only create videos for a single niche. But to get started in the best way, it is recommended that you focus on a specific subject rather than try to please a number of different audiences.
Once your channel is established, you can develop it by adding additional videos aimed at other segments of your audience. It’s very important that you start with a clear focus for your channel and provide video content that is related to a single niche.
Know Your Audience
Knowing your audience is key to creating a successful YouTube channel.
Even if you think that you know your audience well already, take the time to find out what questions your audience has, what they are really looking for, and the style of videos that will appeal to them.
Find out who your competitors are and check out what they are doing with their channels.
If you’ve ever used YouTube, you know how easy it is to get lost just clicking around on interesting content. The same holds true as a content creator.
Meaning, you need to find a way to stand out from the crowd. A lot of businesses will copy what their competitors are doing, but we recommend that you do things differently.
Usually, the most successful YouTube channels are based on subjects that the creators are passionate about.
It is easy for them to create new videos because of their strong interest in the subject. They will then tie in the video content with their website and their existing products and services.
The best channels on YouTube have created a seamless brand.
It is very important that you can connect your YouTube channel with your other marketing channels such as your website and social media profiles.
This will help you to widen your reach and get the best possible exposure for your business.
There is nothing more important than deciding what your YouTube channel is going to be about, so take your time and do not progress any further until you have decided this.
Keep researching your market and look for gaps which you can fill with high-quality video content.
Give Your Audience What They Want
Find out what burning questions your audience have in your niche.
The best YouTube channels provide answers to the questions that their audience has.
If the question is already being answered on another channel, think about how you can improve the answer with your content.
Are there gaps in the content?
What can you do that is better?
It is not always easy to come up with ideas for a YouTube channel, so to help you, here are a few of the most popular subjects on the platform that have been successful for the channel creators:
Tutorials and How-To Videos
Tutorial and “how to” videos are usually very popular because they teach the viewer a specific set of skills.
For example, you can create tutorials for popular software, digital marketing, creating WordPress websites or making money online.
For “how to” videos, you could create a series on home improvements if you have skills in this area. These kinds of subjects are always in demand on YouTube.
Videos about Technology
People are crazy about the latest gadgets, and there are many YouTube users who also like to take a step back in time and get nostalgic about the technologies of yesteryear.
You can create a YouTube channel which takes the “tech” out of technology and helps people to make the right choices.
Tech gadget product reviews are always popular, and you can make a lot of money as an affiliate if you make the right videos.
Mobile phones and computers are probably the most in demand products, but you can think out of the box here and cover other tech devices around the home as an example.
There is always a lot of tech news, so you can incorporate this into your channel as well.
Compilations and “best” of Videos
There is a strong demand for compilation videos these days. You could put together the funniest cat videos or people doing stupid things. What are you interested in? If you like to travel, then you could create videos about the best travel destinations.
You have endless possibilities here. If you are going to use other people’s content to create your videos, then make sure that you are not breaking any copyright laws when you do this.
Arts and Crafts
Are you good at making crafts? Do you know the best places to buy and sell arts and crafts?
There are many people interested in crafts across the world, and this is a great idea for a successful YouTube channel if you have the skills and/or knowledge to create high-quality videos.
Some of the most popular channels on YouTube are about crafts.
People cannot get enough of videos that show them how to make handmade crafts and how to sell all kinds of arts and crafts on platforms such as Etsy.
Channels about Travel
Now that the world is slowly getting back to some kind of normality again after the global pandemic, YouTube users are looking for travel ideas.
They want to watch videos of ideal vacation spots and find out as much as they can about these locations.
How good would it be to travel the world and make money on YouTube through the creation and uploading of videos about where you are?
There are a lot of big companies that will be interested in sponsoring your travel channel as it grows.
Other High Demand Channels
These are just a few ideas for successful YouTube channels. Other good ideas include:
- Video gaming channels
- Health and fitness
- Cooking
- Story style videos
- Podcast style videos
- Videos that expose scammers
Take the time to analyze the most successful channels on YouTube in your niche.
What kind of video content are they creating?
You need to plan out your channel in advance before you create it and upload any videos.
Having clarity on what your channel will be about will help to provide a strong focus and will increase your chances of success.
What Will You Name Your Channel?
Naming your channel is very important, and it’s not something that you want to approach half-heartedly.
The name of your channel reflects your business, your brand, and informs your audience what kind of content they can expect to find on your channel.
Make sure that you do not go for a channel name that is too generic or in any way vague. If your channel name is vague, then your audience will probably not be able to associate it with your niche very easily.
Yes, there are a lot of creators on YouTube who have established very successful channels using their personal names. But we recommend that you come up with a channel name that your audience will instantly recognize as providing the type of video content that they are looking for. As we mentioned above, knowing your audience very well can make this step much easier.
Important Note: We recommend that you choose a name for your channel where you can register the same (or similar) domain name and create other social channels using the same name. This will provide you with total control over the name and will help to grow and protect your business.
Focus On Your Content Format
If you want to create a successful long-term YouTube channel, then you need to focus on the formats of the content you will upload. It is never a good idea to create a channel that tries to satisfy multiple different audiences.
Trying to be all things to all people will only prevent you from creating a recognized brand for your business.
As we said before, start by focusing your video content on one specific niche. This will help to demonstrate your expertise and authority in the niche and your channel will grow faster, and you will be able to develop your brand in the most effective way.
It’ll also be easier for you to come up with a schedule for creating your video content.
In the next section, we will discuss the importance of a good keyword strategy for your YouTube channel.
The Importance of a Good Keyword Strategy for YouTube Success
As mentioned in the beginning of this guide/report, YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world. Only Google is bigger, and Google owns YouTube!
YouTube users search for the video content that they want. You need to optimize your channel and your videos for relevant keywords so that users will find your content.
The competition for most keywords on YouTube is not as tough as it is on Google itself. You can rank your videos and your channel high in YouTube search and appear in Google search and the other major search engines like Bing with good keyword optimization.
Conduct Keyword Research for Your Niche
Before you create and upload your first video to your channel, we recommend that you conduct keyword research for your niche.
You can do this for free using the Google Keyword Planner (GKP). There are other premium tools available such as AHREFS, Ubersuggest and more, but the free Google Keyword Planner is the best place to start.
When you use the GKP, you will discover 2 important things:
- Different keywords that you can use for your video content
- The search volume for those keywords
Now, the numbers that you get from the GKP are going to be a bit higher than for YouTube, but honestly, there is not much difference these days.
There are so many searches performed on YouTube that they will not be far off the Google numbers.
Use seed keyword for your research.
This is the keyword that you think is the most relevant for your niche. For example, it could be “make money online” or “weight loss” or “mind control”.
The GKP will give you lots of keyword suggestions that you can use. Download the list of keywords and save them. You want to continually add to your keyword list.
You can use your keyword list as a guide to the video content that you should create. If there are a lot of searches for specific keywords, then this is telling you what your audience is looking for. Your keyword list is very important for your success with YouTube.
Optimize Your Channel and Videos
You want to add around 10 to 15 of the most relevant keywords on your keyword list to the “About” section of your YouTube channel.
This will help your channel to appear in YouTube searches and in Google searches and the other major search engines.
It’s OK to use some single-word or two-word phrases, but also add some long-tail keywords (3 words or more) to your channel. Don’t just add a list of keywords because YouTube won’t like it! Write a description about your channel and weave in the keywords as seamlessly as you can.
For each of the videos that you post on YouTube, you will have a description box and some tags that you can add.
Make sure to add relevant keywords in all your video descriptions and for your tags. Add your main keyword to the title of your video.
Again, never just add a list of keywords in the description box. You need to write something that helps the user and includes your top keywords. Try and add your most important keywords to the beginning of the description.
Tags are also important for optimizing your YouTube videos. There is a great free tool that you can download (it is a browser extension for Chrome) called VidIQ.
VidIQ has several great features, but one of the best is that it can show you the tags that the highest-ranking videos in your niche are using. You can then use the same tags (or some of them).
Always Optimize Your YouTube Content
Get into the habit of conducting keyword research for your niche regularly and optimizing all your YouTube videos (and your channel) for search.
When you first start your channel, it is best to optimize for long-tail keywords where the competition is not as fierce.
After ranking for these keywords for a while, YouTube will start to rank your videos for more competitive keywords as well.
With so many searches performed on YouTube every day, you must keyword optimize all your content to take advantage of this.
Otherwise, YouTube users are not going to find your videos and you will receive hardly any views.
It will take a little time and effort to create your keyword list, but this is certainly worth it. All you need is a free Google account to use the GKP, and it is free.
You can download the keywords to a spreadsheet and add to them as you perform more keyword research.
In the next section, we will discuss how you can use YouTube to promote your brand.
Promoting Your Brand With YouTube
Now that you have chosen the focus of your YouTube channel, you need to connect your brand to it. This is very important, as branded videos will always perform better than those that are not branded.
The reason that branded videos are more popular is that your audience will start to recognize your brand and this will make your videos more memorable for them.
You will have more chance of engagement with your videos such as sharing, liking and so on. Increased engagement will trigger the YouTube algorithm and help your channel and videos receive more exposure.
Choose Professional Artwork
You need the most professional looking artwork for your YouTube channel so that it will stand out and be memorable for your audience. Your brand needs a professional logo which is instantly recognizable.
Unless you are a Photoshop expert, we recommend that you find a professional designer on a freelancer website such as Fiverr.com or Upwork.com.
Yes, it will cost you some money, but when you find a good designer they can create your logo, your channel art, and your thumbnail template.
You need to make some important decisions about your branding before you hire a designer.
It’s very important to highlight your brand on YouTube as much as possible, so you need to consider these things:
- The main color scheme for your brand
- A logo that has good impact and is relatable to your brand
- An enticing tagline for your brand
- A template for eye-catching thumbnails
Once you’ve decided on the color scheme for your brand, you need to stick with it. We recommend that you add your logo to all your videos and of course your channel. Another thing to consider is an intro and outro clip. You can find talented creators on Fiverr that will create impactful intro and outro clips for you that you will use in all your videos. Remember to have your new logo integrated into those clips!
If you are on a budget and can’t afford to hire a designer, then you can create the artwork yourself using a free graphics tool like Canva.com.
The good thing about Canva is that it is very easy to use, and they have templates for YouTube thumbnails and channel artwork.
YouTube users will view videos on different devices such as computers, smartphones, tablets, and even large screen TVs.
There is a “safe area” that you need to take into consideration with your channel artwork. All your most important graphics and text need to be in this area, as it will ensure that it displays on small devices such as smartphones.
Add the Right Elements to Your Channel Artwork
YouTube allows you to add linking text to your channel artwork. This is in the bottom right-hand corner as well as the top of your artwork.
When designing your channel artwork, you need to take this into account, as you do not want to obscure these links with other graphics or text.
Another thing that you can do is to create merchandise for your channel.
Some of the most successful YouTube channels make a small fortune from selling merchandise to their fans. Here we are talking t-shirts and hats as the most popular forms of merchandise.
Get some t-shirts and hats created with your logo on it and wear these items in your videos. If they look good (which they must) then your audience will be interested in purchasing these items for themselves. You can use websites such as RedBubble and Printful to create your custom merchandise.
In the next section, we’ll discuss how you can create the most engaging YouTube videos.
Creating The Most Engaging YouTube Videos
You need to be prepared to practice making better and better videos for YouTube. It’s unlikely that your first few videos will be as perfect as you want them to be. That’s normal! In fact, most successful YouTube video channels started this way.
The more videos that you create, the better you should become at making them more engaging. You need to learn from your mistakes and commit to creating better videos as you progress.
Another thing that you need to do is become totally familiar with the way that YouTube works.
Practice creating and uploading videos so that you master the platform.
YouTube makes this easy for you, and it shouldn’t take you long to learn about all the different features.
What are Other Channels Doing?
For inspiration on how to create the most engaging YouTube videos, we recommend that you look at what your competitors are doing. You can also look at other channels as well for ideas. Look for the most viewed videos and figure out what makes them so popular.
What is the structure and the overall format of the videos?
How are the videos paced?
Make notes of what you find so that you can use these ideas for your own videos.
We recommend that you create a content schedule for your YouTube videos and stick to it. Get into the habit of creating videos on certain days and uploading them to YouTube.
With practice, you will get this right and leave your audience wanting more.
Editing Your Videos
You need to pay attention to the editing process if you want to create engaging videos that do not suffer from poor pacing or lag. Unnecessary pauses are no good for videos and you need to eliminate these when you are editing. Your videos need to “flow” properly so that you hold the attention of your viewers.
We recommend that you learn how to do your own video editing. There are plenty of video editing programs around and some of these are free.
You don’t have to use Adobe Premier for your video editing. For example, if you have a Mac computer then you can use iMovie and for a Windows computer you can use Movie Maker. Both applications will allow you to perform most of the editing that you will need to do. Final Cut Pro is a premium video editing suite that is easier to use than Adobe Premiere.
YouTube Is, In Reality, Easy To Use
One of the reasons that YouTube is so popular with video creators is because it is so easy to use. It’s possible for you to upload videos in a variety of formats, and YouTube will take care of everything for you.
After all, the platform has spent the last 17 years perfecting its creator tools!
Another feature which creators like a lot is being able to embed a YouTube video into your website or blog using the unique HTML code that they provide. This means that visitors to your website or blog can watch your videos without having to go to YouTube.com.
There’s no need for you to host your own videos or use the bandwidth that you have with your hosting.
YouTube Does Have a Smart Algorithm
When you upload videos to YouTube, most people are going to find them using search when you optimize them correctly.
It is also possible that some or all your videos will appear in Google search as well as other major search engines.
YouTube has a complex algorithm that contains more than a million lines of code that ensures users are served with the videos that best suit their needs.
The YouTube algorithm will look at the metadata for your videos.
This includes the following:
- The title of your video
- The description of your video
- The tags associated with your video
- The thumbnail used with your video
We discussed the importance of optimizing your videos in a previous section, and it is vital that you use the right tags and that they are relevant to the video content.
Your tags need to match the search terms that YouTube users are likely to use to find video content like yours.
The YouTube algorithm will also take into consideration the watch time of your videos. If the algorithm detects that many users stop watching your video before the end, it will deduce that your content is not providing users with what they are looking for.
Perhaps the title or thumbnail for your video was misleading (this is something that you must never do).
If most users watch your videos until the end, then they will receive higher rankings for the search terms used.
The algorithm will see your video as providing the viewer with the information that they were looking for.
You can get some good ideas for making your videos more engaging by looking at other videos in your niche. Note their style and any special effects that they use, such as transitions.
What kind of format are the popular videos in?
Do they feature the creator in person?
Take a bit of time out and do your homework here.
It is OK to make mistakes with the first videos that you create and upload to YouTube.
The most important thing is that you are willing to learn from these mistakes and commit to continuous improvement.
Be consistent with your creation and posting and give your audience what they want.
In the next section, we’ll discuss how you can grow your YouTube channel subscriber base.
Grow Your YouTube Channel Subscriber Base
Once you have created your channel and uploaded some videos, you need to start working on growing your subscriber base. We have some easy tips for you to implement that will help you to grow the number of subscribers to your channel.
Provide Numerous Videos
If you have a lot of high-quality videos on your channel, this will keep your visitors on your channel longer. Engagement is very important to YouTube!
This is very likely to help turn a casual visitor into a loyal subscriber.
We recommend that you create a content schedule and stick to it.
How many new videos are you prepared to create and upload each week?
Whatever you decide, it is important that you stick to this. When you are starting a new channel, you need to be prepared to put in the time and effort to create as many videos as possible.
You can prepare for this in advance by creating your videos in bulk and then publishing them to your schedule. Making enough video content available on your channel to engage your visitors is very important.
YouTube users that are looking to subscribe to new channels prefer those that consistently provide new content.
Creating your videos in large batches is a good way to stop you from becoming overwhelmed due to the pressure of needing to upload new content
Add a Compelling Call to Action (CTA)
When you are recording your videos, be sure to add a compelling call to action (CTA) to them.
Also, add the same CTA in your video description.
Ask your viewers to subscribe to your channel and turn on the notifications.
Never assume that your viewers will know to do this.
Tell people what you want them to do.
Encourage Feedback
Another way to increase your engagement levels and encourage viewers to subscribe is to ask for their feedback.
You can do this throughout your video and at the end.
Some viewers will leave comments and this will tell the YouTube algorithm that your content is popular.
Organize Your Videos
Help your channel visitors to find what they are looking for quickly by organizing your videos. You can create playlists of videos that are related or part of a series, for example.
YouTube users like playlists, and this will encourage them to watch more of your content. They will be more likely to subscribe to your channel afterward.
Cross Promote Other Channels
Find other YouTube channels that compliment yours and contact the owners to agree a cross-promotion strategy.
You can give a shout-out to these channels in your videos and provide links to them in your description.
Another thing you can do is offer to be a guest on another channel. You can create a collaboration video where you record half of it and the other channel owner records the other half, for example.
When you approach other channel owners, tell them how a collaboration will benefit them. Make sure that you view their content and engage with it too in the form of likes, comments and so on.
Review Points
- Creating a successful YouTube channel requires commitment, time, and focus on creating content that your audience wants.
- Start by creating a lot of videos in bulk so that you can publish regularly and attract more users to your channel.
- Consistency is key – create a content schedule and publish new content regularly to avoid disappointing your subscribers.
- Create engaging videos that viewers will want to watch until the end, as watch time is important for your rankings and to convert viewers into loyal subscribers.
- Conduct keyword research and optimize all your videos for search results to increase your visibility.
- Create relevant playlists to make it easy for visitors to find the videos they want.
- Promote your channel on other platforms such as social media, and use applications to upload your videos to multiple platforms simultaneously.
- External links from other platforms to your channel can increase your social signals and help grow your channel.
We wish you every success with your YouTube channel!
