Looking for more YouTube channel success? If so, read on, I’ll be giving you 9 tips to make sure you can get there.

But First.. Why YouTube?

With over 2 billion monthly active users, and over one billion hours of video watched every single day, YouTube’s power and reach are almost incomprehensible. Indeed, the content is available in over 100 countries and in eighty languages—a truly global audience. The opportunities for reaching an audience are astounding.

YouTube really is the best place to be making content right now. However, getting a successful Youtube channel is no easy feat!

When you put content on YouTube, you face fierce competition. There are slightly more than 37 million channels on the platform, with the number growing every month. Indeed, 500 hours of video are uploaded every minute. So when you upload your video, it’s like squeezing a drop of water into the ocean.

How can you possibly gain and grow an audience when you’re just one voice in a sea of millions of voices? Beyond that, how do you even begin to measure success on YouTube?

Well, as it turns out, I have nine critical best practices for you today that will make sure your channel is more successful. These tips will make growing your audience and making an impact with YouTube videos easier!

But first.. we need to talk about metrics.

The Metrics that Matter Most for YouTube Success

The critical metrics for measuring success on YouTube are watch time, views, and subscribers. Let’s take a quick look at these three metrics, so you know how to track your own growth on the platform.

Watch time simply refers to the total number of minutes that people have watched your videos. The minimum threshold for monetizing your YouTube channel is 4,000 hours of watch time over the course of twelve consecutive months, so it’s one the biggest hurdles for new channels. Beyond that, if you’re getting a ton of views but your watch time is low, it means people are finding your content somehow, but they’re not consuming it. Clearly, that’s not what you want!

Views is fairly obvious. This metric refers to the number of times that a user intentionally initiated watching one of your videos, but YouTube only counts it if they watch for at least thirty seconds. The minimum threshold for new channels to get monetized is a whopping 10,000 views, so if you’re just starting out, you’ve got your cut work out for you!

Subscribers are those consumers of your YouTube content who decide to follow your channel. Ideally, you don’t just want people to wander onto your YouTube video, watch a few minutes, and then leave, never to return. Rather, you want to establish an ongoing relationship with them by convincing them to subscribe to your channels. You need 1,000 subscribers to monetize your channels, but the most popular “YouTubers” have hundreds of millions of subscribers! Imagine the reach!

Creating Content Isn’t Enough for Growth

Some companies think that if they simply create video content and post it regularly on their YouTube channel, they are bound to get traction sooner or later. While consistency is very important, bad, boring, or misaligned content probably won’t get recommended by YouTube’s algorithm, so it won’t land in front of your target audience.

If your audience does watch some of your content but finds that it provides little value, or doesn’t resonate with their needs and interests, they’re going to stop clicking on your videos. They may unsubscribe, even block your channel. Over time, if you’re not smart about the content you create, you can kill your channel, and once you do, it’s very hard to resurrect it.

Fortunately, if you implement a few best practices, you will avoid “channel death” and position yourself better to achieve healthy growth in all three key metrics: watch time, views, and subscribers.

Best Practice 1: Design Content for Your Audience

The key to growing your YouTube channel is to consistently provide value for your target audience.

For example, Oliver is the founder of a small but growing meal-kit company that provides organic and healthy food options. He wants to use YouTube to reach his target audience of up-and-coming young professionals. Creating regular videos that provide interesting and useful advice about nutrition, staying active, and making healthy choices — along with a generous dash of humor and personality — is going to reach his audience a lot better than straightforward boring ads, weird attempts at viral content, or dry “talking head” videos.

Best Practice 2: Make Your Videos Longer than Ten Minutes

In the early years of YouTube, videos were limited to ten minutes. Eventually, they bumped that to fifteen minutes, and then they removed the limit altogether. Ironically, these days YouTube encourages creators to make videos that are longer than ten minutes, because it keeps people watching and provides more opportunities for ads and ad revenue.

Oblige YouTube in this regard, and you’re more likely to get recommended to potential viewers, but beware! Don’t pad your videos with filler content. If you do, viewers will drop out early, and that could reduce your chances that they’ll watch future content. Make sure every minute of your video is chock-full of valuable or entertaining content.

For example, Helen is a motivational speaker with an emphasis on helping college students excel academically. If she wants to grow her channel, a video that provides thirty seconds of studying tips followed by eleven minutes of bad jokes, lame skits, and meaningless filler isn’t going to cut it.  Viewers will drop out fast, and they’ll be less likely to watch her future content.

Best Practice 3: The First Minute Needs to Grab Them

Attention spans are shorter than ever. With millions of videos to choose from, YouTube viewers are quick to drop out of a video if it doesn’t grab them right away. You’ve got about a minute to gain their full attention, so put some compelling information up front. A good way to hook people fast is to open the video by telling them about the value you’re going to deliver, then get to the good stuff quickly.

Hamish owns a handmade candy company, which he promotes in fun ways through a YouTube channel. To grab viewers right away, he might put some fascinating trivia about the history of a popular candy right up front (e.g., “Did you know gummy bears were inspired by trained performing bears at European street festivals in the 19th century?”). By demonstrating value right away, Oliver ensures that his viewers will stick around.

Best Practice 4: Deliver Amazing Content

Early YouTube videos had no production values. They were usually shaky videos with poor sound quality and awkward delivery from people who were clearly unprofessional. For the most part, viewers were fine with this. But those days are long gone. Viewers today expect interesting content that is well-written, designed, and presented.

It won’t reflect well on Oliver’s meal-kit company if his videos are comprised of the company vice president, Amy, who is clearly not a professional actor, standing in her garage, slightly out of focus, rambling about the importance of eating vegetables. He needs well-designed videos that look professionally (or, at least, semi-professionally) made.

Best Practice 5: Invest in High-Quality Editing

Similarly, viewers today expect videos to be well-edited, with crisp video, good sound quality, and creative visuals or special effects. Invest in some good video editing software (or hire a video editor), and spend time developing high-quality content.

Our motivational speaker, Helen, doesn’t simply stare into the camera and talk for ten minutes about raising your grades. She also includes plenty of visual aids, maybe a few graphs and charts, some creative pop-up graphics, and plenty of good editing. This will reflect well on her company and cast her services in a better light.

Best Practice 6: Pick a Compelling Title

In just a few short words, the title of your YouTube video must communicate the value of the content in a way that will make potential viewers notice and want to watch. However, the title also has to accurately tell them what they’re going to see. “Clickbait” titles that make promises the video can’t keep will drive your audience away.

Use titles that speak directly to the needs and interests of your target audience, but mind the length. A long title will get truncated after about ten words, so make sure the best part of your title doesn’t get lost.

Here are some potential interesting titles for Oliver’s meal-kit channel. Notice how they speak to specific needs of his target audience:

“5 Tactics for Getting Exercise When You Work Too Much”

“All You Need to Know About Living a Longer, Happier Life”

“3 Easy Steps for Eating Organic Without Going Broke”

Best Practice 7: Create Vibrant Thumbnails

Your video thumbnail gives viewers a glimpse of what they’re going to be watching if they click on your video. That means it needs to be compelling. It’s also usually the first thing viewers see when browsing for content on YouTube. Be creative and find a way to represent the video in a way that will grab attention. Make sure your thumbnail is bright and bold, so it stands out. It’s always good to include people in the image.

Oliver’s video titled “5 Tactics for Getting Exercise When You Work Too Much” might include a thumbnail that shows him running on a jogging track in a suit and tie with a briefcase in hand.  That single image will speak volumes to his target audience.

Best Practice 8: Optimize for Keywords and Tags

Keywords and tags are used by YouTube’s algorithm to categorize your video. This is how your video can appear in search results and recommended video lists for potential viewers. While some keywords might seem obvious, it’s worth spending a little time to research what’s working in your niche. Bear in mind, YouTube doesn’t particularly care for long-tail keywords, so limit them to around two to four words.

When selecting tags for his “Surprising History of Gummy Candy” video, Hamish does some research using a free YouTube keyword research tool to determine that popular video tags on the subject include phrases like “how gummy candy is made,” “best gummy candy,” and “eating gummy bears.” These also happen to reflect the content of his video perfectly, so he includes them in the “tags” section of his video information page.

Best Practice 9: Use End Screens Wisely

If you’ve done your job well, viewers will get all the way to the end screen of your video. What’s the last thing you want to show them before the video ends and a new video automatically starts playing? Think about this carefully. It’s a good idea to have an end card that provides thumbnail links to other videos on your channel, as well as a subscribe button, and maybe even a small promotional link. Take this opportunity to continue the relationship beyond a single video!

For example, Helen decides to add a link to a related video titled “3 Tips for Dealing with Difficult Professors,” along with a subscribe button that shows his happy, smiling face, and another link to her company’s website.

The Sky’s the Limit

Effective content on YouTube does three things: 1) entices viewers to start watching, 2) convinces viewers to keep watching, 3) make viewers want to come back for more.

By following each of the tips provided in this article, you will find that it is much easier to do all three. As long as you are providing real value to your target audience consistently in a way that is well-produced and interesting to watch, you’re going to start getting noticed.

Once you start growing, the sky’s the limit. Maybe someday you, too, will join the ranks of the multi-million-subscriber YouTube channels.

Image credit: https://www.panayiotisgeorgiou.net/youtube-growth-hacks/

Pop quiz! Who is your target audience? It should be an easy question to answer, but how specific can you be? When you’re creating content, do you have a well-defined avatar in mind?

An honest answer for a lot of content creators would be, “Eh…sort of.” Indeed, sometimes we’re just tossing content out there into the world, fingers crossed, and hoping that someone, anyone will read it.

But you wouldn’t walk into a public space filled with random people and just start shouting about—oh, let’s say “email marketing.” Why not? Because in a crowd of random people, chances are most of them won’t have any interest in email marketing, and the few who do probably won’t pay attention because of all the noise around them. You would almost certainly be wasting your breath. Heck, if it’s a global audience, you might not even be speaking their language.

Yet this is what many content creators are essentially doing online—throwing content into the wind and hoping someone will notice. If you’re trying to talk to as many people as possible, you actually make it harder for the right people to hear what you have to say. This is one of the biggest reasons why some great content never gains traction.

In reality, if you wanted to talk to an audience about email marketing, you would select an appropriate venue filled with people that you know had a vested interest in the subject, and you would address it in a way that speaks to their specific interests and needs. The same goes for all of your online content. 

Defining your target audience should be foundational to content creation. Know exactly who you’re speaking to before you start speaking! That way you’re sure that you are speaking their language, addressing their actual pain points, and providing solutions they want and need. 

Starting from the Other End

While many content creators focus on trying to create content that generates interest with their audience, I recommend starting from the other end of the equation. First, get to know your audience, understand their pain, roadblocks, and desires, and then focus on trying to relieve that pain, get them over those roadblocks, and meet those desires. 

Consider the following pairs of headlines. Which one speaks more effectively to the specific pains of a relevant audience:

“5 Ways to Build a Better Business” or “5 Business Expenses You Can Cut Right Now”

“How to Create a Great Blog Article” or “Overcome Writer’s Block and Start Creating Awesome Blog Content Today”

“7 Ways to Win Over Investors” or “7 Ways to Make Sure Your Investor Pitch Isn’t Boring”

What’s the difference between the two headlines? The second headline in each pair comes from a place of 1) understanding a specific audience, 2) knowing their needs, 3) speaking to those needs. Of course, to do that, you first have to define your target audience, and that means creating a persona. 

People in marketing sometimes waffle when it becomes to creating personas because it seems like too much nitpicky work. Look, we don’t need to know exactly what your target audience puts in their Weetabix for breakfast. We just need to clarify enough information to ensure that we are creating content that is optimized for their needs and interests. 

To help you with this, I’ve created an easy-to-use audience persona template. Download it and follow along. I’ll walk you through the template box by box, using my own examples, to make this as painless as possible.

To select a persona, you first need to think of your audience. This is the broad category of people that you need to reach and build relationships with. Do you need to reach small business owners, marketers for fintech companies, C-suite leaders of large corporations, B2B salespeople, independent contractors who work from home (and so on)?

Step One: Identify Your Persona

With your audience in mind, narrow it down to single individuals. These are your personas. They aren’t real people but fictional concepts of who members of your target audience might be. 

Maybe your persona is:

• Dave, the 35-year-old founder of a small investment company, 
• or Rachel, a 24-year-old B2C marketer, 
• or Abdul, the 57-year-old president of a fintech company.

Fill out the top line of the Audience Persona Worksheet: “This is Dave, a small-company founder, who is a buyer persona.”

Once you’ve settled on a persona, you can begin to identify their pain points, roadblocks, desires, rewards, and content preferences. Use your creativity to come up with this information. Remember, it’s a fictional person, but it needs to represent your target audience well.

Step Two: What Are Their Pain Points?

The content that resonates best is the content that makes people’s problems go away. If you figure out your target audience’s pain points, you’re going to open the door to a whole lot of excellent content ideas, because you’ll know the specific issues you need to address to make an impact. 

On the worksheet, identify the specific pain points for your persona. What are the things they struggle with? Are there aspects of their job that they hate? What are the things that keep them up at night? Write these down as bullet points in the appropriate box. 

Examples of pain points might include:

• Dave, the small-company founder, struggles with recruiting new talent.
• Rachel, the B2C marketer, feels increasingly frustrated trying to use Google AdWords effectively.
• Abdul, president of a fintech company, is stressed out trying to set competitive prices for his products and services. 

Step Three: What Are Their Roadblocks?

Roadblocks are the things standing in your persona’s way, hindrances that make it more difficult to achieve their goals. 

• For Dave, the small-company founder, a big roadblock to hiring great talent are budget constraints.
• In the case of Rachel, the B2C marketer, constantly tweaking keywords has become a time-consuming roadblock to creating brand recognition.
• For Abdul, the fintech president, customer research seems complex and difficult, but the feedback is absolutely necessary.

Any content that might help your persona overcome these roadblocks will be deeply appreciated. What is standing in their way? Identify specific things that slow them down and hinder them from achieving their goals. Write them down as bullet points in the appropriate box.

Step Four: What Are Their Desires?

When your persona wakes up in the morning, what are they excited about? What is it that really moves and motivates them? Examples of persona desires might include:

• Dave, the small-company founder, absolutely loves finding a new potential hire who is a perfect fit for the company culture.
• For Rachel, the B2C marketer, brand loyalty is what gets her up and moving in the morning. It’s her dream to make customers fall in love with the brand.
• Abdul, the fintech president, gets energized when he thinks about entering new markets. 

Any content that can speak to these desires, that can really move your persona, is going to get their attention right away. 

Step Five: What Are Their Preferred Rewards?

What are the things your persona likes to be rewarded with? Do they like t-shirts, gadgets, public recognition from their community, or do they prefer things like building new partnerships, winning over new audiences, and entering new markets to build brand recognition?

Some of the content you create can act like a carrot on a stick, enticing readers into a deeper relationship with you by offering rewards that matter to them. 

• Dave, the small-company founder, is chiefly interested in networks and communities that will enable him to meet skilled people who might be potential hires.
• For Rachel, the B2C marketer, appreciates any free seminar, webinar, or training session that will improve her marketing skills.
• Abdul, the fintech president, is a gadget guru, so any new tech, app, or device is going to pique his interest.

Identify the desired rewards of your persona and write them in this box. 

Step Six: What Are Their Content Preferences?

Finally, you need to determine how your persona prefers to consume content. Do they like to read books and articles? Do they like listening to podcasts, YouTube videos, or webinars? Maybe they prefer to attend seminars and training sessions. Are there specific websites or social media platforms they like better?

Write down the ways your persona likes to consume information. Be thorough, even if you run out of space in the box and have to continue on the back of the page.

• Dave, the small-company founder, is active on various social media channels, especially LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. This is where he connects with people and consumes content.
• For Rachel, the B2C marketer, prefers podcasts, videos, and webinars, which she often consumes while commuting on public transportation. 
• Abdul, the fintech president, spends his free time reading short content articles, especially tech-related articles from experts in the field.

Figuring out your persona’s content preferences will help you focus on using the right channels to reach them with your content. For example, if you’re trying to reach Rachel, maybe you need to spend less time on a blog and more time producing short, meaningful YouTube videos.

Get Feedback on Your Personas

Once you’ve filled out all of the boxes for your persona, get a variety of feedback and criticism from team members, friends, and family. Adjust your persona as needed until you’ve got it just right.

With clarity on your personas, you can now adjust your content strategy to serve them. Everything you do needs to have a clear dotted line that connects to your target personas. Otherwise, you run the risk of wasting your time and resources.

All of this will create a focused, personalized content experience that they will love, and that’s the key to long-term meaningful relationships.

image credit: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/build-audience-online