One viral video or even ten won’t make a successful YouTube channel. It comes down to knowing what your audience wants and providing it on a consistent basis.
It’s true that your uploads need to contain good packaging. However, you’ll lose your audience in the long run if you have hollow or unhelpful content.
How to Find Success on YouTube by Knowing Your Audience and Niches
A new YouTube channel cannot be all things for all people. “Gaming, fitness, personal finance, and travel” make for a confused channel where there is no reason for viewers to come back. YouTube has even less context when it comes to deciding who may want to see your next upload.
Find a narrow audience with a specific problem. Identify what people are searching for or talking about, what you can speak to with authority, and what you have a unique take on.
“Personal finance” is an overwhelmingly broad term. “Debt payoff strategies for teachers” gives people a clear reason to subscribe. Cooking is a saturated topic as well, but if you make budget meals then “budget meal prep for college students” is both a clear audience and an audience with a problem that repeats itself.
Pick three to four main topics around that audience. A channel about home fitness could focus on beginner workouts, reviews of home fitness equipment, proper form for workouts, and sample workouts. After publishing 10 videos on that one subtopic, then you would be ready to expand your offerings.
This helps YouTube recommend your videos based on audience similar to others who enjoy that topic.
This audience strategy also makes YouTube success more predictable because your videos can build on one another to keep viewers engaged, as opposed to competing against one another to reach a new audience.
Make Short Videos That Are Engaging Enough For Viewers To Feel Like Sharing
A clever video title gets a viewer to click on a video, but that viewer needs to feel like what they wanted from that video is there once they click on it. Viewers will leave a video with a poor title as quickly as they clicked on it.
Don’t waste your viewers’ time. A viewer should know in the first 5-15 seconds what the video has to offer. Avoid long self introductions, overdone logo animations and especially the welcome backstory prior explaining the point of the video.
Every video should have a simple straightforward outline. Be it a tutorial or a review, build tension so the viewer has a question. A review then can build the audience it is most intended for (the target audience that video should be promoting towards purchasing the product) as a first step rather than naming every selling feature the product has.
Screen recording, examples, or a quick important story (that supports the main point and doesn’t take too long to tell) can reset attention and should be used at the right place within the video.
YouTube is geared to keep viewers and create a very good survey experience, so even though total views may not be high, repeat views, positive feedback, and comments mean people enjoyed your video enough to share it.
Easy Steps for Creating Effective SEO YouTube Videos
Your videos may not be visible to your target audience even if your content is valuable if your title and thumbnails may be lacking. Package should feature promise and must be fulfilled by the video.
When framing your titles, try to place the main search words at the beginning of your title when possible. “How to Edit YouTube Videos Faster in Premiere Pro” is more optimum as a title than, “My Workflow That Changed Everything.” Search-friendly phrasing is most important for tutorials and problem-solving videos. When describing your video, use natural language, and make sure to link to other informative pages. Captions are also helpful if you explain your video in detail. Use tags to further explain your video, but don’t go overboard.
For your thumbnails, make sure to have a clear subject, a face, a product, a result, etc. Make sure to use vibrant colors and eliminate all small details. Keep the text to 3-5 words at most and only put text if it’s necessary.
Once you post your video, you can use the Test and Compare feature in YouTube Studio to help you optimize your title and thumbnail. Keep in mind to check your traffic and retention rate when reviewing the results Thinking your thumbnails and titles are great may have you thinking that the viewers will stick around to watch your video, however if packaging overpromises they will likely leave.
Use Long-Form Videos and Shorts to Design a YouTube Growth Funnel
Shorts give you an opportunity to show a new audience what you have to offer, while long-form videos give them a reason to stick around. While a Short may just cover one aspect of your work, a long-form video can describe the entire process, address concerns, and develop trust.
Where applicable, pull 1-3 clips from long-form uploads if the format works for what you need to say. Don’t publish random unrelated Shorts just because they are Short. Follow the Short with the full video, which you can reference via spoken cue, comment, or link.
For example, if you create a Short describing common mistakes in video thumbnails, be sure to point your audience towards your complete video on packaging videos.
Connect different videos together using playlists, end screens, cards, and a direct “watch next” prompt. This will enhance session flow and make it easier for you to be successful on YouTube because results rely on audience engagement.
Grow Faster With a Publishing System You Can Sustain
A schedule is only useful if you can keep up quality output for months. A good baseline for many creators is producing one or two strong long form videos each week and then filling in the gaps with Shorts when feasible. Try not to feel the need to impress people with a daily upload schedule.
Block off time for research, outlining, filming, editing, thumb nails, and scheduling. It is way more effective to do similar tasks in batches. Recording 3 videos in one sitting is actually way easier than 3 individual videos.
Make a list of ideas which are a result of comments made by your audience, suggestions made by the autocomplete feature, and question posted by your competitors. Then plan your uploads based on your content pillars instead of doing last minute uploads.
Ensuring consistent quality instead of just publishing something is more important. Daily uploads are consistently more likely to result in burned out creators, lower quality edits, and rushed scripts.
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Visitors to a video can see that others are engaged with the video, and that can increase interest in your content in your own channel, or elsewhere like search pages and promotions.
Use YouTube Analytics to Turn Small Wins Into Explosive Growth
Treat each video as constructive feedback. Take a look at the first few days of data and then do a check for the entire week to look for patterns. YouTube Studio has the data you are looking for.
Focus on Impressions, Click Through Rate, Audience Retention, Average View Duration, Traffic Sources, Returning Viewers, Subscribers, End Screen Engagement, and the number of viewers who look at other videos on your channel. These metrics are all important to look at in addition to just view counts.
Having little impressions could mean YouTube is having a hard time presenting your video to the correct audience or there is little interest for your video. Strong impressions with low clicks usually means the title and or thumbnail is the issue with your video. A steep early retention drop usually means the video does not meet the expectation of finishing care it started with.
Take one aspect of your video and try to improve it. This could mean improving the thumbnail, putting a better hook in your video, or improving the angle of your video. If a certain video format consistently retains people, upload a similar video in that format.
For a business, keep track of the performance of your videos in respect to how many newsletter signups there are, product sales, consultations, or downloads. Although views are important, so are the type of people viewing your videos.
Grow Your Viewership and Keep YouTube Happy
Amazing results usually start off boring. An improved hook, focus on the thumbnail, jumping on a topic, and uploading your video will help you gain success on YouTube.
Decide on one of your main topics and develop 10 other main topics around it. Each upload should be in the same format as the video before it and give people a reason to watch you more.