How to Grow on YouTube: 10 Strategies to Boost Audience Engagement
Do you dream of being a successful Youtuber who has huge subscribers count and a high level of engagement? Wondering how to grow on YouTube? It is by ensuring that your audience remains engaged. In fact, engagement such as likes, comments, shares and subscribers is what can make more people view your video clips.
Even if you have just begun, I should say that there is a chance for you to create a strong YouTube channel. Only several powerful strategies are needed to make your audience come back again and again.
In this blog post, we’ll give you 10 simple tips on how to grow your channel and increase viewership.
Quick Facts to Keep in Mind
- Like-Dislike Ratio, Average View Duration (AVD) and CTR (Click-Through Rate) are the main numbers to watch.
- Watch where people stop watching your videos.
- High-quality thumbnails and engaging content are a must.
Step 1: Start with Your Analytics
First you have to understand where you stand before you can improve. YouTube has a feature known as YouTube Studio which enables users to analyze their video performances.
Here are the metrics:
- CTR (Click-Through Rate): The percentage of viewers that watch your clip after clicking it.
- AVD (Average View Duration): The length of time that most viewers watch your videos.
- Engagement: The number of people who continue watching your content till the end.
- Like-to-Dislike Ratio: Even though YouTube hides the total number of dislikes, it can still be found in your channel’s statistics.
Just take a look at what you are good at and what you suck on. These numbers will help you know what your audience prefers or hates.
Step 2: Experiment with YouTube Shorts
YouTube Shorts are brief, vertical videos designed to attract new viewers. Like TikTok and Instagram Reels, they are also very popular, receiving billions of views on a daily basis. If you combine your long videos with Shorts, you might get more people discovering your channel.
Shorts Ideas:
- Shorts for Longer Videos: Slice a small active part of your long video and make it a Short.
- Quick Tips or Fun Moments: Useful tips, fun facts or things happening in the background.
- Did You Know: There are about 2 billion views on YouTube Shorts in a month! So many viewers use them to discover new channels that it is an excellent method to increase your audience size.
Step 3: Create Eye-Catching Thumbnails
Thumbnails are the first impression of your videos. Bright, clear and professional looking thumbnails will help draw the attention of the viewers.
You could:
- Use bold text or catchy phrases.
- Show an exciting moment from your video.
- Add a close-up of your face or an expressive image if relevant.
According to research, custom thumbnails can lead to an increase in click-through rate of up to 34%!. Developing your own brand of thumbnails will make it easier for viewers to identify your videos at a glance.
Step 4: Add Custom Captions
In spite of YouTube’s effort to automatically generate captions, the accuracy of the captions is not guaranteed. Create your own captioning to make sure that every word is understood by the audience. This is significantly crucial for those who would prefer watching without sound. Additionally, it makes it welcoming to people who are deaf or have a hearing impairment because of the subtitles.
Did you know? Around 69% of people watch videos without sound while in public, and four out of five are more likely to finish watching a video if it has captions.
Step 5: Ease of Viewing with Chapters
For the audience to be able to jump to favorite sections or return to the points of interest, it is necessary to include chapters in video compositions. To create chapters, simply add timestamps and labels in your video description. This makes it easy for viewers to jump to the section they want and increases the chance they’ll stick around.
For instance, if you are doing a cooking tutorial, the chapters would be like “Ingredients,” “Step-by-Step Guide,” and “Final Presentation.” Chapters make your video feel organized and are very helpful for viewers.
Step 6: Start Live streaming
Streaming live offers an avenue to interact with viewers in real-time. You can talk to them, respond to them, and hear from them. It is a wonderful way to express your individuality and increase closeness with fans.
What is more, during live streams, there are often such options as Super Chat and Super Stickers that allow your audience to make donations. That means you can interact with fans while making extra money!
Step 7: Use End Screens and Cards
Another idea would be to use end screens and cards. Cards are small pop-up links that come up while the video is still playing and direct viewers to other videos on YouTube. End screens come up in the last 20 seconds of your video that can either show more content or ask people to subscribe.
For example, if you had a video on “How to Care for Plants,” then you could close it by adding an end screen with a title “Top 5 Indoor Plants for Beginners.” This way, your audience is retained on your channel and continues watching other clips.
Step 8: Make use of Polls and Community Posts
But then again, do you have to make a video to remain relevant to your fans? It allows sharing of polls, images and updates directly to followers. As an example, you might want to create a poll asking “What type of video do you want to see next?” or sharing a sneak peek image of an upcoming project.
Such community posts are often used by many large creators like MrBeast to remain engaged with fans and also gather their opinions on new ideas.
Step 9: Replying to Comments
Replying to comments speaks volumes to your audience. Just a simple “Thanks!” can go a long way in making someone feel good. Recently youtube has rolled out what they call a “Shorts” feature that permits a user to react creatively to comments by replying to them with short videos.
Pro tip: Instead, if someone asks anything or writes something nice, answer by making a video! It’s exciting and quite uncommon as it helps you create content as well as bond with your followers.
Step 10: Refresh/Update Older Videos
And last, but not the least, do not forget about your earlier clips! To bring some new life into the videos was updating the titles, thumbnails and descriptions. You also can add the captions or chapters to make it more accessible. There might be videos that are not doing well but sometimes updating may revive them back.
From there, let’s say there is a video from last year that has not been watched much. Perhaps you could improve it – for example the thumbnail wasn’t attractive or clearer captions could be used. Once updated you may promote it again through your newer videos, end screens or community posts.
FAQs About Growing on YouTube
Q1. How frequently should I upload videos to YouTube?
It’s all about being consistent! Strive to post a minimum of once per week. More importantly, concentrate on making interesting videos instead of posting too many times because quality is better than quantity.
Q2. Will my channel grow if I do not have expensive gears?
No way! Most popular YouTubers began with only their phones. You could buy better gear as your channel expands.
Q3. What is the ideal length of time for a video?
It is dependent on the type of content and viewers. For tutorials, ten to twenty minutes may work well. For entertainment, however, shorter videos might be better at times. Also, try different lengths to find out which one works best for you.
Conclusion:
The development of a successful YouTube channel is not an immediate process; nevertheless, you are moving in the right direction with these approaches. First and foremost, comprehend your analytics; secondly, make attractive thumbnails; thirdly, try out Shorts; and finally, dare to carry out live streaming experiments. By the bit-by-bit method, you will be able to create a loyal viewership and witness the growth of your channel!
So why not give it a shot and test if these tips can work well for you? Just put some effort and be creative, success on YouTube will not be far away from achieving it!
