How to Grow Your YouTube Community
Influence4You shares some key steps you can take to build and grow your community on YouTube and improve your reach.
Find your niche and your speciality
Unless you’re a star of the small screen or in cinema, it’ll be difficult to gain followers and therefore success by making videos of your day-to-day and putting them on YouTube. You’re going to need a real niche, something that sets you apart from others to succeed on Google’s video platform. Do you have a speciality? A passion? Something unique? Excellent! Talking about it will help you find your audience organically, as you’ll need to offer real value to stand out among the many new videos uploaded on YouTube every day.
To increase your follower count you’ll need to be consistent with your content. This is why Influence4You strongly recommends that you make your YouTube account about your speciality or passion. If you don’t often travel, there’s no point making a channel on your trips and hotels you’ve visited. Consistency is key. We strongly recommend you upload on YouTube at least once per week. There’s no need to upload every day as you won’t be able to keep it up and continue making quality videos!
Stay original and perfect your content
Your videos need to be original and well produced. There’s no need to invest in a real studio and editing equipment at first. A good camera and microphone will do the trick. However, the video needs to be of good quality, especially if there’s a lot of competition in your niche. You need to grab viewers’ attention in the first few seconds!
Put yourself out there and capture the attention of your audience! You may think you’re not a born showman, or have the skills to make videos. Especially if you’re just starting out. However, quality, well thought out and well-delivered commentary is essential to retain your audience and make people want to subscribe to your channel and follow you.
Optimise the SEO of your video
One of the biggest advantages of YouTube? Google referencing! Many people can come across one of your videos or your channel simply by typing a keyword or question into the Google search box. So it’s essential to make use of it! Optimise your titles: if your video addresses a need or question, include it in the title of your video. Are you reviewing a garden tool? Perhaps go for a title such as “brand XX lawnmower review”. Viewers who want to see the device in action before making a purchase may come across your video and subscribe to your channel if they like your content!
Don’t forget to use hashtags. Less used than on a social network like Instagram, hashtags are still very relevant on YouTube and make it easy to find you. On YouTube itself, there are many tutorials on how to optimise the use of hashtags and how to use them correctly.
Promote your content
Using the right hashtags, choosing a good topic, having made a nice video, that’s good! But that won’t get you off the ground right away. To get more views, and therefore more subscribers, you’ll have to promote your content by sharing it everywhere. Do you have an Instagram or Facebook account? Share your new YouTube video. Do you have a good email customer database? Send them your new video! In short, start talking about it! Share it! Indeed, the views won’t come on their own!
Keep learning and trying new things!
To be sure you’re using the right techniques on YouTube, don’t hesitate to learn more! There are many tutorials on YouTube itself that’ll help you set up your channel, use the right strategies, etc…
To get a better understanding, don’t hesitate to check out what other influencers in your niche are doing. Do they have lots of subscribers? What hashtags do they use? What titles do they use? How do they make their videos? Do they show their faces? Or just offer commentary? Get inspired and learn the best practices, whilst adding your own personal touch.
Put together a contest
Organising a contest on YouTube is a great way to boost engagement but above all to increase your follower count very quickly. You can decide to offer a product or service. All you need to do is to set out the conditions in your post. The most popular way to go about it is to ask for a follow to your account to participate. If you use the right hashtags, your visibility and therefore the number of followers can increase very quickly. The bigger the reward, the larger the number of followers in general.
Be aware though that this technique has a catch: contest lovers only use the platform for this purpose and tend to unfollow as soon as you announce the winner. So you might end up losing lots of followers. Otherwise, it’s up to you to draw them in with your content!
What about buying followers on YouTube?
Some tutorials or guides online recommend this, but Influence4You strongly advises against it. Why? Because the key to developing your community on YouTube and getting partnerships with interesting brands is engagement! So yes, buying followers by the thousands will increase your follower count very quickly, but these ‘people’ are bots who’ll never engage with your posts. Having 10,000 followers but little views will not really help you and will instead arouse suspicion. Your credibility will then be seriously jeopardised and it’ll be difficult for you to grow on the social network.
Finally, note that most platforms are equipped with fake profile and fake follower detectors, like Influence4You!
Find out more
To sum up, be disciplined and consistent in your content, and don’t fall for the temptation of easy followers. Becoming an influencer is a long process. Take a long-term perspective and do things with passion! You’ll have fun if you’re passionate about the subject, you’ll probably meet some great people and you’ll organically grow a loyal, committed community that’s there for you!
For more, don’t hesitate to check out our articles and to sign up to the Influence4You platform to get in touch with brands and have great partnerships.
