5 Key Ingredients For Growing Your YouTube Channel, by Siobhan Scanlon

Great guest post by Siobhan Scanlon  founder of Peacock Bride

Whether you’re aiming to be the next Youtube sensation or using it as part of your on-going customer engagement strategy finding success on Youtube without a plan is next to impossible. Making your YouTube channel something to be proud of takes time, patience and lots consideration. Here are 5 key ingredients to help you on your way:

Collaborate with other channels

One of the best ways to reach other subscribers is to work with other channels. Do you have a channel that you admire or one that covers the same topic as you? Chances are they have subscribers that would be interested in what you have to offer. The best thing to do is to get on that keyboard of yours and write a message to their business email (this can be found on their YouTube page under “About”). Remember that there is nothing worse that receiving a spammy email, so make sure you make it personal to them. Let them know what you enjoy about their channel; let them know about the skills you have that add value (music, voice over, cinematography… anything that makes you stand out); ask if they would consider joining forces on a project using both of your skills. Be enthusiastic about the prospect of working with them and you should spike some interest.

Have something interesting to say

There are the gifted few that can make talking about not much totally riveting, but then there are the other 7 billion who cannot. If you want keep your audience engaged then you need to keep them wanting more! Say something interesting. Research trending topics, find out what styles of video are most popular, keep an eye on your insights and analytics to see which kind of your own videos have been most popular in past. Your content shouldn’t just be about you, it’s about them. Give them what they want.

Interact with your audience and other audiences

Social media is called social media because that’s exactly what it should be, social. It should be engaging and interactive. It should be a platform to meet new people and share new ideas. Share your interest with people and they will share their interest with you. Not only is it nice to be nice, but YouTube also has a complex algorithm that means that the more you interact, follow, comment, like and share, the more people will see you and see the content that you want to share with world.

Relevant Tagging

If you get your tags right, you can pull in an abundance of footfall to your videos. Get it wrong however and you could be seen as being spammy or clickbait. Use clear, relevant and precise tags and you can’t go wrong.

Make your video look good – colours/music/fonts

At the end of the day, we’re all a bit shallow when it comes to video. You could be saying the most interesting thing in the world but if your video is dark with sound that is wonky and you’re using Comic Sans as a font, then chances are people are going to switch off. What kind of style do you like? Look at other engaging videos, what colours/style of music/ fonts are they using? Find a style that matches the message you want to get across!

Do's and don't of Facebook marketing by @siobhan_scan https://t.co/wWP3TQd7vA @SimonCocking @Irish_TechNews pic.twitter.com/LEESTBWV62

— Simon Cocking (@SimonCocking) June 3, 2016

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