How to Double Your YouTube Subscribers (Without Buying Them)

Give your channel a theme ● Before you do anything, you need to give your channel a theme. ● Having a theme will help direct all of your later efforts when it comes to creating content. ● On top of that, if you give your channel a theme, you can make it the ‘go to’ place for certain kinds of content. ● If your channel caters for a specific niche, then people who care deeply about that niche, won’t mind becoming a subscriber. ● Because in doing so, they’ll learn something new about their topic of interest, whenever you post a video — therefore furthering their ability to learn more about a topic they’re passionate about. ● If you’re struggling to come up with a theme for your channel, just think about the problems that your business solves and who it solves these problems for. ● Then produce some videos based on the topics that you know best, of which will help the kind of people that your business serves.

Post incredible content ● If you want to create incredible content, it is worth focusing on producing content that is relevant for your target market/audience. ● Let’s say that you want to create a channel that covers the topic of ‘pencil drawing.’ One way we could come up with ideas is by simply entering the broad keyword of ‘pencil drawing’ into the YouTube search engine. ● When we type in the keyword, you’ll see the suggestions. Now, those topics might seem a little broad, so you may want to pick one of those keywords, and go through the same process again so that you can generate something more concise. ● Let’s add the word ‘tutorial,’ for instance. By adding the word tutorial we are now provided with some more concise keywords. ● You can also use the​ Google Keyword tool​ ​ to come up with some content ideas. That’s ​ because there will be some coherence between Google search results and YouTube search results. ● Youtube also happens to be one of the biggest search engines in the world — after all if people want to find a video they have to search for it right? ● Let’s stick with the topic of ‘pencil drawing.’

● In the ‘Your product or service’ box, enter a keyword based on your business. If I was running a business that taught people how to do pencil drawing, I’d enter ‘how to do pencil drawing.’ ● You want to keep the keyword broad at this stage, because it’ll allow for the keyword tool to come up with a wide range of ideas for you. ● Once you’ve entered the keyword, you’ll then see this page. It shows several ‘Ad groups’ of keywords. Each group of keywords centres around a certain topic. ● We’ve arranged the groups in terms of ‘Average monthly searches,’ in descending order. This gives us a sense of where there might be a lot of competition. ● Let’s click on the mid-range ‘Ad group’ called ‘Drawing Techniques.’

● You’ll find a few keywords that might represent good opportunities, when it comes to producing YouTube content. ● These keywords have been chosen, because it’s clear to see how you could create a focused, high value video, of which could be centered around these keywords. ● You might think that these keywords don’t have that many searches, and therefore aren’t worthy in terms of effort required. ● However, it’s important to remember that we’re not just going to post a handful of videos and then be done with it.

● If you want to make a biggest YouTube channel, whilst still keeping the content relevant, you need to be able to niche down your content as much as possible, so that each of your videos provides something new for a viewer to learn. ● Here are few more key things you need to take care while creating an incredible content: ● Improve your videos production quality. ● You need to ensure that what you’re saying can be easily heard. ● You also need to ensure that whatever you’re recording is easy to watch. ● When it comes to video editing, you have a couple of solutions. If you’re not an accomplished video editor, you could seek out someone from​ Upwork​ ​ or perhaps even ​ Fiverr​ . ● Alternatively, you could purchase a video editing suite and learn to do everything yourself. ● Another way you can post incredible content, is by creating some videos based on your product being used. ● Demonstration videos can go a long way in showcasing your product as something worth buying.

Post often and consistently ● If you’re constantly posting new content, then people have a reason to become a subscriber. ● If you use the tips mentioned earlier, then coming up with ideas for posting new content doesn’t need to be hard. How often should you post? ● If you want to keep things simple, you might want to take a look at what your competition is doing, and then one-up them. Often, however the best plan, is the one you can stick to. ● So, you may just want to create a schedule that you actually can keep up with. Either way, it is important that you do everything in your power to stick to that schedule. ● You don’t have to be at a computer to consistently post content. That’s because you can use the scheduling feature provided by YouTube. ● Sign up for a YouTube account and then go to the ‘Creators Studio’ section. ● Then on the left sidebar, under the ‘Channel’ option, select ‘Monetization.’ ● Then choose ‘Enable My Account.’ ● Once you’ve done that, you’ll then be able to access the scheduling features provided by YouTube.

● You’ll also be able to access a lot more in the way of analytics. ● If you want to schedule a video, click on the ‘Upload’ button. ● Then click on the dropdown menu and select the ‘Scheduled’ option. ● Then drag and drop your video, or click the icon to upload it. ● On the next screen you have the ability to adjust the scheduling options. ● All you have to do now, is enter in the date and time you want the video to go live. ● If people are subscribed to your channel, they may get a message when your video goes live. ● Additionally, scheduling that date into your social media management platform, if you have one, might also be a good idea. ● If you’re struggling to come up with a lot of content on a daily basis, you might want to split up some of your longer videos into shorter ones. ● For instance, in each of your long videos you are going to cover various topics. You could edit out certain topics and then create a mini videos, using those topics. You’ll notice that the channel ​ ‘​ Inside Quest​ ’​ does this a lot. ​

Make some evergreen videos ● A great way to consistently generate subscribers is by creating some evergreen videos. ● Evergreen content is generally based on topics that are aimed at beginners. A lot of ‘how to’ content tends to be evergreen. ● And so when you look at things through this lense, it become easier to understand how to create content that is going to be evergreen. ● Take a look at your niche and see if you can create some ‘how-to’ videos that will stand the test of time.

Get people to actually click on your videos ● So how do you get people pay attention to and click on your video? ● There are three things that you need to focus on — the image, the headline and the description. ● These three elements can have the biggest impact when it comes to influencing YouTube users to click on your videos. ● Firstly, because they’ll help your rankings in the YouTube search engine. And secondly, because they’ll improve your videos ability to entice users to click on them.

● So how are you going to create a good headline for your video? If your video is based on a certain keyword, then it is essential that the title of the video reflects this keyword. ● When you do this, you increase the chances of someone clicking on your video. ● But that doesn’t mean that you have to be non-sensical in how you’re creating your titles. ● ‘​ Keyword Stuffing​ ’​ can hurt you as much as it can help you. One way you can get around this problem, is​ by using a colon. ​ ● Side note:​ An interesting experiment might be to split the ‘simple drawing techniques’ title into separate niches. For example, ‘simple drawing techniques for cars’ or ‘simple drawing techniques for eyes.’ ● When it comes to the image/thumbnail, there are a couple of approaches that you could take. ● The first is to show a clear image of whatever the video is going to be about. So for instance, if you were talking about laptops, you’d show a clear picture of a laptop. ● Alternatively, you could just show a picture of a person interacting with whatever the video is about. ● However, one of the increasingly powerful ways of creating video thumbnails, is by editing them so that they have some text. ● If you want to create thumbnails, you need to follow these rules.

Custom thumbnail best practices: Size ● Your custom thumbnail image should be as large as possible, as the image will also be used as the preview image in the embedded player. We recommend that your custom thumbnails: ● Have a resolution of 1280x720 (with a minimum width of 640 pixels). ● Are uploaded in image formats such as .JPG, .BMP, or .PNG. ● Remain under the 2 MB limit ● Try to use a 16:9 aspect ratio as it's the most used In YouTube players and previews. ● You can create a thumbnail using the​ C ​anva​ platform. If you have some images of your own, ​ you can upload them into Canva, and then overlay some text onto them. ● If you want to upload a custom thumbnail for a video, just go through the normal upload process.

● On the page where you can adjust the video information, pick the ‘Custom thumbnail’ option. ● You’ll then have a custom thumbnail that will be shown around the YouTube platform. ● When it comes to creating a description for your YouTube videos, there’s a lot you can focus on, and this could become an entire post in itself. ● What you need to keep in mind, is that you have a lot of space here, and YouTube tends to use what you say, in order to rank your content. ● The first couple of lines on your description should be written so that they are easy to read in the search results. ● In the description, you may want to use some of the keywords you used in your title, to ensure that it has some coherence. This will also improve the ranking ability of your video. ● When people click on your video, they have the option to click on the ‘Show More’ text. ● This will expand the description. You can use this space to insert a ‘subscribe to channel’ link. ● If you want to do that, use the following link format —

https://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user= However, after the ‘=’ enter the name of your channel. So for Kissmetrics it would be — https://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=Kissmetrics ● When people click on this link, they’ll be taken to your channel page, where a subscribe box will pop-up. ● In the description, you can also enter some other information, such as your other social media profiles, important links and even your content posting schedule. ● You can also describe the things that are being discussed in your video. ● You could even highlight what is discussed at certain time sections in your video. ● It’s also important that you give your video some tags. This will help improve the chances of your video appearing in the YouTube search engine.

Use annotations ● Another, highly effective method for boosting subscriber rates is the use of ‘annotations.’ ● You’ve probably experienced YouTube video annotations in some form or another whilst on the platform.

● They’re the little boxes that appear throughout YouTube videos. ● When people then click on that annotation, they’re taken to the following page. This is an incredibly efficient way of boosting subscriber numbers. ● Let’s take a look at how you can do the same thing for your own videos. ● Go to the ​ ‘​ Creators Studio​ ’​ section of YouTube. There, click on the ‘Video Manager’ section. ● Pick the video you want to add annotations to. ● Then from the ‘Edit’ drop down menu, pick ‘Annotations.’ ● You should then see the following layout. ● To add an annotation, click on the ‘+ Add annotation’ button. ● Apart from the ‘Title’ option, each of the choices listed will allow for you to create a link. So you might want to experiment over time, to see which form of annotation works best for you. ● You’ll want to put some text in the text box. This will end up being your annotation text. ● In terms of the color of the text and the speech bubble, you’ll need to experiment. Pick something that stands out. However, what stands out is going to depend on the colors shown in your video. ● Once you added some text and you’ve adjusted the colours, you’ll then need to decide when you want the annotation to appear. ● Thinking about it logically, you’ll want to put your annotation near the end of the video, when you yourself, can be seen telling people to subscribe to your channel. ● YouTube has this to say about the duration of annotations: ● Duration:​ Annotations should only be displayed for the amount of time needed to read them. Showing annotations for any longer period of time could be distracting to the user and perceived as annoying. In most cases, 5-7 seconds is sufficient for the viewer to read annotations. ● Put your annotation at the end of the video, you’ll be able to display the annotation for more than 5-7 seconds. ● In terms of where the annotation should appear, it will depend on your video. For instance, in some videos you’ll notice that people will point to, or mention a certain section of the video, when they tell people to subscribe. ● If you’re doing that, you’ll want to ensure that you have some coherence.

● If you’re not going to be doing that in your video, YouTube recommends the following placements. ● Once you’ve done all of that, click on the Link option. ● Then select the ‘Subscribe’ option. ● You then need to enter the channel name into the text box. Don’t worry about entering the actual URL — you just need to enter the name of the channel. ● Click on ‘Preview link’ to ensure that everything is setup properly. If it is, you should be taken to the channel page, and the subscribe box should pop-up. ● Once you’ve set everything up as you’d like it to be done, just click on the ‘Apply changes’ button at the top of the screen. ● If everything is saved properly, you should then see the button change to this. ● Remember to test your video to ensure that the annotations do everything that they’re supposed to. ● You also have the option of using YouTube cards. This feature is a little less direct, as you can’t really use it to create a subscribe pop-up, in the same way that you could using an annotation. ● Here’s how you would go about creating a ‘YouTube card’ for your video. ● Select the ‘Video’ option inside of the ‘Video Manager’. Then click on the ‘Edit’ drop down menu for the video you want to add a card to. ● Then select the ‘Cards’ option. ● Click on the ‘Add card’ option and then choose ‘Channel.’ ● Then enter in your channel name and some text. ● The teaser text is the text that appears on the little graphic that appears in the video. ● If you want to adjust when the card displays the ‘teaser text,’ adjust the slider below. ● You’ll notice, however, that the ‘i’ will always be visible in the video. ● Clicking on this will take users straight to the Channel. However, no subscriber box will pop-up.

Engage with your audience Another way you can boost subscriber numbers, is by engaging with your audience. There are a number of ways you can do this. ● The first is to respond to any comments you might have on your videos. ● The second option is to host a Q&A session: You can do this using Google Hangouts. Also just ask at the end of a video for viewers post their questions in the comments section. Then in the next video you could spend some time going through the questions you received. ● Another way you can engage with your audience, is by creating videos based on what they want.

Consider doing some collaborations ● The best way to go about this is to find channels that have a similar audience to you. ● You could both then arrange an event, where you can both benefit from the interaction. ● It is important that when you do a collaboration, you encourage people to subscribe to your channel. ● Alternatively, you could consider doing some interviews on your channel.

Use YouTube Ads ● In order to make it work, you might want to target some of the keywords that your videos are being created around. ● This will ensure that your videos appear at the top of the​ search results​ ​ when people enter ​ that keyword. ● If you have a plan in terms of how you’re going to make money from your YouTube channel, then this could prove to be a very effective option.