Hi there and welcome back to our on-going series on tips for becoming a YouTube content creator. In the first part of this series, we looked at a few things to consider before starting your channel. In this part, we’ll pick up where we left off, and look at some more important things to consider before setting up your channel, and also what you can do to grow your audience. Let’s jump straight in with:
Pick Your Filming Style
If you look at some of the most popular YouTubers these days, you’ll notice that they tend to stick to certain styles of filming. This helps them to create a consistent visual that becomes familiar to their audience over time.
Face-to-camera videos are one of the most popular filming methods for YouTubers. It lets audiences know who you are and gives you a great chance to express your opinions. Combine this with some slick editing and entertaining graphics and you will have the foundation for a solid YouTube video format.
Practice Good SEO
You’d be surprised how many newer YouTubers ignore proper SEO, which you can use to your advantage to get a leg up on the competition. If you’re not familiar with the term, SEO stands for search engine optimization and refers to the methods by which content is optimized to rank higher when someone searches for it. The search ranking algorithm on YouTube will take into account how well your content, titles and video description match the search criteria of a viewer. If your content isn’t relevant, it won’t rank.
The first thing you need to do is keyword research. One of the best ways of doing this is looking at the search terms YouTube suggests when you type something into the search bar. This will give you an idea of popular terms that people are searching for. There are also several handy SEO tools that you can find online if you want to take this further.
Once you’ve found a suitable keyword for the content you intend to make, make sure to include it in your video’s title and description. Your description should be between 200-300 words long and you should include your keyword about 3-4 times. If you can, mention the keyword in your video too. Use your keyword near the start of your video’s title and keep the title as short and punchy as possible.
There are some additional factors that can greatly influence how your video does on YouTube. Long, engaging videos tend to do better on YouTube. YouTube wants viewers on their platform for as long as possible, so they will reward videos that keep them there. A video series can also be very effective at this. If your video gets lots of likes, shares and comments, it will naturally become more visible.
Post Consistently
It will be impossible to sustain your viewership on YouTube if you don’t post consistently. Many top YouTubers have certain videos that get more views than others, but that doesn’t deter them from trying to replicate that success again. They know that they need to keep their channel updated to remain relevant.
Devise a posting schedule and stick to it, whether that’s once a week, twice a week or three times a week. Make your schedule public so that your subscribers know when they can expect new content. You could mention when your next video is coming in the description of your latest video or in the video itself.
Thursdays and Fridays are the best days to post videos on YouTube, so try to make sure that you have something lined up for then. It can be a good idea to stockpile videos that are similar to your most popular content, ensuring you always have something lined up for your channel.
Invest in Your Recording Equipment
Long gone are the days where you could upload grainy, poorly-shot footage and expect to be successful. If you want to be successful on YouTube these days, you’re going to need to ensure you’re posting high-quality and crisply shot content. This can mean significantly investing in your recording equipment.
The minimum video quality you should be filming in is HD (1080p) and 4K is certainly worth considering. As time goes on, more YouTubers have begun to embrace 4K, which means that lower resolution videos may be left behind.
Make sure you choose a camera that best suits your style of filming. For short recordings on the move, a compact camera with image stabilization could be ideal, but for better production quality, a mirrorless or DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera might be more suitable. In a DSLR camera, light that passes through the lens is reflected from a mirror to the viewfinder, but in a mirrorless camera, light goes through the lens and straight to the sensor.
Having the right hardware is important, but they aren’t enough to make interesting videos on their own. You need to make sure that you also use the right software to edit your raw video footage.
Editing a creative video out of clips is one of the basic requirements of a talented YouTuber. Using editing programs also helps develop creative and IT skills.
That about wraps up this article. In the next article in this series, we’ll look at how communicating with your viewers and monetizing your channel can help drive your success. We look forward to seeing you there.
