How To Build Your YouTube Audience

Grow YouTube creative Strategy agency Springfield ma

There’s no denying that video marketing isn’t going anywhere. And while popular social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and even your own website are great places to invest, YouTube remains the giant in the space, with individuals spending a billion hours each day watching videos on this platform. So with all those users on the platform, establishing an audience should be easy… right?

Growing a YouTube channel these days seems to get harder and harder. Your business and brand need to cut through the noise, but how do you do that? Here are some tips on how you can grow your YouTube channel.

Create and Establish Your Brand

Having strong branding, by maintaining consistency between thumbnails, titles, colors, graphics, and fonts, will help your channel stand out when your videos are shown to viewers within recommendations. These efforts should be happening across all of your digital platforms. By establishing your brand guidelines around visual representation, you can better establish your brand, and ensure people know your material, without even having to look at the channel name.

Build Your Channel Around an Audience

Just like in any other form of marketing, you need to consider the audience that you’re trying to reach, and what they want to see, both now, as well as what they will want to view in the future, in order to keep your posts relevant and keep viewers coming back. You should think about who you want to watch the channel. In order to continue to grow your channel, you should continuously be attracting new viewers, all while keeping those previous viewers coming back for more.

With many people now on YouTube, there’s much more content available now than ever before, which means that in order to stand out, you need to be creating content that’s either better than what’s already out there, provides them with what they are looking for, or has a unique angle that people can’t get anywhere else.

Do Your Research

Watch lots of videos. Just like in any other strategy, or even when you start your business, you want to conduct market research and competitor analysis to see who’s out there doing what. Look into the frequency of other channels are posting, the length of the videos, design styles, and more to see what you need to do to get started. Pay attention to trends, but don’t have all your video topics be about trends. While you may get quick new views, the goal is long-term and is to build your audience, grow your subscriber count.

Be Consistent

One of the most essential ways to grow your audience is just showing up. In order to build repeat viewership, you need to post consistently, to a schedule, in order to become a part of their routine. YouTube Creators need to stay true to the promise that was first delivered in their clips, and that this is especially true when first establishing your channel. If you tell your viewers that your videos will release weekly on Thursdays, then you need to make sure you have a video scheduled each Thursday. It is ok to evolve your approach to your channel and content, as long as you are aligned with your audience.

Optimize Your Videos

One thing that gets overlooked is making sure you optimize your videos. From descriptions to titles and tags, there are many facets when it comes to optimizing your videos, and your channel. Include things like links to your website, social media, and email newsletters from your video descriptions. Fill out your channel bio and let your new audience really learn more about you. Google does own YouTube, so the better the optimization, the better the search results will be for your videos and channel.

Overall, growing your YouTube audience relies on the content that’s aligned with who you want to target and consistently showing up for them. If you are new to YouTube or are looking to grow your staggering channel, contact us today.

YouTube Launches New Fundraising Tools for Nonprofits | Digital Scoop 028

YouTube is launching YouTube Giving, will enable creators to raise awareness, and money, for their chosen organizations via the video platform with a new set of fundraising tools which will include Fundraisers, Community fundraisers, Campaign Matching, and Super Chat for Good.

The Fundraisers feature will allow YouTube creators and qualifying 501(c)(3) nonprofits to create and embed a fundraising campaign next to their videos and live streams. Fans are able to donate to campaigns directly on YouTube via a “Donate” button, making it easier than ever for creators and fans to raise funds for causes they care about on the platform. Creators set their campaigns up and YouTube will take care of the logistics and payment processing.

The Community Fundraisers allows multiple creators to co-host the same fundraiser. The feature is designed so that a Community Fundraiser will appear on participating creators’ videos at the same time and reflect the collective amount of money their communities are raising together.

The Campaign Matching feature, which is not yet available, will allow creators who organize Fundraisers and Community Fundraisers to receive matching pledges to help amplify their efforts.

And finally, the Super Chat for Good feature will enable creators to raise funds for nonprofits via the YouTube live-streaming Super Chat payment system. The option is in limited testing, with YouTube covering all transaction fees in the initial period – meaning that 100% of the donations go to the relevant organizations.

YouTube currently has 1.8 billion monthly active users. There is an amazing potential your cause and fundraiser can reach with the new features.

Online fundraising is a popular activity today across sites like GoFundMe, Kickstarter, and Indiegogo. Facebook also entered the market in mid-2016 when it rolled out the ability for its users to raise funds for nonprofits they support.

The company this year has been expanding the types of things creators can do with their videos, in the face of increased competition from Facebook Watch and Amazon’s Twitch. If you’re a non-profit organization, it’s worth looking into these new tests, and keeping an eye on the platforms updates and evolutions.

YouTube Launches Channel Memberships, Merchandise and Premieres | Digital Scoop 026

YouTube Goes After Instagram

YouTube creators are gaining three major new tools to generate revenue from their videos outside of traditional advertising, as well as those that will help them better engage their fans. This comes after Instagram’s launch of IGTV, so clearly this is a rebuttal since IGTV offers similar features.

This new features include rollout of channel memberships, merchandising, and the launch of Premieres. 

Memberships

Creators with 100,000 subscribers or more, are over 18 and members of the YouTube Partner Program qualify for this feature. For $4.99 per month, this feature will allow subscribers to gain access to members-only posts in the Community tab where creators can share custom perks, like access to an exclusive videos, news, announcements, and more. YouTube says it will vet these perks manually, to ensure they meet YouTube’s guidelines and are something the creator can actually deliver. The perks can be almost anything the creator wants to offer, within YouTube’s guidelines.

Merchandise

In addition to memberships, creators will also be able to sell to fans directly. The feature will show pictures of creators’ merchandise in a display under their videos. This tool is available to all channels in the U.S. with over 10,000 subscribers. This greatly increases the visibility of YouTubers’ branded gear on the platform. Previously, creators could only paste a link with no options to upload images of their merchandise in their video descriptions. This has the opportunity to increase sales by getting more clicks to products. Previously, people had to click “show more” to see the full description, creating an extra step in the process.

Premieres

Finally, YouTubers can use a new feature called “Premieres” that creates a landing page they can promote ahead of a video’s release. This page will also have a chat feature, like Live videos do, which means creators can use Super Chat and take advantage of Channel Membership perks even if they aren’t doing live content.

The videos are uploaded in the same interface on YouTube, so there’s no new workflow to learn beyond toggling the “Premiere” switch on. Creators can also join in the chats as the video goes live to engage with their fans around this pre-recorded content, as well as comment on the videos before they start. When the Premiere wraps, it’s posted as a regular video on the site (without the two-minute countdown video YouTube adds).

What’s next?

YouTube said its version of Stories will arrive for all eligible creators with more than 10,000 subscribers later this year as well. The announcements come at a critical time for YouTube, as Facebook and Instagram are trying to woo creators away to their platforms and video hubs with unique features of its own.

 

Instagram Launching One Hour Videos & Hub | Digital Scoop 025

1 Hour Videos And New Hub Coming To Instagram

Instagram is planning to launch it’s own video hub which could allow videos of up to an hour in length, instead of the current length of one minute. This new update could change the way your business engages with the younger demographic, teens and young adults specifically.

There are sources that told the The Wall Street Journal that social media platform has also been talking with influencers and creators about making long-form content (shows). Of course they are saying the plans are tentative and subject to change, but it all makes sense. If they actually releases this hub, this could be the platform’s moment to take users away from YouTube.

Teens have been flocking from Facebook and going to YouTube and Instagram. A recent survey found that teens are over Facebook and prefer other platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube. Over 80% of online teens are using YouTube, with 72% of them using Instagram. That’s a whole lot of video content.

Instagram’s new hub will be similar to Snapchat’s Discover and Facebook’s Watch and offer creators a place to show their content, shows and more. Even though you can upload videos up to an hour, look at this hub as YouTube. Expect to see 10-15 minute videos compared to the hour long. Continuing the attraction to content creators, the videos will also reportedly feature a swipe-up option to open an associated link so viewers can easily navigate to the video creator’s website or store.

If you looking to target the young demographic, then it’s time to start looking at how your business and utilize the new feature. How will your brand engage with teens and young adults? Will your business use Instagram’s new hub and hour length video when it launches? Comment below and let me know.

Facebook Video Monetization And Promotion Tools | Digital Scoop 023

Facebook has released a new set of monetization options and best practices for video creators as it seeks to build interest in its Watch platform.

 

The new monetization options include:

  1. Pre-Roll Ads
  2. Preview Trailer
  3. Ad Auto Break Insertions
  4. Pre-Publish Brand Safety Check

Facebook Tests Out New Video Format called Facebook Premieres | Digital Scoop 022

Facebook Premieres

Facebook is testing a new video format called Facebook Premieres that will let video creators, publishers and shows post prerecorded video as live footage. Facebook says its new video format is currently being tested among a group with a wider rollout happening soon.

The prerecorded videos will play similar to a livestream, allowing viewers the chance to interact with the video as it is broadcast on the site. Comments, reactions and interactions with the prerecorded Premieres video will happen in real time, as with Facebook’s Live videos.

Subscribe To Digital Scoop Emails To Stay Up To Date: https://tcsa.co/scoopemail

LinkedIn Lauching Geofilters For Video | Digital Scoop 013

LinkedIn is the latest platform to “borrow” features from Snapchat adding Geofilters to native videos for conferences and events.