Grow your audience on YouTube: Top five hacks

By now, YouTube remains one of the most significant platforms where bloggers can develop themselves. Many people are trying to reach success on this social network, and strategies are countless. Marketers around the globe are constantly doing research, inventing new methods and hacks to provide growth to business, artisans, brands and bloggers of different kinds. And the platform is big enough to hold all this diversity in balance, where everyone under the sun can settle on the best terms. 

However, practically all the strategies you can find will contain the same statement. YouTube is all about the audience you can attract to your blog. No matter how brilliant you are, if nobody watches your videos you simply will not get what you want. Here are five main hacks that will bring attention to your profile.

1. How to get noticed

Just like on any other social network, people on YouTube can be easily driven to your profile by signs of approval. The equivalent of that on social media would be the numbers you get for your content. Simply talking, the more likes, views and subscribers a user sees on your profile, the better the chance that he or she will decide to become a part of your community too. So, in order to grow your audience quicker, you can turn to paid services for help. For starters, you can buy small amounts, like 500 subscribers on YouTube. You can buy views and likes as well. Those actions are supposed to make your profile seem more valuable to potential viewers, thus increasing the probability of subscribing to your channel.

The secret to proper usage of paid services is to preserve the balance between real and fake subscribers. You should keep in mind that the subscribers that you purchase cannot replace the ones that came on their own. That is because fakes can’t provide another vital characteristic of a successful blog: engagement. Remember that your aim is to get a real audience, which interacts with your content. Bots cannot do that. So, their main purpose is to create a public image of you, that would correspond to the matters of social approval. 

Stay focused on your niche

The enormous popularity of YouTube is both a gift and a curse. The number of people who visit this social network daily is growing all the time, so you can find yourself an audience easily. But on the other hand, this means that every significant niche is already occupied by a number of bloggers. However, due to the wide-open community, this problem can be solved knowing these facts and tips:

• Users prefer narrow-themed blogs and can be subscribed to several channels with similar content. So, to squeeze in you can start promoting your blog on other bloggers channels. 

• Always try to think outside of the box. Even if you have chosen an extremely popular topic for your channel, you have a good chance to outrun your competitors if you will show the same content at a different angle. 

• Keep track of the hottest trends around your industry. Providing the freshest information is one of the effective methods to draw attention to your blog.

• Time to time, check on what your competitors are doing. Look through their profiles and see how their audience reacts to their content. Use that experience to avoid making mistakes.

3. Deliver quality content to your viewers

Any content that is posted online, has to be informative or entertaining or the combination of the two. Also, YouTube is a known treasure island for educational content. So, if you want to get more subscribers, you have to give them the attitude subscribers expect. A good way to show your respect to your audience and build a trustworthy image for your blog, is to deliver good-looking and high-quality videos that are considered valuable. To improve growth, choose one of the most popular formats of video:

• Product reviews

• VLOG

• How-to’s, tutorials and any other kind of educational content

• Respond to the requests from your viewers, e.g. Q&As.

Providing helpful content can help you build a community, where people rely on you as a source of information that they can trust. Thus, your viewers will be eager to subscribe and recommend you to other people. 

4. Engagement and where to find it

User engagement is an effective tool for growing your numbers. People love getting involved in various kinds of interaction with bloggers. Your goal as an author is to create a buzz around your videos. You should encourage your viewers to leave comments and likes. And don’t be shy to become a part of the conversation. The more efforts you put into communication with people, the bigger payback you’ll get. Here are the tips that will help you to increase engagement on your channel:

• Be polite and friendly

• Ask questions

• Respond to the comments as much as possible

• Use CTA’s (meaning ask your viewers to subscribe, like, or comment your video directly)

• Engage with other blogger’s audience – enter their discussions, for example

There are many other methods to increase engagement from your viewers. And a successful combination of them all is individual. But it is worth the effort because being active on your profile equals a bigger audience. 

5. Dress up your profile

This paragraph is all about the appearance of your profile. Visual representation of your channel can not only attract people, but it can retain them as well. When your page is branded and stylish, it makes you look more professional. Also, it makes your content recognisable. There are no particular requests to the way your profile page should look, but the only recommendation that could be given is: create a unique style. Mainly, this can be done by using a distinctive colour scheme, fonts and thumbnails. Think of your logo too. 

Let’s think more about thumbnails. Basically, they are regarded as an instrument that picks the interest of a user when he or she is looking through the results of his search. The goal of a thumbnail is to catch the attention of a viewer. Here are the most common requirements for a good thumbnail:

• Make the background bright (it’s better to use orange, yellow or blue)

• Snapshots or uploaded picture should show the point of the video

• Short CTA is preferred

Also, don’t neglect the power of playlists. Grouping your content is a way to prolongate average watch time, which is an important metric. People are lazy, and the function of automatic play of the next video on the list is exploiting this.

Afterword

Grossing a bigger audience is a primary goal of any blogger on YouTube. But with popularity comes the responsibility. You are obliged to make more high-quality content for your followers. That is a rule for remaining on top. Growing numbers is not too hard, but it requires devotion and lots of time. Buying subscribers can be less time consuming, but there is still much more work to do. 

The editorial unit