- When you first start out on YouTube,
being at just zero subscribers can be rather frustrating.
You make your first vlog or video review, and then you wait.
You wait, and you wait for hopefully views, comments
and subscribers to start rolling in, only to find crickets.
However, using the very tips that I'm going to
give you here today,
I managed to help a brand new YouTube channel
get their first hundred subscribers just three days
after posting their very first video.
And if you stick around till the end of this video,
I'll give you some extra tips that got that channel
well beyond its first 100 subscribers.
The first thing I would tell a new channel
do not ever buy subscribers.
Additionally, do not participate
in methods that could manipulate your subscribe count
in some weird way, like sub for sub.
Not only are these practices against YouTube terms
of service and a great way to get banned,
in pretty much all cases, you're going to release videos
and give them an incredibly slow start.
YouTube looks to those subscribers
as people who can help gauge the early success of a video.
So if your newest subscribers
aren't clicking your most recent videos,
YouTube's getting some pretty strong signals
that something is not right here.
Your videos are not attracting these new subscribers
and therefore maybe they won't attract anybody else.
The next thing I would tell a new channel
is to find a niche, find a topic
on YouTube that you're passionate about
and then stick to it.
Now as with any new thing, you try finding that right niche
that right space you fit in
on YouTube could take you a while
and it's absolutely okay to experiment
with all kinds of different things at first,
but if you continue making videos that try to appeal
to literally everybody, you just end up making videos
that appeal to nobody.
So when you think you've found
that topic that you wanna go all in on,
start researching the audience that would be interested
in watching that topic.
The goal here is to make videos that appeal
to a very specific person and get that person
to watch every single video that you post
on YouTube thereafter.
Once you have that topic and you're starting
to upload videos, you need to set a channel trailer
on the front page of your channel.
I kid you not. This is a very important step
and one that a lot of channels, even large ones don't take.
For anyone who's presented your content on YouTube
and then they start watching and wanna learn more about you
they tend to go to your channel page to investigate more
about what they're gonna get on your channel
if they commit to becoming a regular viewer.
Your channel trailer could be there to sum that
up in just one or two minutes.
And as it turns out, the subscribe button
on YouTube that is clicked by most users is actually the one
on the front page of your YouTube channel.
Speaking of setting up your channel page,
you also need to fill out your about section.
This is in your channel customization settings
and it's a great way to give a very brief overview
of what it is you do on YouTube.
When you're writing this about section,
it's also very important to use keywords
and keyword phrases that describe what you're going to
be talking about video after video,
these keywords can be used to
actually surface your channel in search.
For example, if you do a search for Pilates, these are just
two channels that show up, and it's funny because
the word Pilates does not appear
in their channel name, but it does appear
in their about section.
So more advice that you've probably heard time
and time again is to have an upload schedule
on your channel.
Now, from my own personal experience
this doesn't have to be really strict and really rigid.
In an ideal world,
you would set a goal to post three videos a week
and they would come out
at the same exact times every single week.
But sometimes life gets in the way
and that is totally okay.
If I can only post two videos that week when
I wanna post three, it's probably gonna mean
that my last video of the week comes
out pretty good because I'm not burning myself out
trying to make sure that I absolutely hit that schedule.
The most important thing
about your schedule, though, is that you continue to upload.
Taking really long breaks is a great way
for your viewers to forget you exist and have them move
on to other creators that do something similar to you.
Another way to work towards that 100 subscriber
goal is to actually put a branded watermark on your videos.
This is, again in the customization settings
in your YouTube studio
and a lot of people tend to just put their channel's avatar
or even a subscribe button in this little watermark spot.
When people click on this, they are prompted to subscribe
to your channel, and if you put nothing there
you're basically leaving a subscribe button on the table.
So why not? I also alluded to this earlier,
but you should be asking people every now and again
to subscribe to your channel in videos.
As a personal recommendation,
I don't think you should do this every single video
but every so often in the middle
of one of your videos after you've given some value
it's great to say, "Hey, by the way, I work really hard
on these videos and you should absolutely subscribe."
I also have a philosophy
that the more fun you have with this call to action
the more likely someone is to actually click that button
but at the end of the day
a lot of people forget it's even there.
So reminding them every so often that, hey
they can subscribe isn't a bad thing.
As you continue uploading videos on YouTube
another thing you need to do that's gonna take
some practice is making searchable titles.
Having videos that target search is a great way
to start a channel because it helps you get
into the recommended feeds
of brand new people who have never heard of you before.
So to make sure that your videos rank in search,
there are some best practices for you to follow.
Around your topic, try and answer questions that involve
a who, a what, a why or a when.
Answer these questions using videos that have
these searchable titles. To come up
with ideas for searchable titles around your topic
the YouTube search bar is a great place to start
but we also have a tool that kind of acts as a cheat code
within our YouTube keyword Tools is actually a space
for questions that people are currently asking.
All you need to do is start
with a keyword and then scroll down to questions.
There, you can find potentially hundreds of video ideas just
from questions that people are actively typing
into the search bar right now.
Links to all of our tools are down below, so enjoy that.
When you're writing these titles, a bonus step I have
for you is to use some proper capitalization.
When you type your titles in all lower case letters
it kind of just looks a bit lazy.
It looks like the video was uploaded with just a file name.
Additionally, you could all cap certain words
in the titles to add emphasis.
A lot of the biggest creators do this, so again
just be sure that you're following the best practices
and your titles will show up in search and people will click
on them, and you probably saw this coming,
but it's not just titles, it's also having that
attention grabbing thumbnail to get your brand new videos
lots of clicks right out of the gate.
Some best practices here is
that the ideal thumbnail size will be 1280 by 720.
I like to start with images that are actually captured
with 1920 by 1080 framing.
This allows me a lot more pixels to actually zoom
in on different subjects.
Ultimately, your thumbnails should be kept very simple,
don't use too many elements.
Do the research by looking around at other creators that are
in your space and seeing what thumbnails are resonating
with the viewers that you're going after.
These thumbnails that you make should do their best to
compliment the titles that they're attached to.
You wanna avoid misleading people with content
that's a bit too click-baity.
It also helps to use contrasting colors
and when you put text in your thumbnails
try not to repeat the title all over again.
Text and thumbnails is a great way to add emphasis
where you couldn't do so in the title.
A super valuable way to get subscribers
on YouTube is to take advantage
of the pinned comments underneath videos.
A lot of people scroll down to the comment section to see
if any questions they have are being answered
or if they want to ask a question themselves.
You can absolutely use the pinned comments
to drive traffic to other videos.
Your pinned comment will appear
at the very top of the comment section.
So if people are asking the same question over and over,
write out a pinned comment
and make sure you answer that question
so people don't have to keep asking.
Additionally, you can use that pinned comment to
ask people to subscribe or even push them
to the next relevant video so
that they get even more immersed in all of your content.
Speaking of comments,
another thing you should be doing is answering as
many comments as possible on your channel.
Even doing something as simple as clicking
that heart icon shows the people who are taking the time to
leave comments that you take the time to read them.
Even YouTube themselves say,
"When creators take the time to interact
with their loyal community,
it can encourage audience participation
and ultimately result in a larger fan base."
And this tactic works because not a lot
of YouTubers pay much attention to their comments section.
It helps you as a creator stand out amongst the crowd.
I've been saying a version of this throughout the video
but I wanna make it very clear you should absolutely
go out and be learning from other creators.
These other creators, especially the ones that are
in your space, have been doing this for a really long time
and they've paved the way for your success.
You absolutely do not need to reinvent the wheel here.
If you see an idea you like, a trend, that all these
other creators in your space are jumping on, make sure to
follow them and make your own version of this video.
When people on YouTube watch a video about a new topic
that they really enjoy, they tend to go out
and look for more videos on that topic.
So don't be afraid to make your version
of these trending videos.
Learning everything you can along the way from
other creators who are doing it successfully.
Simply in the fact that it is you making the video
and not them means that you won't be copying them.
Once you've posted your videos and you've answered a bunch
of comments and they've been on YouTube for a few days
you should start looking at their analytics.
Now, we have a video coming out soon that's gonna go even
deeper here, but just the surface level stuff.
The first thing I would look at is your retention graph
on your latest video. The goal here is simple.
The longer people watch your videos,
the more your videos tend to spread.
If you upload a new video, you wait a few days,
check the retention graph and you're noticing it's about
40% or so, push yourself to make that 40% go up just
a little bit in the next video, maybe 42%, 43%.
It's really easy to look at your analytics and kind
of beat yourself up a little bit
when things don't look the way you expect.
So I recommend looking at these a few days later
after you and your video have had some time apart
any spots in the graph where you see a dramatic drop
off of viewers, investigate those.
Try to learn from these mistakes and correct them
in future videos so that those numbers continue to climb
from 40% to 50% and beyond.
Another thing you can do to get some new viewers
onto your channel if you're just starting from zero
is to promote your videos occasionally to social media.
Believe it or not, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok
these are all great places to perhaps get you
some new subscribers.
My caution for you here is to make content
on each of these platforms
for the audiences that live on these platforms.
By that, I mean don't just simply re-upload your video.
Perhaps you could take the topic of your video
and create a short Instagram story or reel about it
or maybe you can take some of the bullet points
of your video and break them down in a Twitter thread
with a link to your video at the end of it.
Anywhere you go online as your channel persona,
you should always be looking to bring value
to whatever audience it is you're trying to speak to.
So there are a number of ways
you can be sharing your videos on social media
but it's also really easy to do it the wrong way.
So just don't be posting links willy-nilly.
So many channels on YouTube who are
under a hundred subscribers are still that way
even in an entire year
after they started their channel, but I promise you
if you take these tips and you apply them properly
you can get the first 100 subscribers
and you can do it fast.
That channel I mentioned at the beginning of the video,
they got their first 100 subscribers in just three days
but three days after that,
they were at a thousand plus subscribers.
And if you want that very best chance to
get that first 1000 subscribers,
this video is the one that you wanna watch next.