Hey it's Rob Balasabas! Recently, I reached a thousand subscribers on this
channel here on YouTube it's a huge milestone I'm super excited about it but
looking back there's definitely a few things that I would have done
differently had I known when I first started my channel that I think would
have brought me to this milestone even faster the good news is that I'm able to
now share those things with you so before we jump into it though
you know what time it is. Let's roll the intro! My name is Rob Balasabas! Hey!
So I actually looked this up I started my channel on October 1st 2018 and I
reached my 1000 subscriber milestone officially on April 27 2020 that's
exactly one year and 209 days now there's a snowball effect you might have
heard about this there is a snowball effect that happens when you start
building a YouTube channel as you get more subscribers more views more
impressions there's more videos out there for people to potentially watch of
you on YouTube you're bound to get more views more impressions more subscribers
and so that snowball effect is very real I'm experiencing that right now things
are going really well with this channel people are finding in there's lots of
search traffic recommended traffic that's coming into this channel and
those things just don't happen overnight they do take time they do take some work
but here's a few things that I think would really help you if you're just
starting on YouTube or your channel is growing to get to that first 1,000
subscriber milestone really really quickly if not faster hopefully after
you hear these tips so let's go the first thing keyword research now when I
first started my channel I used to just make a video based on whatever I thought
would be really good for my audience I didn't really do much research then then
after the video was done I would go and then do the research and usually usually
I would get a wake up call that the video that I created was for a keyword
that was too competitive and so I didn't get much views much traction much
age meant much of anything with those early videos because I created the video
before I did the keyword research now fast-forward a little bit there was
something that triggered me to go and check out a tool called TubeBuddy now I
didn't work for TubeBuddy yet and this is not a plug, kind of is I guess for TubeBuddy
but I wasn't working at TubeBuddy yet
but I discovered TubeBuddy I discovered that they had a keyword research tool
that I could then use and so what I did was I did the keyword research first
identified and discovered keywords that were not as competitive they were a
little bit longer in terms of the actual length of the keyword there might have
been a bit of a phrase like a keyword phrase there was a little bit longer
they may not have had as much searches each month compared to the more popular
keywords that were way more competitive but it was a place for me to start
building an audience so if you're in a place right now where you're trying to
get your first 1000 subscribers I suggest if you're not doing it yet do
your keyword research first identify the opportunities the low-hanging fruit
where your content fits in in a less competitive space so go and do your
keyword research first find out your tags that you want to use all those
things and then create the video that fits that keyword the second thing if
you are a educational or content or how-to type of channel which my channel
is you'll see my channel it's full of tutorials so if you're like me then do
not vlog do not mix up vlog content with your tutorial content in the beginning
because the reason is no one really cares and this is something that I just
learned and this is something I can tell you now because this is something I have
gone through that no one really cares about you as a person they don't care
about what you did on the weekend what you do for fun the city that you live in
the way you travel what you had for lunch or dinner they don't really care
about that type of content YouTube is a search engine so people are searching
for answers to their specific questions so what you need to do to grow as fast
as possible is to create content that answers their specific question as
quickly as possible if you do this if you
provide them the answers to their questions ASAP then you will see people
coming back subscribing watching more if your videos checking out your playlists
and things will happen for your channel let me remind you that there are three
types of value that people can get from your channel either they will be
motivated or inspired they will be entertained or they will learn something
educational content which is the type of content that I lean on now as you mature
and get better as a content creator then you may be able to combine two or all
three of those types of value in your content but in the beginning focus on
one and stick with it and really double down on that the third thing is that
don't make your videos any longer that they need to be you should make your
videos as long as it needs to be but as short as possible so meaning don't try
to make your videos longer than it needs to be just to get more watch time just
to get people stuck on your channel for longer deliver value really quick quick
punch and really bring them value really quickly and people will then keep coming
back if you make your videos longer than it needs to be and you delay to get to
the value in that video people will leave people have a very short attention
span not just on YouTube but really all over social and online anywhere you
gotta to deliver that value as quickly as possible so do that people will come
back they will subscribed it will watch more of your videos if they can rely on
you to deliver value ASAP number four is to use your playlist a lot of people
skip out and forget about playlists playlists is an amazing tool and I only
learned this not too long ago and when I say use your playlist I don't just mean
add your videos to a playlist that's that's like that's basic that's very
very basic what I'm talking about is when you share your videos share that
video from the link inside of the playlist so that does a couple things
for you if people end up on your video inside of one of your playlists the
first one is that it allows them to see that hey there's an entire playlist of
related videos here that I can watch because I like this type of content and
there's more here that I can watch the second thing is basically now they can
binge watch and awesome you want that you want people to
be on your channel for as long as possible there's a metric that YouTube
tracks which is called watch time and that's basically how much of an
individual video on your channel do people watch but there is another metric
called session time that YouTube tracks which is how much time do people spend
that you brought in say from Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn how much time do
they spend watching on YouTube in total so if you brought them to one of your
videos on a playlist and they watch one video then they watch another video and
another one then the session time for that viewer gets longer and longer which
YouTube loves which YouTube will reward you for by suggesting that video to
other viewers like that one that you brought in does that make sense let me
know in the comments if you have any questions about playlists be consistent
uploading one video per week is a minimum if you can do more upload two
videos a week if you can but one video is a minimum I know that there's
channels out there that are well-established that just do one video
a week or one video a month but that is for more established channels if you are
building your channel you need to put out more video more content out there
especially when you're starting out because you need to get content out
there that YouTube can share can recommend each properly optimized video
that you upload is a signal to YouTube about what your channel is about and
here's my bonus tip guys this is just a reminder for people that may have heard
this already but you need to niche down you need to niche or niche niche a you
need to niche down meaning you need to focus your content in your channel don't
talk about so many different things in the beginning find a keyword or a
keyword phrase that is an opportunity for you and create 3 to 5 videos around
that particular keyword or keyword phrase what that does is that it starts
to establish your authority in that particular topic this is what happened
when I started to talk about LinkedIn live on my channel very frequently I
became one of the leaders around LinkedIn live and people
would message me they would reach out to me they would ask me to speak at
different conferences or web summits about LinkedIn life because they would
continue to find me on YouTube talking about LinkedIn live once you've done
that then go find another keyword that's sort of related to that first one and
create another three to five videos around that keyword or keyword phrase
for me on my channel right here where you're watching I talk a lot about
live-streaming and so live-streaming is at the top of my topic pyramid under
live streaming I would talk about gear or livestream platforms so let's just
say livestream platforms under livestream platforms I would talk about
restream I would talk about stream yard I would talk about ECAM and then under
those subtopics I would then talk about specific social channels and
live-streaming on there so I would then talk about Facebook live YouTube live
periscope and LinkedIn live and so you can see everything in there in that tree
of content topics they all feed into each other somebody that's interested in
one of those videos will be interested in other videos within that tree topic
once I started doing this then my channel really started to grow and so
hopefully that is something that's gonna help you if you would like to learn my
exact process and have specific questions and really dive into this I
invite you to join me inside of my patreon community where I do tutorials
about this type of thing every single week and so jump in there the link is in
the description but for now I want to thank you for watching this video go
check out this playlist here on how to livestream better or get started with
live-streaming or you can watch this other video that YouTube thinks you
might be interested in enjoy the rest of your day and I'll see you in the next
video bye bye