Whether you have dreams of making it big or you just want to support your brand in a fun and engaging way, starting out on YouTube can be tough.

If you make good content and you have some fans or followers already, it's not hard to generate an initial base of subscribers.

But once your small YouTube channel starts gaining momentum, it's going to become increasingly difficult for you to pick up new subscribers and continue growing.

Obviously, much of your success depends on your ability to earn new subscribers. More subscribers lead to more views, more engagements, and ultimately more revenue.

So how are you supposed to get those subscribers as a small YouTube channel?

Analyze Your Current Position

Start by analyzing your current position. Take a close, deep look at the types of videos you've made, the types of results you've seen, and your current subscriber count.

Pay especially close attention to:

Audience

‍Who is your target audience? What types of people are subscribing and what types of people are currently watching your videos as you publish them? This is one of the most important questions you'll need to answer, and it's going to be nearly impossible for you to see growth unless you can answer it confidently. If you don't know who your audience is, you won't be able to make videos for them successfully.

Competitors

‍It's also important to look at your top competitors. Unless you've stumbled on a totally novel, niche area that no one else has touched, there are probably multiple YouTube channels doing what you do, or something similar. What kinds of subscriber counts do these channels have? What do you think is responsible for their success? What are they doing differently from you and how can you distinguish yourself in an even more compelling way?

Past and current strategy

‍Finally, examine your past and current strategy for producing and distributing videos. Which of your videos have been most successful? Which ones have fallen flat? How have your subscriber rates changed over what time and what do you think is responsible for these changes?

Hopefully, this analysis will allow you to identify some key strengths and weaknesses associated with your channel, allowing you to generate some initial ideas for how you can improve.

Invest in Your Production

Take a look at your approach to production, post-production, and editing. If you want to consistently earn more subscribers, you need to produce videos that look and sound professional in quality. With the abundance of relatively inexpensive professional equipment and production tools, there's no excuse for not having videos that look amazing.

It can be challenging as a relative newcomer in the world of video production to achieve this professional quality. So if you need some extra support, consider working with a video production agency who can help you give your videos a better final polish.

Look for Stronger Keywords

Many struggling YouTube content creators suffer from their inability to recognize audience generation opportunities. By looking at search trends, you can identify strategically valuable videos to create, fulfilling demand while avoiding competition at the same time.

Take a look at search terms used by your audience. The sweet spot is going to be keywords and phrases that have high search volume, meaning lots of people are searching for them, but relatively low competition, meaning there are few competitors producing videos for these people. This is a niche with high demand and low supply, giving you a critical opportunity to get attention on your work.

Pursue Stronger Relevance

You can always make your video content more engaging by pursuing stronger relevance to your target audience. This is one reason why it's so important to know who your audience is, inside and out. What are the demographics of these viewers? What are their values? What's important to them? What styles of video do they prefer?

Additionally, these audience members probably have burning questions and strong desires to see certain types of content. If you can give them specifically what they want, you should have no trouble generating more subscribers. Even if it means alienating portions of your broader audience, it's typically worth the investment to dig deep into a specific niche.

Cater to Emotions

Generally, when people subscribe to, follow, or engage with brands, it’s not a logical decision; it’s an emotional one. Human beings are emotional creatures, whether we like it or not, and most social media platforms are geared toward spurring strong emotions.

To the extent possible, optimize your video titles and descriptions to cater to the emotions of your target audience. Can you make them shocked or excited? Can you make them nervous or intimidated? Can you evoke in them a sense of morbid curiosity?

Obviously, you'll need to be careful here. You don't want to emotionally manipulate your audience, nor do you want to exaggerate your subject matter in pursuit of more clicks; this is typically a losing strategy in the long run, as it erodes trust and respect. Still, if you walk this tightrope carefully, you should be able to generate far more subscribers.

Publish More Shorts

Many YouTube creators have avoided producing Shorts, because they want to primarily focus on long-form content. There's nothing wrong with prioritizing long-form content and you can still pursue it as your primary avenue of video creation. However, if you aren't producing Shorts regularly, you could be missing out on some serious subscriber generation potential.

Shorts are quick, punchy, and appealing to a wide range of people. They're also extremely discoverable. Even if you only produce a couple of Shorts a month, it could help get more eyes on your channel and ultimately earn you more subscribers.

Tell a Compelling Story

Storytelling is at the heart of every successful YouTube channel. Each YouTube creator tells different types of stories and tells them in different ways, of course, but in every successful video, you'll find some kind of compelling narrative. What kinds of stories do you tell? What are your strengths as a storyteller?

If you've never thought about this, now could be the perfect opportunity to delve into the narrative side of things. Can you illustrate your talking points with the help of narrative examples? Can you introduce characters and a beginning, middle, and end to your stories?

Take What’s Popular and Make It Your Own

Pay close attention to what's popular on YouTube, even if it's outside your sphere of influence. What are the most popular creators doing? What are the most viral videos of the past couple of weeks?

There are two major reasons for this. First, this gives you a crucial opportunity for inspiration. By studying what other successful youtubers are doing, you can come up with ideas for how to make your own videos better. YouTube creators sometimes find themselves in a rut, producing similar videos over and over. But you need to adapt and incorporate new ideas if you want to continue growing. It doesn't mean sacrificing your brand identity or your style of video, but it does mean gradually evolving.

Second, this is an opportunity for you to plug into the zeitgeist and see what's resonating with people. There is no single formula for a successful YouTube video, in part because any formula that might exist is constantly changing. New technologies, new trends, and changing demographics force significant changes in video production. You need to be attuned to these changes if you don't want to become irrelevant.

Reward Your Subscribers

Find a way to reward your subscribers. Do subscribers get access to bonus content or other special privileges? Do you regularly enter your subscribers into giveaways? Do you ever shout out your subscribers and thank them for subscribing? Even the smallest rewards can incentivize your existing subscribers to continue subscribing to you while simultaneously inviting new numbers into the folds of your long-term viewership. You don't want to bribe your subscribers, but you do want to make it worth their while to continue subscribing to you.

Collaborate

Collaborating on content production is one of the best ways to increase your subscriber count – and you might be able to boost someone else’s subscriber count at the same time! Collaboration is almost always mutually beneficial, so it’s well worth considering in pursuit of advancing your channel.

Consider reaching out to video creators with similar approaches. Channels with more subscribers have more power to lend to your collaboration, but they also tend to be harder to reach and harder to collaborate with, so use your discretion as you climb this ladder.

In any case, come up with a good pitch that would be relevant to both your target audiences. Depending on the nature of your channel, this could be something simple, like interviewing each other on each other's channels, or something more complicated, like working together on a multi-video story.

Cross-Promote

No matter what, you should spend more time cross-promoting your videos. In other words, you need to market and showcase your video on other social media channels. YouTube remains the most popular online video platform in the world, and likely will remain in that position for the foreseeable future. But it's certainly not the only video channel, and video channels represent only a small fraction of all social media channels.

It's typically free to share, promote, and comment on videos on social media, so there's no reason not to take advantage of these channels. Doing so could get more eyes on your work and ultimately help you generate the subscribers you want.

Advertise

If you're not seeing results as quickly as you'd like, you can also consider paying for advertising. Not every YouTube content creator is going to have the budget for this, but for those who do, it's a convenient shortcut that can immediately introduce people in your target demographics to the type of content you produce.

Close the Gaps

Next, work on closing the gaps in your content strategy. Are there any major topics within your sphere of expertise that you haven't yet covered? Are there any newsworthy events that you haven't commented on? Are there things that all your competitors do that aren't present on your channel? Tightening these things up can make your channel much more attractive.

Experiment

Finally, be willing to experiment. It's important to be consistent in your video production in terms of both topics and style. But unless you occasionally try new things and measure the results of your changes, you won't be able to meaningfully advance your strategy or grow your subscribers.

Are you hoping to boost the subscriber numbers on your YouTube channel?

Are you ready to seriously invest in your video platform?

We’re here to help. If you’re ready for your free consultation, contact us today!

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