A SHORT CASE STUDY

Kickstart YouTube with these tips

Jibreel Yilmaz

Feb 5·5 min read

Creating a channel on YouTube seems to be an easy task, and it is. However, growing your channel is the real struggle, and most people don’t even bother to do this struggle.

There can be several reasons why your channel isn’t growing, but the most common one is the lack of knowledge and implementation of wrong strategies.

I did the same, and of course, I failed. However, I tried once again and studied the suggestions by some famous YouTube experts, and I implemented them. It actually worked for me. The success was little, but I would love to share this case study to anyone who sucks at YouTube.

So, without wasting any time, let’s get started.

About My Channel & Niche (Details)

I started working on a gaming channel. The main focus was on PUBG Mobile (as it is trending these days). This PUBG focused niche is quite a bit saturated now.

Everyone is creating channels and claiming to be a pro gamer, and in such competition, the only way to grow is to make your content stand out from others. Here’s what to do.

1. Interact With Your Audience

YouTube is a video sharing (social media) platform. As YouTube is a social media platform, so you have to start socializing with your audience.

No matter if you have hundreds or thousands of subscribers, all you need to do is interact with them. For example, whenever you post a video, make sure to encourage them to comment and share their experience (relevant to that particular video).

Other than that, if you have unlocked your community tab, use it to interact with your audience regularly.

I haven’t unlocked my community tab yet, but still, I engage with my subscribers via comments.

2. Choose Your Keywords Wisely

The next thing to do is to choose your keyword ideas wisely. If you make a video on any random topic, you’re not going to grow.

I’ve been into blogging, and while doing keyword research, I always intended to find keywords with low competition that suit my niche.

Same is the case with YouTube. You have to find keywords with low competition to make your video rank higher.

For this purpose, using the YouTube search bar is the best suggestion from my side. Type your keyword idea into the search bar and then note down all the suggestions.

Use these suggested keywords and check the videos ranking on them. If the competition is normal, create a video, perform YouTube SEO and publish it.

Here’s a screenshot from the traffic sources of my ranked videos.

3. Create Your Videos Around a Unique Topic

While starting a channel, make sure you are choosing a specific niche. For example, If I had created a channel related to dogs, I have to post about dogs, their breeds, and other such information.

However, if I started making videos about tech and published them on my dog's niche channel, that would definitely seem awkward.

So, I hope with this example, and you will understand why choosing a specific niche for your channel (and following it) is too important.

Once you have finished choosing your niche, look out for your competitors and find keywords for your channel.

4. Promote Your Channel on Other Social Media Platforms

While you post content on YouTube, another necessary step that you should take is to promote your channel on different social media platforms. If you have an audience on Instagram, or Facebook, post about your YouTube channel so that you can target a larger audience.

When I started my YouTube channel, I had a Facebook page with 300+ followers (now 700), I added multiple stories about my channel and told my audience to go through my YouTube videos.

In your case, you can opt for platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.

Here is the result of promoting my videos through Facebook:

5. Thumbnails Are Necessary

The greatest mistake, I’ve ever made is ignoring the importance of thumbnails. I underestimated the fact that thumbnails can actually skyrocket your views.

YouTube highlights the videos with their thumbnails. So if by chance your video gets ranked on YT, then remember to design awesome thumbnails so that your videos can stand out from your competitors.

If your video has a great thumbnail, it will get a higher click-through rate (CTR). To get a higher CTR through your thumbnails, I will recommend highlighting specific areas with large text, arrows, or maybe an image with a stroke. It will help you gain the attention of the audience.

Following are the apps that I use for thumbnail editing.

• Pixellab (for mobile phone)
• Adobe Photoshop
• Canva

6. Find the Right Time to Post Videos

Here comes the most important step that you should implement. After finishing the content creation process, the next important step is to find out the right time when your viewers are more likely to be on YouTube.

Here’s how you can do it:

• Go to your YouTube channel dashboard, and head towards the channel analytics.
• In the channel analytics, click on the audience and scroll down. You’ll see something like this:

If your viewers are active at 7 a.m., that doesn’t mean you have to post exactly 7 a.m. You should post like half an hour before the exact time.

Final Thoughts

So, these were the tips from my personal experience. I hope that you’ll enjoy reading this article. If yes then make sure to drop down your response below!

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