8 Ways to Grow Your YouTube Channel in 2024

By 2025, YouTube will reach almost 3 billion active users worldwide. Yep, that’s the massive popularity of YouTube.

In today’s world, YouTube has become one of the most popular places for branding and marketing. Tons of brands and influencers use this platform to gain subscribers, earn money, and have a strong brand presence. 

As of 2019, every minute, more than 500 hours of videos were uploaded to YouTube. 

The competition is very tough. So, if you want to take advantage of YouTube and stand out from other creators, you have to follow some strategies. 

Don’t sweat! We understand why you’re here. And that’s why we’ve compiled a list of 8 easy strategies for you to grow your YouTube channel. 

So, keep reading to find out how to entice your audience to hit that subscribe button again and again!

8 Powerhouse Strategies to Grow Your YouTube Channel

1. Create Outstanding Content

The most important reason people subscribe to a YouTube channel is interesting, exceptional, and interactive video content. If you want to grow your YouTube channel, great content should be your first priority.

And there’s no exception to it.

But the question is: what does great content actually mean, and how can you create one?

To be honest, there’s no formula available on the whole web that can help you evaluate the quality of any content.

But there are a few key things that you can keep in mind while creating your content.

It obviously won’t guarantee that your content will be great, but it will give you a clear roadmap, and if you follow it correctly, you can produce some outstanding pieces of content.

Know Your Audience

The secret to crafting good content is knowing your audience well. Before you post anything, ask yourself these three simple questions:

• Who is my audience?
• What are their pain points?
• What benefits will they get from my video?

Once you understand what your audience needs, you can build content around that. 

For example, suppose you are a digital marketing coach, and you post videos related to the digital marketing niche. 

Now you need to know what your target audience would like to see from you. Do they want to see “how-to” videos? Perhaps they want to watch educational content. Whatever they want to see, make sure it delivers value and resonates with them. 

Plan Ahead

Quality video content doesn’t happen overnight. You need to invest time to plan ahead for pre-production.

Plan out all the different shots you need to create a quality video. If you need to use any prop, make a list beforehand.

A Clear Hook

Your YouTube viewers won’t stick around if the video is dull. You only have a few seconds to grab your audiences’ attention in your video. So, make sure to open your video with a compelling hook. Tell them what they’ll get from watching your video and give them a strong “WHY” to watch your video.

One of the most successful YouTube channels of 2021, Disney is a perfect example of producing exceptional video content. With more than 5.31M subscribers, Disney is known for creating engaging content like movie trailers, movie clips, teasers, stories, and animations. 

Disney knows what their audience wants, and they perfectly tailor their videos to match their audience’s expectations. 

2. Find Untapped Keyword Opportunities For Your Videos

No matter how amazing and unique your video content is, it’s useless if no one finds it. To ensure your video doesn’t get lost in the ocean of YouTube search results, finding the right keyword is extremely important. 

This is where keyword research plays a crucial role. 

You have to find out untapped and low competitive keyword ideas that your ideal audience might be searching for.

Most of the people run after high competitive keywords where already top YouTube channels are ranking.

By separating yourself from the crowd and targeting low competitive keywords that no one is actually paying attention to can be a game-changer for you.

Optimizing your videos around untapped keywords can not only help you rank #1 on YouTube search results, but it can drive a hell lot of targeted views for your videos and can significantly grow your YouTube channel.

But, how can you find out those untapped and low competitive keyword ideas? 

First, create a list of seed keywords in your niche. For example, if you’re a beauty blogger, your seed keywords would be:

• Skincare
• Acne problem 
• Combination skin
• Facial hair
• Knotless braid

Now, use these seed keywords to find your untapped keywords. 

How? 

Well, simply open YouTube. Type in your seed keyword in the search box, hit space on the keyword, and check out the keywords YouTube suggests. 

These long-tail keywords are usually not super competitive like seed keywords. 

And you can optimize your YouTube videos around these keywords to ensure your page appears at the top of the search results easily.

Pro tip: For keyword research, you can also use some tools like Google keyword planner, AnswerThePublic, VidIQ, and Tubebuddy.

3. Optimize Your Videos to Rank High on YouTube Search

Now that you know how to find untapped keywords, it’s time to optimize your YouTube videos so that your videos rank at the top of YouTube search results.

Keyword Optimized Video Title

You already know SEO is essential to rank higher on YouTube search results. So, if you really want to grow your channel, include targeted keywords in your video titles. 

For example, if you search “untapped keywords” on YouTube, you’ll see how different Youtubers optimized their video titles around this keyword. 

It’s crucial to write Keyword optimized video titles. But, never stuff Keywords. Use keywords only if it sounds compelling and natural.

SEO friendly Video Description 

According to YouTube Creator Academy, short descriptions aren’t good for SEO practice. They recommended writing long descriptions up to one to two paragraphs. 

Unfortunately, most bloggers or vloggers on youtube write short descriptions. And sometimes, they only put links in the description. 

But this practice is a big mistake!

Try to write a long description and make sure that your target and relevant keywords are included in your description.

Source

Use Tags 

Tags are another great ingredient for maximizing your YouTube search visibility. If you use them wisely, they’ll help YouTube get an idea about your content and can help rank your videos for your targeted keywords.

YouTube allows you to use quite a few tags. So make sure to add them accordingly. For instance, you can keep a mix between long tail and short tail tags to optimize the video content. 

And doing this, you can literally grow your channel in no time!

4. Engage With Your Audience

If you want to skyrocket your YouTube channel, engage with your audience consistently. Your YouTube channel is like a community where you should form genuine relationships with your audience. 

Don’t just post videos. 

Respond to your viewers’ comments. Take out some time of your day to leave meaningful comments on your YouTube videos. 

If someone shares your video, show gratification by thanking them. 

For instance, if someone shares your YouTube video on Twitter, thank them in the comments or retweet it immediately. 

You’ve probably heard that engagement is a two-way street. That means when a user follows or subscribes to your channel, go to their channel and engage with them. Share feedback on their content. This will help you build a strong community. 

Lastly, always remember to ask! 

Ask your audience to share, comment, and subscribe to your channel. Dedicate a few seconds of your video to encourage your audience to act. 

For example, Brian Dean, co-founder of Backlinko, never fails to engage with his 4m+ subscribers on every YouTube video. He always leaves witty and valuable replies in the comments. And, if someone shares feedback, he shows his gratitude with positive comments. 

5. Thumbnail Plays a Very Crucial Role

They say don’t judge a book by its cover. But, in the digital world, the audience will always judge your video content by its cover, or rather its thumbnail! 

As of YouTube reports, 90% of the best-performing YouTube videos have custom thumbnails. 

Thumbnails are mainly the cover of your videos. They represent what your video is about. If you can design it perfectly, it will grab a lot of eyeballs to your YouTube videos. 

A good thumbnail can increase click-through rates. It can help your content stand out from the rest. Also, thumbnails are an excellent way to showcase your brand image. 

Here are some hacks you can use to create attention-grabbing YouTube thumbnails: 

Find The Right Size

According to Google, the ideal YouTube video thumbnail size is 1280 X 720 pixels. Also, your image must have a minimum width of 640 px. The thumbnail should be big as the image will also be used in the embedded player as the preview image. 

Here’s a heads up: You should upload your YouTube video thumbnail in JPG, BMP, PNG, or GIF formats. And, remember, the thumbnail size shouldn’t be over the 2MB limit. 

Play With Colors 

We’re pretty sure you’ve noticed that YouTube mostly has three main colors black, white, and Red. So if you use these three colors on your thumbnails, no one will notice you. 

While customizing YouTube thumbnails, you must play with colors. You can use purple, green, yellow, blue, orange to make it eye-catching. In short, use colors that are high in contrast and aren’t red or white.

You can take the Bright Side YouTube channel as an example. If you look closely at their video thumbnails, you’ll notice they’ve used a lot of colors on their thumbnails.

And they are absolutely killing it with this.

Represent Your Brand 

YouTube video thumbnails are a great place to showcase your brand logo. After all, if you want to grow your YouTube channel, you must strengthen your brand image in front of your audience. 

For instance, Harper’s Bazaar always includes its brand logo on the bottom left corner of YouTube thumbnails. 

Pro tip: There are hundreds of great tools out there that can help you create eye-catching thumbnails in almost no time. For instance, you can use tools like Canva to craft compelling thumbnails like a pro! 

6. Heavily Promote Your Videos on Different Channels

According to a recent report, 85% of marketers stated that video effectively gets online attention. If you want to gather engagement from social media channels, there’s no better alternative than video content. 

That’s why you should heavily promote your YouTube videos on different social media channels. As soon as you upload a video on YouTube, share it on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linkedin to encourage your followers to become your subscribers. 

You can create different captions, snippets, or previews for different platforms to promote your YouTube videos. 

You can send a video announcement in your newsletter. Or perhaps you can promote your content using email outreach.

For instance, copywriter and YouTuber Alex Cattoni amazingly promotes her YouTube videos through value-packed newsletters. 

So yes, promoting your YouTube videos on different social media channels can help you grow your YouTube subscribers for the long term. 

7. Run Giveaways to Boost Your Viewership And Subscribers

Be it YouTube or Instagram; there’s no doubt that audiences on all platforms love giveaways. Giveaways and contests are great ways to boost your viewership and subscribers. 

You can ask your audience to leave comments, share, or subscribe to your channel by running giveaways. 

Here are some tips you can follow for running a successful YouTube giveaway contest:

• Strictly follow the YouTube Policies. 
• Give away freebies that are related to your business. After all, your goal should be to promote your brand. 
• Make sure to provide strict rules that explain when an entry is invalid and which have sponsorship.
• Make sure you’re getting positive results from the giveaways. If the contests aren’t giving you active subscribers, you could be wasting resources, time, and money. 

For example, American YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, also known as Mr. Beast, is famous for creating viral larger-than-life and stunts videos on YouTube, started a giveaway contest in 2020. 

In 2020, the YouTuber posted a video titled “I opened a restaurant that pays you to eat at it.” In this video, he took entertainment to the next level by distributing free iPads, AirPods, wads of cash, and other giveaways to all the customers at his restaurant.

And it quickly became a massive hit on YouTube.

8. Run YouTube Ads

This is one of the most obvious yet effective ways to increase your visibility and grow your YouTube channel. Sometimes despite all the efforts, your channel or content won’t perform well organically. 

And paid ads, you can solve this issue.

YouTube allows you to run different types of Ads, such as:

• Display ads: Available only on desktop. Show up on the right-hand sidebar of videos.
• Skippable ads: Show up before or during a video. You can skip these ads after five seconds. 
• Non-skippable ads: Shows up before, during, or at the end of a video. You can’t skip these ads. You have to watch it all the way before you can watch the video.
• Overlay ads: Show up on the bottom part of a YouTube video. These are semi-transparent and available only on desktops.
• Sponsored ads: Show up within a video. You can use relevant video content to promote your YouTube channel or products through these ads. 
• Video discovery ads: Shows up on YouTube search results. 

So yeah, YouTube ads can help you grow your channel effectively. You can always reach out to your targeted audience and convince them to subscribe by running YouTube ads.

However, keep in mind that running YouTube Ads takes a good amount of money.

And if you don’t have a budget for it, you should try to use the above strategies that we’ve shared.

Conclusion

There you go! As we’ve promised earlier, here are your 8 easy and powerful strategies to grow your YouTube channel. 

If you use these strategies wisely, with time, you’ll get better at YouTube marketing. 

But remember, growing a YouTube channel isn’t a one-night thing! You have to grind for a long time to stand out from the crowd. 

YouTube requires effort and time to showcase the results. And if you’re patient enough to grow your channel, these 8 strategies will definitely help you. 

So, what is your takeaway from this post? Do you use any other strategy to grow your YouTube subscribers? Let us know in the comments.