I see some people that have 200 subscribers and other 200k on similar topics!
Depends on your personality a good bit.
1) Work. You can just work hard. Speak at Meetup Groups, WordCamp (or similar), Trade Shows, Niche Conferences. Speak to many people who are interested in your topic + plug your YouTube channel during your talks.
Or better plug your Website with an optin device + publish content on YouTube + many other venues.
2) Create controversy. This is niche independent. This works whether you're a militant Vegan, Trump supporter, Liberal troublemaker.
3) Run paid traffic directly to video. This depends on traffic source + their content guidelines, which seem to change daily.
Likely you'll have to embed your video on your site, wrapped in content + run traffic to your site page. Likely many people will click to play your video on YouTube.
4) Most importantly, give people a good reason to subscribe + tell them to subscribe + what benefit they'll receive by subscribing.
I have been creating videos for promotions and presentations.
Aside from the quality of the video, you must have an attractive script. It all started with the script for your video and should answer the following:
1. What is the problem or conflict?
2. What is your solution?
3. What is your unique selling proposition (UPS)?
4. What is your call-to-action?
This is basically a marketing stuff but if you look at the successful You Tube videos, they have these elements, regardless of the the brand or type of videos.
I am open for a phone conversation in case you need more answers and guidance.
Thank you very much!
Regards,
Allan
Someone with 200 subscribers might have a newer channel, might not upload consistently or often enough, might not be as likeable of a personality, might not have a teaser at the beginning to hook the viewers and keep them watching, might not use end cards to keep viewers watching more afterwards, might not have properly optimized their videos as well... there are a number of factors at play that determine the success of a channel.
For your videos to be successful the main things to focus on should be watch time (getting people to watch further through your video and stay on YouTube longer after they're done it), uploading at least one video a week (even if it's just very simple videos that you can shoot a bunch of at once, to intersperse with your regular content), and optimizing the metadata so you're getting found for the keywords people are searching for (and showing up as suggested videos against other popular videos on the same topics).
Happy to have a look at your channel and then provide more custom solutions in a call!
How to be successful on Youtube is simple, but it's not easy. It basically comes down to a handful of things...
1. Consistancy
You need to be putting out content consistantly. Depending on your video topics and niche that can very but at least one video a week, ideally 2-3.
2. Quality Content
You need to make quality content. Quality is subjective. You don't necessarily need the best production value, the best video, the best editing, but if you're doing something educational or information based the content needs to have value.
3. Perseverence
Youtube is a longterm game. While you may wind up having some success three weeks in, plan on doing this for 1-2 years with next to no results. Unless you go into it with that mindset you won't succeed because you'll quickly grow frustrated with the slow growth and no money.
4. Be Authentic
There's way too many people out there putting on this facade of this amazing life they live or all this money they are making. Most of it is non-sense. People appreciate authenticity. Heck there's a reason people watch Youtube either in addition to or instead of television. Just be yourself and be authentic and you'll connect with people.
Excellent question.
In one line, I would say that the successful channels bring *clarity to a desirable topic.*
There is a lot more of a focus on scripting, and planning for the video than you realise, with channels like PewDiePie (60 million subs) actually being on the very low end of production quality.
I would take these action steps:
Study 3-5 channels in your niche. The channels you use should have large subscriber to views ratios. For example, you want the channels with 400 subs that have 2 million views, as opposed to the channels with 200k subs and 2 million views.
Once you find those high performing channels, take notes on their videos about what recurring principles stood out to you in their content. You might need to watch a few videos on each channel, but you will start noticing patterns very quickly.
Write a test video script with 400 words (three minutes of content). Use the software Boords to plan out what visuals might be best suited to each line of dialogue.
Then use an easy editor like Kapwing to edit your content. You can make seriously good content using stock footage, text and filming yourself speaking (if you're comfortable).
Ask for feedback on designernews or reddit (pick the right sub reddit). Use that feedback to develop a second video, and then repeat the process.
This whole time, you should be using Vimeo's analytics to track viewer engagement. If you are in the range of 60%+ for your first 5 videos, that is pretty excellent.
Anything lower than 20% needs serious rethinking on tone and introduction.
We wrote on some more trends in video that might be of use to you here: https://vidico.com/news/video-production-3-trends-for-2019-that-you-should-know/