YouTube says that the algorithm follows the audience, but how do you build your audience on YouTube when you’re just starting out?
In this video you’ll learn how to identify your target audience, how to get your audience to find your videos, and how to keep them coming back for more of your content.
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Let’s first talk about how to identify your target audience.
Your target audience are the people that are interested in your content. One of the ways to find your target audience is to see what search queries people are entering into the YouTube search engines.
For example, if I enter, “How to tie a tie,” into the YouTube search engine, I get a bunch of different suggestions. These are all search terms that people are entering into the YouTube search engine to find out the information that they seek.
If you create videos that contain the search terms and the title description tags, then these videos are more likely to appear in the YouTube search engine.
Ideally, you want to find less competitive keyword phrases because they’ll be easier to rank for especially if you’re a small channel or just getting started.
If you want to know how to find low competition keywords with a high search volume, watch this video.
Another way to find your target audience is to do a survey or a poll. If you have an email list, you can survey your subscribers. If you have a Facebook group, you can create a poll.
If you’re lucky enough to have the community tab on your YouTube channel, you can also create a poll on the community tab.
One of the best ways to tap into the mind of your target audience is to read the comments under the videos. You can read the comments under your own videos or even your competitors’ videos. I often find great questions from viewers in the comments.
When you make a video, you can also ask a question to your viewers in the video and pin that question to the top of your comments. When your viewers go to post a comment, they’ll see your question pinned to the top of the comments.
If you want to know the frequently asked questions that people are asking in your niche, use Answer the Public. It’s a free chrome extension that compiles all the questions in their alphabetical order.
If you have the chrome extension keywords everywhere installed, it will give you the search volume and cost per click of those questions, this is a great time saver.
If you’re like me, and you are your own target audience, then just think to yourself what kind of questions you would ask about your particular niche. If you already have a channel that’s getting a lot of traffic, check your traffic sources for the videos that are bringing the most traffic. You can see what keyword phrases people entered into YouTube search to find your video.
Under suggested videos, you can also see the keyword phrases that contributed to the traffic for your video.
If you have a high view velocity in the first 24 to 48 hours, then your videos will get surfaced to other people’s watch pages. In order to do that, you want to promote your video on social media sites, in your description, pin it to the top of your comments and also place it on your channel home page. The more places that you promote your video on YouTube and off YouTube, the higher probability you’ll get a lot of views from your target audience.
Let’s discuss how your target audience is going to discover your videos on YouTube.
Whether it’s through search or suggested, they’re going to discover your videos based upon a great thumbnail and a great title. The keyword phrase that you research, you want to enter into your title description and tags. If your viewer doesn’t find the title and the thumbnail compelling enough to click on it, then they’re not going to watch a video and you’ve wasted all that time making your video for nothing. Therefore make sure you create a title that motivates the viewer to click on your video.
Click here for the BEST YOUTUBE TITLE GENERATOR For SEO And More Views
Also, make a thumbnail that stands out from your competitor.
Click here to learn how to create a clickable thumbnail.
Basically, your title, thumbnail, and description should also be highly relevant for your video to get found in the search engines. The best scenario for your video to be discovered by your target audience is that YouTube promotes it to other people’s YouTube watch pages. In order to accomplish that, you have to have a high click-through rate and a high watch time.
A high click-through rate will happen if you have a great title and a great thumbnail. YouTube says that the average click-through rate is between 2 and 10%, the higher the better but just keep in mind when people first watch your video, it’s going to have a higher click-through rate because most of the people that watch it in the beginning, are your subscribers.
Your click-through rate will decrease as your videos get surfaced to a wider audience. Keep in mind that click-through rate is not the only factor that affects the rankings of your videos. You’ve also got watch time, average view duration, and average percentage viewed.
A high watch time means that your audience remains engaged throughout your video. These two factors will increase the probability of your video appearing in search and suggested videos. They’ll also get recommended on the home screen of your viewers and subscribers, and will appear in browse features in YouTube analytics.
Let’s talk about how to get your viewers to keep coming back for more of your content.
There’s three types of viewers, new, casual, and returning viewers.
New viewers are viewers that have discovered your videos for the first time. They may have discovered it by YouTube suggesting your video on the right side of the watch page. They can also discover your video in up next, which is the next video that plays after the video they’ve just finished watching.
Casual viewers are viewers that watch a few of your videos but don’t often return to watch more of your content, for example, a viewer might have entered the search query how to tie a tie, watch the video, and they’ll never come back to the channel. You might have experienced this on your own channel where you get a lot of new subscribers but they don’t often return to watch more of your content.
Returning viewers are people that frequently return to watch more of your content. These are usually your biggest fans because they like your content and the way that you deliver it. For most channels including my own, the majority of people that are watching the videos are non-subscribers. A small percentage of viewers are subscribers which are generally the first ones that comment on the videos and drive the view velocity for the videos.
Let me ask you a question, what percentage of your viewers are non-subscribers?
Post your answer in the comments below, I’d love to read them and I’m sure others would too.
What are some ways to increase returning viewers so they can watch more of your content?
One way to get more returning viewers is to create a video series. Focus on a theme for your next few videos, then focus on topics that are related to that theme for each new video. When a viewer is watching one of your videos, link to the next video in the series so they’ll watch more than one video. This will motivate them to keep returning to your channel to watch more of your content.
Another thing you can do to keep them returning is to deliver consistent value. This means you have to create videos on topics that they like and are interested in. You can discover the topics that your audience is interested in by looking at YouTube analytics.
Go to the reach tab and look at your traffic sources. You’ll discover the search queries that people use to find your videos. Write down those keyword phrases as ideas for your future videos.
Another thing you do to attract returning viewers is to have a consistent upload schedule. If viewers know how many times you’ll upload a video each week, and what days you’ll publish it, they’ll keep returning to your channel to see more of your content.
For instance, I usually upload new videos at least twice a week, once on Monday, then do a live stream on Friday.
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Here’s another tip to keep viewers returning to watch more of your content,
Go live. When you go live on your channel you have the ability to connect more deeply with your viewers and subscribers, by answering their questions. It gives them an opportunity to know you better as well as you getting to know them better. As a result, they’ll want to keep coming back to your channel.
Here are three big takeaways on how to build an audience on YouTube. Your main focus on YouTube is to attract new viewers and retain the ones that you have.
- Think about the people that were attracted to your channel in the first place and how you can bring them back to watch more of your content.
- Create a video series so you can drive viewer loyalty. Instead of a viewer watching a solo video, give them the opportunity to take a deeper dive into your content by watching more videos around the same content.
- Attract repeat viewers by delivering consistent value instead of chasing trends and views. If your video topics consistently contain content that your viewers want to watch, they’ll keep returning to watch more of your content.
Here’s a bonus tip to build an audience on YouTube…
Make sure you reply to viewer’s comments. Your viewers took the time to respond to your video so reward them by replying to their comment.
Click here to learn how to use the YouTube algorithm to your advantage so you can get more views and subscribers.
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