Building a successful YouTube channel is a great way to generate traffic, leads and sales on autopilot for your business or for your products. It’s not just about gaining views and subscribers.
On this beautiful snowy day (watch the video above), I’m going to show you the 10 steps on how to make a successful YouTube channel for beginners. You’ll discover that YouTube is not just about gaining views and subscribers but building assets for a lifetime.
Here are the 10 steps to make a successful YouTube channel.
1. Define your purpose.
If you don’t have a clear purpose for your channel, you’re not going to be successful. Your purpose could be to make money. Your purpose could be to generate revenue so you can pay your bills. It could be to generate leads for local businesses. Perhaps you want to start a consulting business. You may want to generate leads and sales by promoting your own products and affiliate products. Maybe you want to impact people’s lives by sharing a hobby you’re passionate about.
Let me know in the comments below what the purpose of your channel is.
2. Choose a niche you’re passionate about.
If you don’t choose a niche that you’re passionate about, it’ll be difficult to keep going when the going gets tough. There’s going to be times for when you’re not motivated or inspired to publish a new video, but if you have a deep reason why you’re doing it, then it’ll be easier to keep going.
A big question you should ask yourself is, what kind of value am I going to give to my target audience?
When you clearly define your target audience and help solve their problems, people are going to watch your videos. A great way to choose a niche that you’re passionate about is just entering your main keyword in the YouTube search box. It’ll give you a bunch of suggestions of different topics.
Another idea is to use the free Chrome extension, TubeBuddy. If you use the keyword explorer tool in TubeBuddy you’ll get a bunch of suggestions. You’ll also be able to see the keyword trends for a particular keyword phrase, as well as researching the competition. It’s a great time-saver for researching topics for YouTube channels.
3. Create a unique value proposition.
A unique value proposition is what makes your channel stand out from others. Instead of trying to do the same thing as all your competitors are doing, try to do something different that is unique to yourself. Try to come up with one sentence that defines your channel.
For example for my channel, I say, “I help people grow an audience on YouTube so they can generate traffic, leads, and sales on autopilot.“
On my channel banner, I have a tagline that says, “Grow your audience with video.”
Click here to learn how to create a unique
value proposition for your channel.
4. Design professional channel art.
This also helps with channel branding. You can design a professional channel banner, a channel icon, channel trailer, video thumbnails, branded intro for your videos, perhaps a custom end screen and a website that you can associate with your channel. Ideally, your branding should be congruent so when people see your thumbnail, they immediately associate it with your channel.
5. Organize your channel homepage.
Your channel homepage is like the front page of a website. You only have a few seconds to make an impression upon your viewers so they’ll be motivated to subscribe to your channel. If you’re not a graphic designer, then hire somebody on Fiverr or Upwork to design your channel banner and your thumbnails. Your thumbnails are the first things people see about your video in the search engines. Your channel banner is the first thing people see when they land on your channel homepage. You’ve got about five seconds to make an impression.
You also want to include a channel trailer of one to three minutes that summarizes the content of your channel. When people see your banner and watch channel trailer, they’ll be motivated to subscribe. For the rest of your homepage, you should create sections that contain playlists. Each section should contain a different playlist, so when someone sees your channel homepage, they can dive deeper into your content. You also want to create a good description on your about page. A lot of people will check out the about page to find out what your channel’s all about. Instead of just talking about yourself, mention the benefits to your viewers.
After you’ve mentioned the benefits, then you can introduce yourself and end with a strong call-to-action, like subscribe to your channel.
Another thing to do is to include your channel keywords in your description. This helps the discoverability of your channel in the search engines.
6. Keyword research.
Instead of thinking about one video, think about creating a series of videos that you can put in a playlist. This means that instead of somebody watching just the single video, they can watch several videos in a row.
Keep in mind, one of the main ranking factors of YouTube is watch time. The longer you can keep people watching your videos, the higher the probability of your videos appearing in search and suggested videos.
A free tool you can use for keyword research is the YouTube suggestion box. Just enter the main keyword in the YouTube search box, and you’ll get a bunch of suggestions. Make a list of all suggestions in a Google Doc so you can go back to them when you get stuck for video ideas.
You can also use TubeBuddy, which I mentioned before, which is a free Chrome extension. It’ll save you a ton of time doing keyword research because it’ll give you a bunch of suggestions, it’ll show you the trends, and also show your competitors.
Click here to watch my review of TubeBuddy.
Another great tool is answerthepublic.com. This will show you all the questions that people are entering into Google Search about your particular niche.
Instead of guessing the questions that people are asking about your niche, you’ve got a tool that shows you exactly the kind of searches that people are doing. If you install the Chrome extension keywords everywhere, it’ll also show you the search volume.
Another great point about TubeBuddy is it’ll give you a keyword score so you can quickly identify if a keyword phrase is worth going after. This will save you a lot of time creating videos that never rank and how to get any views or subscribers.
I highly recommend installing TubeBuddy to speed up your keyword research. My face is getting frozen.
7. Structure your videos for maximum engagement.
If you’re just starting out creating videos, I highly recommend creating a script for your first video. This will help you to stay on track and stop waffling through your videos. I typically write out several scripts at once so I can batch record my videos. Instead of filming one video, I can save time by filming several videos at once.
If you’re just starting out creating your channel and creating videos, you don’t need expensive gear, just start with what you got. Then when you can afford it, you can upgrade.
For example, I create most of my videos for the last few years just using my iPhone. It’s only recently that I upgraded to a Canon camera. If you don’t have a phone, you can just purchase a webcam for about $50. It’s a great way to just get going.
When you structure your videos, make sure you have a strong hook at the beginning, because you only got a few seconds to grab viewers attention. Expand on that hook by delivering great value throughout your video, then end with a strong call-to-action.
If you follow this structure, you’ll be on your way to grow in a successful YouTube channel. When you batch record several videos in a row, you can also batch edit your videos. I typically edit my videos on time blocks so I don’t get too tired. I might spend a couple hours in the morning, one in the afternoon, and then a couple hours at night.
According to YouTube, your goal should be to keep your audience retention as close to 100% as possible. This means that your viewers are watching your videos all the way through. I typically try to shoot for at least 50% audience retention rate.
Videos that have consistent high audience retention will show up in YouTube search and YouTube suggested videos, so try to improve one thing in each video you publish.
8. Video optimization.
Your goal with optimization is to keep your viewer watching all the way through your videos. It starts with a great thumbnail and title. If you can get a viewer to click on your thumbnail, then they will be more inclined to watch your video. Add the keyword phrase that you research in our earlier step to the title, description, and tags of your video. Make sure you also add cards and end screens that link to a playlist so you can keep people watching more of your videos.
Another great idea is to pin one of the videos that’s in your playlist to the top of your comments. When people go to comment on your video, they’ll see your pinned comment.
Click here to download a checklist on the steps on
how to optimize your YouTube videos
9. Video promotion.
Use the share icons under your video to promote your video to social media sites. If you have an email list, promote it to your email list. If you have a website, embed it on your website.
The more places you can promote your video, the more chances you have of attracting a large audience.
10. Track video performance.
You want to keep an eye on how your videos are doing by going into YouTube analytics. If you get a high click-through rate on your thumbnails and a high watch time on your videos, your videos will do well in the search engines and you’ll get a lot of traffic. Try to work on increasing these metrics in each video you produce.
Here are some important things to keep in mind.
1. Be consistent.
At least upload a new video every week. If you can do more than that, that’s great.
2. Reply to all comments.
If people made the effort to reply to a comment, then you should reply to their comment.
3. Think of a series of videos.
Instead of coming up with a script for just one video, create several scripts for several videos to save you from getting stuck with video ideas and keep you on schedule.
4. Link to a playlist instead of one video.
When you link to a playlist, people will be more inclined to watch a series of videos instead of just one video. The longer somebody stays watching your video on YouTube, the more inclined your videos will rank in the search engines.
5. YouTube is a marathon not a sprint.
It’s very rare that a video is going to get thousands of views right out of the gate. Therefore, be patient and keep a consistent upload schedule.
Bonus tip.
Have fun!
If you’re not having fun creating videos like I am out in the snow here, then you’ll soon give up. Try creating different types of videos to see which one resonates with your audience.
Do you want a grow your YouTube Channel this year so you can attract more views and subscribers? If so, pick up a copy of my 100+ page ebook at TubeBootCamp.com
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