Best Practices For YouTube- How To YouTube 101

Currently, on my channel, I have a video series going on called How To YouTube 101. In this series I talk about the things that I have learned over my past 2 years being on YouTube, and hopefully I'll end up helping someone out there to achieve their dreams!

This blog post is from the 2nd video in this series and it's all about the best things you can do to optimize your channel growth & boost your watch time & subscriber count. If you want to watch the video then just click here: https://youtu.be/Xn0LqILIssQ  

• Consistency is key to YouTube and its algorithm. Like I mentioned in my Things to Know before You Start a YouTube Channel (blog post & video) having an uploading schedule can benefit you sooooo freaking much. So, right now my uploading schedule is every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday that's when I will post a new video. I’m still figuring out the best times to post so I don’t have a “time” per say but I do try and upload 3 times a week. When you’re just starting out I would just start posting once a week on a certain day for a month, see how that goes, if you feel like you’re not getting a lot of views- give it time. Your audience and the algorithm will get used to you uploading on that day. But in order to gain more attention to your channel you do need to be consistent. That being said you don’t have to post a new video every week or every day, you could just post 1 or 2 videos a month, just know that your rate of growth is going to be a little slower than someone who is posting once a week or more.
•   Prompting your audience in your videos is so major. At the beginning of every one of my videos I say the same thing, (Hello everyone welcome back to my channel, and if it's your first time seeing my face then hello my name is Emily Burton & I'm so happy to meet you, I hope you'll stick around by clicking that big red button down below and subscribe to my channel)  when you do this in your videos this kind of lights a fire in your viewers mind like “oh yeah, I like this video I want to see more, I should subscribe or hey let me comment and tell them what I think” you know? It’s like a quick reminder that you should totally subscribe or at least show me some love because I worked hard on this, dangit!
• Trends. You know, I have always been like 3 steps behind every single trend my whole entire life, so this one is still tough for me. Try to stay on top of trends you see going around YouTube. Like the “I tried following ____ makeup tutorial” or “Copying ____ Instagram for a week” or even the most recent “Japanese foil ball” – I am not making a video on that lol I just don’t feel drawn to it…just saying. Trends are something that a good majority or people are interested in in this very moment, and if you can jump on the trend wagon then you’re going to attract a lot more attention to your channel and videos.
• Make sure to Engage with your community! I think it's best practice to actually take the time and reply to comments, like & heart comments, just have a little conversation with your audience! These people are coming to your channel and taking the time to tell you what’s up and what’s good, so I think it’s super important to let them know that you’re grateful for them and their time.
• Tags! Tags are the hashtags of YouTube. When you tag your video you want to make sure you are tagging everything relevant to your video and maybe even channel. YouTube is a search engine and by tagging what your video is about is going to help the SEO figure out where to put your video in search… does that make since? Also along with tagging, you want to be sure and title your video with a good title, and add your title to the description box too, think of it this way… your video could be about you showing us the best way to vacuum the floor, but you just title & tag your video “vacuuming” and  don’t put anything in the description box- then the search engine isn’t going to pick up what you’re putting down. Essentially it’s just going to add you to the longgggg list of vacuuming videos that are out there, therefore making it harder for your video to actually show up in search, and it's hurting your chances at vies. So basically, have a catchy title, have your title in the description box along with other key words, and tag your video like crazy, but keep it relevant.
•  Thumbnails are so important! Think about getting on Netflix trying to find a new movie to watch, if the thumbnail of the movies don’t match the movie, or like a fire in your eye then your more than likely not going to click on that movie and watch it… having a good thumbnail on YouTube works the same way. Personally, I use the same 2 fonts on my thumbnails and also try to keep the color scheme the same. Sure if you just have the automatically generated thumbnail that YouTube gives you, you will still get views I’m sure of it… but science shows that colors and stuff (that sounded so professional & stuff) can draw more attention to something, so think about that when you are creating thumbnails, or just do whatever is aesthetically is pleasing to your eye!
• Promote Promote Promote!! Use your social media y’all! Tell your mama, tell your daddy, tell your 4^th cousin twice removed to go watch your videos. Go on your Facebook and share your video- not just Facebook but everywhere! Again more on this in another video (or blog post) in this series, but this is so important. How do think you are ever going to gain traction to your channel if you don’t believe in yourself enough to share your creation? Like let me know you just posted a new video, I’m supportive and will love watching your magical creation even if it’s a video of you vacuuming your floor. (why do I keep going to that?) Even if you barely believe in yourself then still muster up the courage and start shouting from the roof tops. (P.S. you should believe in yourself because you're effing awesome... just saying)
• Don’t compare yourself… this can be detrimental to your inspiration to keep on creating. Trust me, I have worked my little bitty butt off to get to where I am right now, and the skies the limit, but if I were to just give up because I don’t have as many subs as so and so then that would be so stupid… so and so started with as many subs as you and I did 0- just remember that.

I'm not saying I know absoultly everything there is to know about YouTube but I have taken the time to study it and how it works- I've still got a TON of learning to do. I wanted to create this series to help out other small youtuber's like myself and honestly if you have any questions don't be afraid to ask.

Till next time,

-Em