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Looking to boost your YouTube channel’s subscriber count? Follow these steps to reach (and retain) as many viewers as possible.
Say you just launched your own company, freelance website, or personal account. Great, now you’re ready to build a YouTube page — a daunting, strenuous process. Building a channel from scratch is one of the most challenging projects you can take on. It requires hours upon hours upon hours of work to build an audience. Whether you’re creating fun, daily life content or strictly using the platform to promote your business, there are right ways and wrong ways to establish yourself on the video-sharing site.
With so many creators already propelling the medium with each new upload, making a splash can be a difficult, seemingly impossible challenge. So let’s take a look at a few ways to kickstart your channel and get that subscriber count you’re looking for.
Understand Your Audience
Once you start uploading content to your channel, you’ll find out very quickly who subscribes to your content and who likes or dislikes it. This can be disheartening because the internet is brutal, especially if your videos are not up to the standards YouTube users create.
Whether you love it or hate it, the YouTube comments section is an incredible resource that you should never overlook. Yes, you’re going to see some truly terrible comments and get a peek into some of the darkest corners of the internet, but you shouldn’t disregard your audience. Often, the comments can be an excellent source of feedback; the like-to-dislike ratio is a good way to determine if a video worked or not.
But, the comments aren’t where the improvements will come from. If you’re in the business of pleasing fans and building a community around your brand identity, listen to the subscribers.
Build a Community
If you look at some of the best YouTubers and content creators, one of the few things they have in common is how they interact with their audiences. Don’t be afraid to comment back or tag other brands and people. Let people know there is a human behind your account. The whole point of creating a channel is to start a conversation and give people a reason to subscribe. People want engagement and communication; it’s how they feel validated.
Also, be smart about links in comments. Readers and viewers don’t want you to show you them where to go — they want to be there already. If you’re posting about a new video on Instagram, post the link in your bio, not the caption.
One way I’ve seen creators do this is to address their fans head-on. Let them know you’re reading the comments and appreciate their interactions. In your videos, don’t be afraid to use verbal calls-to-action. Let your viewers hear you tell them to “Smash that like button” because that is a valuable way of building your voice and pulling the community into your channel. If you interact enough with your audience, they’ll interact with each other, and soon you’ll see organic engagement and communication right before your eyes — in the comments section.