YouTube in five simple steps

There's a good reason why YouTube is the leading online video platform, especially for businesses.

It's easy to use, it allows maximum search engine exposure and the audience is readily available.

In fact, YouTube has over a billion registered users, which means it's clearly a great way to build a business, maximise reach and develop an outstanding brand.

But we don't have to tell you about the incredible possibilities of creating a YouTube channel. You probably already know that. What you might not know is exactly how to get started.

This includes things like:

⦁ How to choose a theme for your channel.

⦁ How to create an effective brand for your channel.

⦁ How to optimise your channel for maximum exposure.

⦁ How to choose the best content formats for your channel.

⦁ How to grow your subscriber base.

Well, you won't be left wondering anymore because all of this is covered in this special report: YouTube in 5 easy steps.

We'll walk you through all the important elements of creating a winning channel.

From how to set up your channel so it's designed to attract the most loyal subscribers, to how to plan and produce the highest quality content possible, we've got you covered.

Let's get started!

1 - Channel Focus

When it comes to setting up your YouTube account, there are plenty of tutorials online that will walk you through the actual sign-up process, so we won't cover that in this report.

Instead, we'll start by talking about what really matters: the focus of your channel.

The truth is that laying the groundwork for your channel from the beginning is key to its success. In fact, the one thing that often separates successful channels from failures is careful planning.

First, you need to make sure you have decided on a main theme for your channel. Creating a strong theme will make it easier for you to grow your audience.

And while you're not stuck creating content for a single niche, when you're just starting out, it's always better to focus on a specific topic rather than trying to cater to multiple audiences.

You can scale your business later on by creating additional content that will appeal to other segments of your market.

The key is to create a channel that is focused and delivers content that is relevant to a core niche.

So start by jotting down ideas and notes on the type of content you want to create.

Research your market to better understand what type of information they are looking for, what style of content and general tone is most likely to appeal to them and what you can do differently to other channels in your market.

Very often, the most successful channels are built around the topics you are personally interested in and passionate about. And, of course, you want to link your content to your existing products, websites or blogs.

The idea is to create a seamless brand where you are visible on all major platforms, so connecting your YouTube channel with a blog that offers a text-based component will reach a wider audience and help you maximise exposure.

If you're not sure what your channel will be about, you'll want to spend some time figuring it out before moving forward. Again, this goes back to researching your market so you can find areas that lack content.

Filling a need in your niche with content that is in demand but not widely available will be the easiest way to launch your channel with little marketing needed.

If you need additional help finding a focus and topic, here are some popular topics that are used on many successful YouTube channels:

Procedures / Tutorials / DYI:

These channels are always popular because they teach specific skills. Whether your channel provides tutorials for things like software, marketing, website creation or making money, OR if you create content based on home improvement, interior design or saving money with renovations, this type of channel is always in demand.

The best of the clips:

Think of these videos as summaries of popular videos. You could include content such as "Funniest Home Videos" or "Top 10 Vacation Spots". The possibilities are endless. Just make sure you don't infringe on anyone's content and that you have the right to include video segments.

Travel channels:

People are always looking for reviews of vacation spots and what kind of activities are available in these areas. You can easily monetise a travel channel with sponsorships later on, once your audience grows.

Technical videos:

Always a popular topic, tech videos simplify technology. You can feature reviews of products such as computers, mobile devices and other gadgets or cover tech news.

Elaboration:

These channels cover everything from creating crafts, selling crafts and everything in between. Many of the popular channels teach people how to create handmade crafts, but there are dozens of ever-growing channels that show people how to create digital products to sell on sites like Etsy or Shopify.

There are many other channel topics that are in demand and profitable, including gaming channels, podcast-style channels, storytelling videos, health and fitness channels, cooking channels and even channels dedicated to exposing online scams.

The idea is to research your market, analyse the top 10 YouTube channels in your niche and create a plan for your channel before you even start creating content. That way, you will have a clear plan that will guide you with a clear direction and a strong focus.

Regarding channel names:

If you have not yet decided on a name for your channel, you will need to consider it very carefully. Your name represents your brand, your business and tells potential subscribers what to expect from your channel.

This means you don't want to choose something generic or vague that people won't instantly associate with a topic.

While there are countless examples of successful Vloggers who created a channel under their personal name, it is often much easier to launch a channel and connect with your target audience if you choose a channel name that represents the type of content you will be offering. In other words, your topic.

This means that you should first make sure you understand your market and what type of content they would be interested in.

Creating a successful YouTube channel requires a strong focus on specific content formats. Creating a random channel that tries to be everything to everyone will make it difficult, if not impossible, to build a recognisable brand and stand out.

Instead, you want your content to be geared towards a core niche. At least when you're just starting out.

Again, while you are not restricted to creating content in one niche, by deciding to focus the initial phase of your channel on one segment of your market, you will be able to launch faster, grow a following more easily, and solidify your brand. .

In addition, it will be easier to create a content plan and schedule if you take a laser-focused approach to launching your channel.

Tip: You also want to make sure that the name you choose has an available or closely related domain. You'll want to register that domain in advance, even before you launch your channel.

Purchasing the domain and username on all of the popular social media platforms will help you protect your business because it gives you full control of your brand. Plus, it's a great place to sell merchandising later on.

2 - Create a keyword strategy

Keywords help people find your channel. They serve as signals in the major search engines that will connect your audience with the content they are looking for.

In fact, just optimising your channel to include relevant and highly targeted keywords may be all you need to do to generate traffic, especially if your content is aimed at a hungry market.

This means you'll want to add relevant keywords in the "About" section of your channel.

Doing this will help you rank organically in search engines and ensure that your channel comes up when someone enters search terms directly into the YouTube search bar.

You'll find the About section here: https://www.youtube.com/advanced_settings

Try to find 10-15 relevant, long-tail keywords that best describe your content.

You can use these in different areas of your channel as well as within the description of each video.

You'll also want to optimise your video descriptions to target both your audience and search engines. This means that instead of writing a long description for each video, focus on including your main keywords at the beginning of the text, but make sure they read smoothly.

You don't want to place keywords where a subscriber reads your description and it doesn't make any sense to them.

Your most important keywords should always appear in the first line of your description; otherwise, it will be truncated with a "Show more" link, but again, make sure your description isn't just a series of keywords; it should provide your audience with important information about your content.

In addition, you'll also want to include relevant keywords in your video titles, especially your focus keyword (the main keyword you hope to rank for).

Keep your video titles short and focused on engagement. You want them to be exciting and grab attention right away.

Always take every opportunity to include keywords in your content. Also, vary the keywords used so that you can rank for a variety of long tail keyword phrases.

Here are some ways to take advantage of YouTube's free keyword tools:

HyperSuggest: https://www.hypersuggest.com/

There is a free version of this keyword tool that will allow you to search by country and at the same time provide important data such as potential search volume.

WordTracker: https://www.wordtracker.com/

This tool will provide search volume, overall competition and other information to help you optimise your channel, such as the number of times keywords appear in the anchor and title of popular YouTube channels.

This tool makes it easy to discover relevant, high-traffic keywords while being able to reverse engineer popular channels in your niche.

And finally, you'll want to create a secondary keyword list that focuses on tags.

Tags work in exactly the same way as keywords, so they will become a very important part of your channel.

Unfortunately, tags don't show up by default in video descriptions, so you won't be able to discover them just by searching for popular videos in your niche. However, there are a handful of free tools that will solve this problem.

These include:

TubeBuddy:

https://www.tubebuddy.com/

YouTube Tags: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tags-for-youtube/dggphokdgjikekfiakjcpidcclbmkfga?hl=en-US

Once you install these Chrome plugins, every time you visit a YouTube channel and check the description, you will be able to see what tags the creator is using. This spying tactic is invaluable because it will show you exactly what others are successfully using.

And while tags are not the only way to optimise your videos and overall channel, they are important when it comes to telling YouTube and Google search what your video is about.

Tags will also help your videos show up in search as well as in related video views.

3 - Brand dominance

We've talked about the importance of choosing a theme for your channel, but now it's time to connect that theme with your brand.

Branded videos always outperform unbranded videos and there's a good reason for that: people start to recognise your content just because your brand is prominent and memorable. They will share your content with others (if it is entertaining) and, in turn, your brand will get even more exposure.

This includes creating prominent channel artwork. Consider hiring a professional designer to create a logo, banner and thumbnail templates that you can reuse.

You will find qualified designers on websites such as https://www.Upwork.com and https://99designs.com.

What you are looking to do is to highlight your brand in as many ways as possible. You should choose a main colour scheme or design style and stick to it. Always look for ways to include your logo or other brand identifier in your videos and other content. The more often people see it, the quicker they will start to recognise it.

If you have a great slogan, you should include it in your artwork. If you produce a lot of videos (a new video every week, or every other day, for example), include it in your channel banner so people know what to expect.

Remember that YouTube can be viewed on many devices, from a smartphone to a TV. On a larger TV screen, the channel artwork will appear in the background, behind your content. On a desktop computer or mobile device, the channel artwork appears as a banner on top of the content.

You can also create your channel artwork from scratch if you're on a tight budget with a free image maker like Canva. This free tool includes ready-to-use YouTube templates that you can quickly and easily customise for your channel.

Link: https://www.Canva.com

Important note: When designing your channel artwork, keep in mind the "safe area" in the centre of the template. This is the area that will be displayed on almost all devices. You want to keep your text and graphics within that area.

Make sure that any important information, such as your website URL, slogans and images, are within this space so that they will display on the device and not be cut off or covered up.

Another thing to think about is link text. YouTube allows you to display links to your channel; they are displayed in the bottom right hand corner at the top of your channel design. Make sure you don't have any important text, logos or images in that area of your artwork.

Pro tip: You can also create a hat, mug or t-shirt with your channel logo and include it in each video. The more you can highlight your brand throughout your content, the better.

Then, as your channel grows in popularity, you can sell these items to your subscribers who want to support your business.

It's easy to create custom merchandising at places like: https://www.Printful.com or https://www.RedBubble.com.

4 - Creating share-worthy content

Your first video probably won't be everything you hoped for. That's okay, practice makes perfect! The more you create content, the quicker and easier it will become and the quality will improve, as will your skills.

What you want to do is practice creating and uploading videos until you become familiar and comfortable with how the platform works.

Watch a lot of videos in your market and see what channel owners offer. Pay attention to their overall format and structure, along with their pacing - take lots of notes!

Then create a content schedule and stick to it.

and upload them (you don't have to publish everything you upload). The more you practice, the better you'll get, just like any other skill you've learned.

The post-production process is also very important, especially when it comes to creating engaging content without lag or poor pacing.

The main thing to pay attention to during the editing process is to eliminate unnecessary pauses and delays and to make sure you keep a steady pace so that your content flows smoothly and keeps viewers' attention.

You can also save a lot of money by learning how to edit your own videos. Popular vloggers like Jake Paul and Felix Kjellberg use Adobe Premiere to edit their videos. You'll pay just over $20 a month to use it, but it's very intuitive and comes with everything you need to get started.

You can check it out here: https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html

If you want to follow the example of popular vlogger Casey Neistat, you can use the Final Cut Pro application.

Final Cut Pro is easier to use than Adobe Premiere and comes packed with useful features that will help you create amazing videos.

It also includes excellent organisational tools that will make project planning easier.

Free editing software is also available, including iMovie, which has a minimal learning curve and comes pre-installed on Mac-based operating systems.

It's a great tool to get started and will help you learn the basics of video editing quickly and easily.

YouTube is not a difficult platform to learn. In fact, its popularity is mainly due to its ease of use. You can upload videos in a variety of formats and YouTube converts them to Adobe Flash for you (this gives it a file extension of .FLV).

Doing this allows YouTube to play your videos in its flash player (which anyone can upload and use for free).

Another great benefit of this is that you can embed your video on a website by simply copying the HTML code and pasting it into your site. This allows any of your website visitors to view the video on your site using the YouTube player.

This way, you don't have to host the videos on your own site and use a ton of bandwidth.

Bandwidth is the range of signal frequencies you need to transmit data over the Internet, and you have to pay for what you use - let YouTube carry the bandwidth load for you!

Of course, most people will probably find your video by searching for relevant content on Google or YouTube. To help connect viewers with the videos they are looking for, YouTube uses a complex algorithm that is made up of over a million lines of code.

One of the main factors they use to determine which videos to show is the video metadata.

Metadata is the title, description, thumbnail and tags you give your video when you upload it. That means you need to make sure your tags are relevant to the content of the video (and match the keywords that viewers would use to search for your content).

YouTube also measures the quality of the video by measuring the amount of time it is being watched. If many viewers leave the channel before your video ends, this suggests that your video had a misleading title (or thumbnail), or that you didn't give viewers what they were looking for.

If they stay until the end, your video is likely to be appropriate for the search terms used, and will be given a higher ranking than videos that are left unfinished.

Tips: Spend some time watching videos from your favourite channels, especially from creators in your niche.

Pay attention to their overall style, how they create transitions, what their pacing and branding style is.

⦁ What kind of voice and tone do they take when creating videos?

⦁ Do they create head-talking type video content more often than other formats?

Take note! We mentioned this already, but it's important, especially when you do market research to create a plan for your own channel. You'll want to reflect on this later.

And finally, give yourself the freedom to make mistakes. You'll learn a lot along the way, and the type of video content you create today will probably look very different from what you create a year from now when you've had the time and experience.

The important thing is to be consistent, follow a content schedule that your subscribers trust and stay true to your brand.

5 - Build your subscriber base

When it comes to growing your audience, there are a few easy things you can do to give your channel the best chance of succeeding.

First, you'll want to constantly work to build a solid backend. This means the more video content you can post, the better.

Providing subscribers with a ton of content to consume will keep them on your channel longer and will work to ease the process of turning a visitor into a loyal subscriber.

So work on building your content library. This is why creating a content schedule is so important. Decide whether you plan to create a video a week, every two weeks or once a month; the choice is yours. But keep in mind that when you are in the early stages of creating a channel, you will need to spend more time and energy creating more content so that your audience has enough to interact with.

Therefore, consider spending a few weeks (maybe even months) creating content for your channel before publishing it. That way, you can provide enough information in advance to keep people engaged.

Tip: Subscribers prefer channels that provide new and current content on a regular basis. You can set yourself up for long-term success without feeling overwhelmed by creating content in batches and then building it up for future release.

That way, you can take breaks to reload while you still have new content to upload.

You should also include a direct call to action in both your video content and description. Don't be afraid to ask viewers to subscribe and turn on notifications for your channel. Not everyone will understand how YouTube works, so remind them to subscribe to receive notifications when new content is available.

Also, people like to support new channels, so if you ask them directly to subscribe, comment and like your video because it helps your channel grow, they are likely to do so.

You can also end your video with a question or request for comments. This will encourage people to leave comments which will tell YouTube that your channel is growing and should be shown more often. The more activity a channel has, the more often it will appear in search results.

You can also organise your channel content to help people find what they are looking for. Consider setting up playlist-style arrangements that organise your content by topic or style. Your subscribers will appreciate this and are likely to engage with a lot more content if they browse through your video playlists.

You should also be on the lookout for ways to network and cross-promote with other channel owners.

Give an acknowledgement to another channel or consider providing links in your video content to other channels - this will put you on the radar of established channels that may be open to networking!

Either way, look for opportunities to be invited on relevant channels.

This can be done in a variety of ways, including collaborating on a single video, two separate videos that are put together (where you create one part of the video and someone else creates another part), or creating content exclusively for another channel as a way to introduce your brand to your audience while giving the creator fresh content to post.

When it comes to reaching out to other channel creators for potential collaborations, you can easily connect with them through their social media accounts, by email or directly through their video or blog comments.

Just be careful when approaching channel owners so that you can highlight what's in it for them (free content, etc.).

Also, you should spend some time interacting with their content, follow their channel and study what they do.

That way, when you communicate with them, you can show them that you are familiar with their content and brand, and explain why you think a partnership would be mutually beneficial.

Conclusion

Creating a successful YouTube channel is not rocket science, but it does take time, commitment and focus. In the first few months, you will probably create more content than you will later on, to build your backend inventory and cultivate followers quickly.

Later on, you can back off and produce fewer videos with a longer shelf life.

So create a content schedule that you think you can deliver. Condition subscribers to expect content at certain times of the month, as it will keep them coming back.

Remember, YouTube play time is very important. The longer new viewers stay engaged with your content, the more likely they are to become subscribers, and when it comes to viewer retention, by analysing the data YouTube provides you with, you'll know for sure what content is among your top performing videos so you can create more!

Also, the longer a viewer stays engaged with your videos, the more likely they are to interact with them, subscribing, commenting and liking your content.

This is where playlists come into play. If you segment your content, especially after you have uploaded a large amount, you will be able to keep people glued to your channel for longer as they consume the different playlists available.

Finally, be sure to focus on optimisation as part of your weekly business plan. You want to make sure each title includes relevant keywords to increase visibility.

Remember to add keywords in the video descriptions, avoiding duplicates! Make space count.

And finally, always look for ways to create external (external) links. One of the easiest ways to do this is to automatically sync your YouTube channel with your other social media accounts, such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

That way, every time you post new content, it will automatically appear on all your social media profiles. These social signals are important when it comes to maximising exposure and growing a successful channel.

Here's to your success!