Here are some tips to set up a YouTube channel and increase your chances of success:
- Choose your core niche and stick with it.
- Add proper channel art and profile image.
- Add About page description and social links.
- Upload video content to YouTube with proper title, description, thumbnail and keyword tags.
- Stick to a content production schedule (if you can post video content daily, do daily. If you can post weekly, do weekly. I like posting at 11am every day, while prepping a day or two in advance).
- Blog the video on your website. The YouTube link should be embedded in the post AND added as a hyperlink in the post’s content.
- Share your direct YouTube video link on highly unique and relevant subreddits. This one is huge. Make sure you have permission here. ShamelessPlug, AdvertiseYourVideos and Videos are all great subreddits to start. You’ll get a few views to kickstart your day there.
- Share YouTube video to relevant Facebook Groups. Similar strategy to the subreddits. You could also upload the native video file here, because that will get you 10x the views.
- Create amazing content and look to improve your production quality each week. Little things like audio and lighting go a long way.
- Look at common trends for successful videos in your channel and competitor channels. Replicate those in unique ways.
- Set up playlists for autoplay views across your channel. This is binge-watching gold. I love playlists for rapid view increases.
- Add main keywords in content title, description and tag. SEO gold for your long-term success.
- Description content should be 150 words or more. This lets YouTube know you’re serious, and the algorithm gods will love you more.
- Relevant tags added. If they’re not relevant to the video, you will be penalized. Sometimes less is actually more here.
- Quality microphone for audio. Anything is better than the one built into your phone. Audio is even more important than video quality these days, as podcasting is exploding.
- Audio extraction for podcasting. To get even more eyeballs and fans, I extract the M4A file from my YouTube video and add it to my WordPress post using the free PowerPress plugin. That automatically gets added to all the major podcasting platforms, with very little additional effort. If someone finds you via podcasts, they can go right to your blog post and watch the video.
- 2,000+ original words written in your blog post with embedded video for better chances at being ranked on the first page of Google. You could definitely get away with less and still be indexed (it just won’t compete with the top 10).