YOUTUBE CHANNEL GROWTH

So… Let’s Answer These Questions!
When it comes to a successful upswing in YouTube Channel Growth, launching a YouTube channel is when an audience analysis typically happens. You identify which audience fits with the mission, brand, and content strategy. After a channel has been up and running, it’s valuable to assess whether the actual audience matches the target audience. 

Collect and analyze that data. You may need to measure several dimensions to validate. Look at the overall number of subscribers gained, then use the multi-line view to identify watch time impact by video.

Identify if a change is needed and implement solutions based on the analysis. Your implementation plan typically would reflect which improvements can yield the best possible results. If your latest video series is gaining fewer subscribers, check the verbal and visual calls to action. You can also review comments to gauge how well your audience likes the content. A clearly defined mission and consistent branding are key to establishing a channel identity. By aligning the mission and brand, you can be more confident that the channel appeals to its audience by providing a harmonious experience.

While mission statements vary in style, you can check yours against these recommendations:

• Describe the channel’s value proposition
• Summarize the content themes
• Identify the target audience
• Tell your channel’s story about its mission and brand through its channel trailer and channel description (About tab). When a channel reaches 100,000 subscribers, it can submit a request to YouTube for a verification badge

Assess Content Strategy
People usually come to YouTube to be entertained, educated, or inspired. Content that targets viewer intentions can drive stronger audience engagement. Videos satisfying these needs are more likely to keep interest up.

Avoid Dips and Declines
Dips (red arrows) mean viewers are skipping over those parts of the video.
Eliminate or shorten elements that consistently result in dips and declines.

A sudden drop (red arrow) means viewers are leaving the video within the first few seconds. This usually indicates the video didn’t match the viewers’ expectations. Ensure the title, thumbnail, and description reflect the content. If one type of content gets a higher percentage of dislikes than others, consider whether it covers a controversial topic or diverges from the usual topics featured on the channel. Comments can help you figure out subjects that appeal to the audience so that the channel can create more videos on those subjects. 

You can even drill deeper into interesting sources of traffic. For example, within YouTube search, you can look at the top 25 keywords that people search for to find your videos, which can help you to optimize video metadata for what viewers are searching for.

Subscribers are key to a YouTube channel’s growth success. They help drive views up on the first day of the upload, contributing to increased discovery by non-subscribers.

If the largest traffic source is external, that may present an opportunity for partnering with one of those websites to drive even more traffic to the channel. Also, when you see a large spike or drop in a traffic source, you can investigate the potential cause. Some channels enable optional tabs or buttons in their social media feeds to link to YouTube. YouTube uses video metadata (titles, tags, and descriptions) to index videos against viewer searches. By optimizing metadata, a channel can maximize its presence in YouTube search, promotion, suggested videos, and ad-serving.

To determine if a channel has effective metadata, you can evaluate whether:

• Video titles, tags, and descriptions accurately represent the content
• Video titles have the most important keywords in front so they’re not cut off
• Video tags are listed in order of relevance to the video
• Video descriptions are searchable and understandable

What is your YouTube Channel’s Growth Global Reach?
YouTube is available in 76 different languages, covering 95% of the Internet population. Overall, 80% of YouTube’s views are from outside the U.S. You can make it easier for international viewers to find a channel, and improve the viewing experience, with captions, subtitles, and translated metadata.

To evaluate your YouTube channel’s growth global reach, first, look at the Watch time report, then examine “watch time per country – share by viewers”. You can measure where views are coming from by country, comparing subscribers and non-subscribers. With this, identify countries where a channel can improve discovery.

Subtitles are translations of captions. They offer audiences who do not speak the same language as a video the option to read a translation of the words spoken. You can translate and write subtitles yourself or crowdsource them from your community by enabling “Community Contributions”.

With more than a billion users in 75+ languages, YouTube connects with one-third of global internet users and provides creators and advertisers opportunities to reach large-scale audiences. What’s more, individuals, media companies, and brands alike can own channels and create content for YouTube! High quality monetized content, engaged viewers, and high traffic help fuel the ecosystem with advertising dollars. Enabling monetization funds the channel owner and provides an opportunity for advertisers and brands to reach audiences with on-demand relevant content.

Channels also have the opportunity to earn revenue off YouTube by:

1. Selling merchandise and/or crowdfunding through approved third-party retailers. 
   1. • Learn more about selling merchandise here.
      • Learn more about crowdfunding here.
2. Getting paid sponsorships Learn more.
3. Collaborating with brands to produce branded content.

Note: Not all of these revenue streams are available in all countries. If you are being paid or compensated to create content, make sure you understand your disclosure requirements.

Advertisers target ad placement based on the audience demographics, the geographic location of viewers, and device viewers are watching on. Check the channel’s studio to see if the audience of your channel could match with potential brands (target audience behaviors and interests) and to see which ad formats are enabled on the devices your viewers are watching. 

Since advertisers can specify certain viewer demographics when they bid on an ad (e.g. age, gender, geography, content category). The demographic and behavioral attributes of a viewer can influence the ad serving model. The model checks to see if the ad type can display on the viewer’s device (some ads may not display on mobile), whether the video is embedded, if the viewer is a YouTube Premium subscriber, and if a viewer has just seen an ad.

I know this is a lot of information regarding YouTube channel growth, but we’re here for you! Any success stories? Comments? Questions? Please write them below. We want to know and we want to help you!