YouTube has certainly transformed itself into a multimedia juggernaut where millions of content are consumed every day. It certainly has grown a lot from relative anonymity in 2005 to the content powerhouse it is today.  Now owned by Google, its influence has only grown even more and has definitely become a platform where everyone can share content, gain plenty of followers, and achieve online success.

Many people, as well as small and big businesses, have enjoyed success by sharing content on YouTube. How did they do this, you ask? Well, there really is no secret formula for making sure you are successful on the video-sharing platform. But there is a way to ensure that you are on the path to success.

In this article, we’ll talk about the best practices that you can follow to improve your chances of enjoying success on YouTube.

But first…

Clearly Define What You Mean by Success

Success can mean different things for different people. For some, achieving success could mean simply being able to gain a significant amount of followers on their channel. For others, it could mean earning a lot of money from their content.

Whatever definition of success you may have, you must clearly define it and set it as a goal that you must strive to achieve. This will dictate what type of videos you will create as well as identify your target audience.

 

Make a commitment to posting multiple times a week.

When trying to build an audience on YouTube, keep a regular schedule of multiple posts per week in order to raise your channel in YouTube’s algorithm. Studies have shown that those who post videos twice or thrice a week perform much better than those who post just a video a week. In fact, some reports show that posting a video three or more times a week helps channels in getting more recommended views.

 

Make your video production schedule sustainable.

Your videos might be better than Game of Thrones in terms of production value, but if each video takes you half a year to produce, then these videos are simply not worth producing as a way to grow your YouTube channel. Keeping a regular schedule of uploads at multiple times a week can certainly bring people back for more. Choose content that you can develop on a regular basis and figure out ways that can streamline production, such as creating a template, setting up a studio, or hiring an entire production team.

 

Use video thumbnails that makes your audience want to click.

Thumbnails are a very important component for YouTube videos because they pique the interest of your audience. Aside from the video title, thumbnails are the first thing they see. That is especially true for suggested videos, which is a leading source of organic traffic on YouTube. This acts as an endorsement from YouTube wherein they display your video as a suggestion to a video they might like. For this reason, your thumbnails need to stand out and immediately catch people’s attention.

 

Don’t be afraid to collaborate.

A good way to achieve plenty of views and channel followers in a relatively short time is by collaborating with other people within the community – especially if they have more subscribers. You can leverage a skill you have that others don’t and ask them for a collaboration on their channel. For instance, if you’re good at animation, you can do some animations for their channel in exchange for a mention in their video and a link to your channel.

 

Always include a call-to-action.

Depending on the type of content you are producing and the goal for your channel, it is very important to add a call to action in order to tell your audience what you want them to do. For instance, you may want them to visit your site, or visit the site of a partner. You may want them to make a purchase or check out another video on your channel. Whatever it is, your CTA tells them to do just that. There are many ways to accomplish this. You can add annotations to the video, add your CTA to the video description, or embed the CTA on the video itself. Also, don’t forget to add a portion to your video that asks them to subscribe to your channel.

 

Create a series or produce content with a similar theme.

Your video watch time can be increased when you encourage your audience to binge watch your videos. And nothing encourages binge watching more than creating series playlists. These can be videos with a similar theme or a continuous story that you can tell in multiple videos. Many successful YouTube channels have done this and have experienced great success, many of which run multiple series – each with their own subject matter to discuss and a similar thumbnail theme.

Things to Avoid

 

Clickbait

Clickbait is generally frowned upon due to its deceptive nature. Titles like “You won’t believe what scientists just dug up” or “10 things you shouldn’t do at home. #5 will shock you” won’t really help you gain more followers. No matter how engaging your content really is, if the first thing that people see is clickbait, it will only end up hurting your reputation.

 

Excessively Long Title Sequences and Opening Credits

Because everything is readily-available and on-demand, the acceptable time for waiting has decreased immensely. This created a generation where attention spans have become short. When you create videos with long title sequences or opening credits, one of two things can happen: people can get so bored with the entire sequence that they will skip to where the real content starts, wasting all that time that went into creating the sequence, or people will lose interest and just skip the entire video.

 

Distractions

Keep your videos engaging by editing out distractions such as long pauses, frequent out-of-topic talk, or being boring. This gives your audience reasons to look at other suggested videos and click away from your videos. There are two ways you can do this. You can either try really, really hard not to commit any of the mistakes stated earlier, or you can just edit them out using an advanced video editor.