How YouTube Can Grow Your Brand

1. Make sure to use eye-catching thumbnails and channel art

Make an impression with your channel art and thumbnails!

A thumbnail that is effective and clear should be in sync with the video’s title. It must also stand out.

When browsing through search results, thumbnails are how viewers choose what video to view. You don’t need to just communicate the message of your video. It is important to be different from your competition.

The competition is… loud.

You can look at what others are doing and then try to do something different. You can choose a different color palette or go minimalist to stand out from a sea of Impact fonts and neon colors.

2. Select the ideal channel icon

Channel icons are like a logo for YouTube. It should be consistent with your brand and compliment your channel banner.

When picking an icon, follow YouTube’s recommended image dimensions to avoid any stretching. Check your channel on multiple devices so you can see how it looks.

YouTuber J.J. McCullough uses a cartoon caricature of himself as his logo to represent both his art and his personality.

3. Make playlists

You can keep your viewers on your page by organizing and creating YouTube video playlists.

YouTube playlists not only organize related content in a neat and tidy list but they also auto-play. One video ends and the next one begins… This reduces the chance that viewers will switch channels.

Financial counsellor Max Mitchell, for instance, adds all of his TFSA videos to one playlist, so viewers can just sit back and learn about tax-free savings accounts for hours on end.

4. Create a channel trailer

When someone first comes across your channel, a channel trailer is a way for them to get a sneak peek at your content. Make it count.

You can make your audience want more, just like Hollywood’s hotshots do to get them hooked on Avengers Tokyo Drift.

Consider the viewer to be a complete stranger. Introduce yourself and explain why you should subscribe. Keep it short, sweet and snappy: let ’em know what your content is like and when they can expect new uploads, like Yoga with Adriene does on her channel.

5. Consistently create great content

Although it may sound obvious, viewers want to see good videos. Check out https://getfans.io for more information.

However, YouTube videos are different from those that would be shown at a foreign film festival.

According to Search Engine Journal, successful YouTube videos have attention-grabbing intros and great branding, background music, and clear audio.

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It is important to include calls to action. The right CTA can make it happen, whether your goal is to increase your subscribers, drive traffic to your website or start a conversation in comments.

There is no one formula that will make a YouTube video a success. While some brands are successful with polished, high-quality content, others thrive by being authentic, raw, and unfiltered.

Vanity Fair’s YouTube channel is an inspiring one. This goes beyond what you might see in the magazine’s profiles. It features videos of actors sharing their daily lives or taking lie detector tests.

6. Your videos will have the best chance of making it big if you post them when people are online and available to view them.

You can see if there is a particular day or time of week that has high viewership and engagement in your channel analytics.

With the help of scheduling tools such as Hootsuite, you can start publishing regularly once you have that information.

7. Understand your audience

It’s hard to make compelling content if you don’t know who you’re making it for, so make sure you’ve got a good sense of your audience persona before you dive in.

Who are they? What are they interested in? (Why don’t they call you?!)

Once you’ve got a few videos under your belt, see whether or not you’re hitting the mark by diving into your YouTube Analytics. You will find out if your art is having an impact by looking at the numbers.

8. Try YouTube advertising

Promo campaigns are a great way to get the attention you need with organic content.

These are the four categories that YouTube ads can be found in:

• Skippable ads in-stream
• Non-skippable in-stream ads (including bumper ads)
• Video discovery ads (previously known as indisplay ads).
• Non-video ads (e.g. overlays and banners).
• For more info on YouTube’s ad formats and how to use them, check out our detailed guide to YouTube advertising.

9. Ask viewers to sign up

Subscribers get an email when you post a new video to your channel.

YouTubers large and small know that “Don’t forget about to subscribe” is their preferred sign-off.

Increasing your subscriber base is not an easy task. For that reason, we have a full guide on how to get more YouTube subscribers.

You can become a YouTube partner once you have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of video views per year. This will allow you to monetize your channel and register for YouTube Partner status. Learn more about YouTube’s Partner Programme here.

This is only the beginning of how to make a YouTube channel successful. You can read our blog post to learn more about how to increase views on YouTube and 23 smart ways to promote YouTube channels. Also, how to become a YouTube marketing expert.

Hootsuite makes it easy to upload, schedule and promote your YouTube channel, videos, across multiple social media networks, from one dashboard. Get it today for free.

Hootsuite helps you grow your YouTube channel quickly. You can easily moderate comments and schedule video.