This is why people aren’t subscribing to your YouTube channel.

A little constructive criticism and food for thought. I’ve been in several groups on Facebook, SEO Groups, Social Media Groups, YouTube Groups, Photography Groups, etc. In fact I even run some groups of my own, like Texas Photography Forum. And it seems to be very common for people to just join these groups groups and dump links to their videos or channels, and beg for likes and subscribers. And it gets them NOWHERE. I’ll start with a little background on myself, that way you’ll understand where I’m coming from.

I’ve been in social media since the days of Friendster and Myspace, and just about every social media network and video platform in between leading up until now. I do social media for a living, meaning I get paid to manage accounts for actual companies, to increase the brand awareness, exposure, followers, etc. Along with that I also do SEO, if you’re not familiar with that term and you’re trying to grow your YouTube channel, social media and overall web presence, then you need to do some homework and understand what SEO is. I’m not telling you that you have to become an expert in it, just at least have an idea of what it is and the basics around it. I’m also a photographer and videographer, beyond just my personal YouTube channel. And lastly I build websites for individuals, companies, etc. I’m giving you all these details so my comments come with a some merit.

If you join a group, don’t think of that group as a place to dump your links and gain likes or subscribers by begging and annoying people. Sure, you might get a handful of people that will do it, but it’s pointless. Why? Because if you don’t have good content to back that up, they won’t return and most likely, they will even unlike or unsubscribe. They only gave you the like or subscribe so you would subscribe to them in exchange. Once they’ve earned yours, they will often go back at a later time and unsubscribe.

Here’s a little internet marketing 101 for you. Everything runs on algorithms, EVERYTHING! And if you want to be successful, you have to learn how those algorithms work, and then structure your content to be friendly with those algorithms. Have I lost you yet? If so, I’ll break it down a little more. Find someone that you follow or like and want to have a similar social presence to. Ok, got that part? Now look at their content, look at the view counts, the thumbnails, the comments in the videos, and so on. Now you have to begin to reverse engineer that process. Meaning, what is it about this piece of content that stood out to make it more successful than another piece of content. Sometimes it the timing of when you post it. Other times it’s might be something that is trending, but most often, it’s the initial visuals followed by the content.

In my opinion, and you are welcome to disagree, the absolute most important thing is GOOD content. Whether it’s a written BLOG, a video, or an image. Since this BLOG is primarily focused on YouTube, I’m going to use that for my example. When you’re browsing through YouTube, typically the first thing that will catch your attention is an image, the actual thumbnail that represents the video. If you have a thumbnail that stands out and makes a statement, you will grab their attention. Following that, you need a good title for your video. When making your titles, think to yourself, “what might someone type in the search bar to find a video like mine”? Then structure the title of your video around that. And if you have GOOD content to follow up with that, meaning have a nice video, then you will get the subscribers, you will get the comments and you will get the likes, ORGANICALLY. Yes, you should still share them to social media, and ask friends and family to check out your work, but do so in doses. Post one thing to Facebook, and maybe another to Twitter, and a different one to Instagram and so on. Space it out, and make sure you think out the process of where you share it. For instance, if your videos are about cars, find some car groups, join those groups and post there. But again, don’t “beg” for the likes and views. Instead of saying this “go check out my video and like it and subscribe to my channel”, say something like this “I just made a new video about Nissan GTR’s and I think you’ll like it. If you have a few minutes, check it out and let me know what you think”. If you do this, you are more likely to get views, if they like your video, they will subscribe without having to be asked in your initial post. They are also likely to come back to that Facebook post and say something like, “I really liked your video, nice work” or “I liked the video but maybe next time you should include more POV shots” or “Cool video, let me know when you post another one”. You get the idea, if other people see the positive comments, they will be more likely to go check out the video too. Thus creating more comments, and the cycle continues. Keep in mind that in your own videos, you should certainly ask people to subscribe and like, because that it the correct time and place to do it. You can either do it in the intro of your video, somewhere in the middle, or in the outro. If the video is pretty long, you can even do it more than once, but just be mindful of how you do it so it doesn’t come across as annoying or desperate.

Once you start getting views, likes and subscribers, you really need to pay close attention to your video and channel analytics. While subscriber counts and views are an important piece to the puzzle, an even bigger part is view time in minutes. Let’s say you make a video that is 10 minutes long. You take the proper steps in sharing that video, and you start to see the views come in but don’t see much interaction or likes. You need to take a look at how LONG people are viewing your videos. If they come to the video and drop out about 1 minute or 2 minutes into the video, the algorithms are going to make note of this and start suggesting your video less. What YOU need to do is figure out where you went wrong in those first 1-2 minutes that you didn’t hold their attention to keep watching. On the flip side of that, if your video is being watched in full length, or close to it, then the algorithms will take note of that and your video will be suggested even more. What YOU should do then is analyze that video and try to determine what made it more successful. Was it the places you shared it to? Was it the subject that your content was focused around? If so, then it might be a good idea to do another video on that same subject. In your YouTube analytics, you can also see what search terms people used within YouTube to find your video, this should help you to fine tune your video titles. And lastly to wrap this up, YouTube recently introduced hashtags. However, they limit your to only 3 per video, so think long and hard about what hashtags to use, again, reverse engineer it, think “what are some other videos on YouTube like mine?” and then use a hashtag that might lead them to your video. NOTE: when using hashtags in YouTube, you have to put them in the video description area and they have to be the LAST thing in that section. If you need to get an idea of where to put them, feel free to check out my YouTube Channel and click on ANY of my videos, then click the description area, and scroll all the way to the bottom and you should see them there.

I’m always trying to grow my own social media, websites and YouTube, but I’m also here to help everyone around me grow as well. So if you ever have any questions, feel free to ask. You can do so in the comments of this BLOG post, at the bottom, you just have to be logged into Facebook to leave a comment. Or if I’ve posted this to a Facebook group, you can ask me in the comments there too.

Best of luck to you all!! Now go create some amazing content!!

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