Ask any YouTuber and they will tell you that generating significant views and subscribers isn't easy. But with the right strategy and tools, any video creator can build an engaged subscriber base when they understand what those subscribers want to watch.

Appealing to an audience to watch content you are passionate about making is just the first step, you need to know how to reach them and get your videos discovered. Our guides to how to guide more views on YouTube will give you the best tips to succeed on the platform.

How To Get More Views on YouTube

Do you want to make money on YouTube? Millions of creators are earning a very good living from the platform by uploading content that drives huge views and engagements. Whether that income is from advertising revenue, merch sales, or brand deals, we keep you updated with best practises and ideas.

How To Make Money on YouTube

Do you know how to do keyword research so you understand what videos people are actually searching for on YouTube? Do you know how to create a custom YouTube thumbnail? Do you know how to create a Playlist on YouTube?

vidIQ has a ton of tips that will help every creator maximise their video content. We publish content every week to keep you up to date with all the best practices.

YouTube Tips & Tricks

If you’ve put off creating your own YouTube channel because you’re overwhelmed with the choices you need to make or are panicking because you feel you lack the right skills to succeed, worry no more and welcome to the only resource you’ll need to fulfill your video creator dreams.

If this is your first time here, we have a 

 that aims to educate you on your YouTube journey. And if it is your plan to grow your channel, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, and click on our notification bell so you don't miss any of our latest tips, tricks, advice, and news.

How to Start Your YouTube Channel: 10 Top Tips

We promised 20 tips to kickstart your YouTube channel, so let's start delivering on that promise with 10 tips in this post and 10 tips in the 

. All the tips are covered in this video too:

So amazingly, there are still some people out there who are thinking of starting a YouTube channel and have been for months, possibly even years. My advice to you is, ready or not, start now. And I'm not telling you this as a New Year's resolution. Every moment you hesitate or procrastinate, there are thousands of video creators starting their YouTube channel today, and gobbling up all your potential audience. You don't want that.

Feel the fear, do it anyway. Start, press record. Record whatever you want today. It doesn't matter if it doesn't end up on YouTube. You need to gain experience in getting in front of the camera, getting behind the camera, using your editing program. You need to start creating content to find out whether or not you enjoy making videos before you know whether or not you enjoy being a YouTuber.

Tip #2 Learn How YouTube Works, No Seriously:

The chances are, that the first video you make is going to absolutely suck. Fantastic, you've made a video. You've made the first step, and in six months’ time, you'll look back at that first video and think yeah, that really was terrible, but you've gotta start the journey somewhere. And with that, you've gotta start your YouTube channel somewhere as well, even if you're not ready. Create a YouTube account, upload a video to YouTube. You don't have to publish it, that's the important thing.

You need to gain experience going through the workflow of uploading videos. The last thing you want is having a brilliant video ready to upload, but you don't know how the YouTube system works. Again, experience is going to trump any advice any of us can give you, so record a video, upload it to YouTube. You don't have to publish it.

Tip #3 Develop a Strategy you Will Actually Follow:

While getting some practical experience behind you is obviously a good thing, you also want some form of strategy. So, answer these questions:

What do you want your channel to achieve on YouTube

, and when you're answering this, try and answer it from a viewer's perspective, not your perspective. So I don't want to hear about hitting 10,000 subscribers, a million views, or whatever. If your viewers know that you're in it for your own self-gain, they will see through it and immediately switch off. Viewers want to know what they can gain from the content, and you want to sell that as much as possible in your videos.

 Again, try and be as specific as possible. What age range? What gender, if you are going to a particular gender? What type of demographic? What are they interested in? You need to know who's going to watch your content.

 There are millions of gaming channels out there, hundreds of thousands of Fortnite channels out there. How are you going to distinguish your content from everybody else who's already on YouTube making content? You need to disrupt the status quo, not join it, because you'll never be seen.

how are you going to deliver this content?

 Is it going to be every day, once a week, at a particular time of the day? Think about when your audience is most likely to watch YouTube, and how much YouTube they can watch per week, and then tailor your content to those watching habits, and think about whether you're going to do video on demand, live streams, what's going to be best for you and your audience?

Tip #4 Find Your Niche and Build the Hell Out of It:

live streams, you'll know this one off by heart. Niche down. Let me give you a quick example. What's your channel about? If you're giving an answer such as, "My channel's about beauty, and it's about travel, "and it's about vlogging," then it's about too many things. 

. It should be about one specific topic, when you start your channel, because you need to appeal to a very specific audience.

Once you've grown your channel, and you've got millions of subscribers who fall in love with you, you can take them on a journey wherever you want, but to begin with, the audience is only interested in the content. They have no investment in you. Try and remember that. It's a cruel lesson to understand, but it will help you when you first start out on YouTube.

Once you've thought about and answered all of these questions, I want you to wrap it all up in a nice little present, called your value proposition. This is your elevator pitch. Try and tell your audience who you are, and why they should watch you, in around about six words.

. It tells you the who, YouTubers, video creators, and why they should watch, because they will learn how to grow their channels. But we've managed to do that in four words. Now it's your turn.

Tip #6 Invest in the Right Audio Equipment:

If you've just started out on YouTube, and you're wondering what your first tech upgrade should be, it is 100% audio, and here's why. Bad audio is so much more distracting than bad video, and everybody hates onboard microphones. 

So if you can, get yourself a dedicated microphone for your camera,

 and if you're recording from a computer, you can't go far wrong with a Blue Yeti.

Tip #7 Create a Formula with Template Videos:

Videos need structure, so when you make your next video, try to think of how you will develop a show formula, that you can use as a template for your future videos. Remember at the beginning of this video, I literally gave you a hook. An introduction, a teaser to what's going to be going on for the rest of this video. Then we have the branded intro, followed by an introduction to who we are for new viewers, a call to action to subscribe to our channel, and then we jumped into the meat of the content where we are right now, and at the end of this video, you'll see how we round this all up.

Your show formula will take time to structure, and it will evolve over the course of your YouTube journey. Try and keep an eye out for this when you watch your favorite YouTubers. As rough and as random as they might appear, there is always structure and story behind each video, and that's why you watch them.

Some people love analytics, others hate them, but there are a couple that are crucial to keep an eye on, whether or not you want to look at that analytics. The first is 

This represents how enticing your titles are, and how clickable your thumbnails are. Check the click-through rate for your channel as a whole, and on individual videos as you test. I'm not going to give you all of the same target to reach. Check what your current click-through rate is, and whether it's two, four, six, or eight percent. I want you to try and improve that by two to three percent this year. It will bring in so many more views.

The other metric, as it always has been, is 

. Generally speaking, the more watch time you get, the more YouTube is going to promote your content. But if you make shorter videos, that doesn't necessarily mean you must make longer videos, because your audience might not react very well to those longer videos.

What I will say is maximize the value of your watch time in the videos that you have. That's by looking at relative audience retention. How does your video stack up to similar videos, in terms of whether people are still watching or not, and try and improve the relative audience retention. Having said that, if your average view duration is 60, 70, 80%, you're doing really well, and it gives you a license to try testing longer videos.

Verify your YouTube account. That will give you access to the most important tool on YouTube, which is custom thumbnails. We've got a video here on how to do it.

Tip #10 Create an Engaging, Interesting Channel Banner:

If I see another generic cityscape, or rolling hills in the channel banner when we do channel audits, I'm going to rip out my hair.

10 more tips or creating and growing your YouTube channel

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Members of the vidIQ family that have upgraded to our Boost and Pro packages get immediate access to the Academy 

 so you can kickstart your YouTube success today! Access to the exclusive vidIQ academy will give you a huge advantage over your competitors from the get-go. 

Kick off your YouTube dreams with the tools you need to launch YOUR channel. We've got the top tips just for you!

How to Start a YouTube Channel: 10 Brilliant Tips

I didn’t think I’d be writing this post 7 days ago. But here we are, being thrown headfirst into a world we don't really understand, with millions of people currently self-isolating, under quarantine, under a potential shelter-in-place mandate, or being asked to work from home by their company because of the current health crisis. It’s an extraordinary and challenging time.

, there has been a significant and understandable uptick in people in the US searching for content around ‘working from home’ or ‘remote working’ over the past week.

vidIQ is a fully remote global company. We don’t have a central office and every member of the company works from home. I asked some of the team for tips about what works for them when it comes to staying motivated and productive. I hope you find them useful.

25 Working From Home Tips from the vidIQ Team

If you’re sharing a house with a partner, come up with your own boundaries. For instance: "If I’m in my office, I’m working," or "between 9am and 3 pm I’m working". Also, I make sure to communicate that if I can't chat, it's not personal, it just takes a long time to shift gears from work to personal.

Be more flexible with your time. I always set myself a 45-minute work chunk where I may break off for 5 minutes to empty the bin, or empty the dishwasher - something physical versus sitting at my desk. Oh and get a comfortable chair.

Get a good pair of Bluetooth headphones. Dishing out a little extra pocket change is worth it for quality audio and blocking out the noises of home when you need to focus on work.

 It might seem obvious but carve out your own space somewhere at home so you can leave it at the end of the working day. If you don't, the lines between work and personal time may become so blurred you end up adding more stress to an already difficult situation.

Carla Marshall, Head of Content Marketing

Use Slack, Asana, Google Doc, Notion to stay on top of your work. Create healthy boundaries between work and home life.

 *Keep a to-do list handy and give yourself deadlines for when to get specific tasks done. If your company doesn't already have a task system, an easy one to get started with is Google Tasks. This can be accessed on your phone or in your email's inbox. Discord is also a great tool for keeping in touch with friends and/or work colleagues. *

Destinate space to work in that's purely for work and when you're in the space, let everyone know not to bother you. Sometimes the best space in a busy home is inside a closet. Do whatever you can to stay focused and limit your interruptions. Another tip, don't do ANY housework when you are working from home, it'll distract you and interrupt your flow. When you're working from home, you work, when you're done working, go to town and clean your toilet seats!

 *Schedule time to check-in with your teammates weekly, either individually or as a group. You will be checking in on work reasons already, but use this time to check in as people. Since you are not in an office, organic conversations won't just happen, and those are important to stay connected as a team. *

Set a reminder to stand up and move. Also, try not to sit in front of the computer right after getting out of bed or you can be glued to it until lunchtime. Lastly, try not to sleep in the same room/area you work in.

Working from home is like working from the office (minus the commute of course). Set your alarm, get dressed, head to the "office" and get into the workday as you normally would. It’s also critical to take breaks and get up and away from your computer - go outside for a bit of fresh air so your brain can get that refresh.

Liron Segev, Director of Customer Success

I don't strictly stick to a 9-5 schedule. I often have long lunches (partly because I need to take Jasper, my dog, for a walk), but I'll make that up and more by working later or starting earlier. When my commute involves 5 steps, I am happy to work when I am motivated, fresh and buzzing with ideas whatever time of day it is.

 *I won’t move my laptop from my desk. I noticed when I would work from my bed or couch, it was easy to get distracted. I know when I am at my desk it is work time. It can be difficult to push yourself to get ready for the day when working remote. However, I tell myself "no coffee" until I shower and get dressed and that motivates me because I cannot do without coffee. Plus the shower helps wake me up. *

 *If you are new to working from home, try to set up a routine that "switches" you from non-working mode to working mode. It might be wearing a more formal set of clothes, leaving the apartment for a brief walk (to simulate "going to the office"), or something like that. This will help you re-orient your brain and help you get into the working mood; when the work is done, it will help you wind down and stop being "at work" to prevent yourself from never giving yourself a rest. *

 *Recognize that the danger of working at home is that you overwork which then affects family time. Setting an end-of-day time and sticking to it will help. With freedom comes responsibility - deliver your work to the same quality as your would if you were in the office and perhaps when all this becomes a distant memory, remote working could be a permanent way of working *

One of the biggest struggles about working from home is timing and focus, for that I recommend to follow a shift and try to separate things at home. Avoid working from your bed, for example. :)

Frederico Soares da Silva, Senior Front End Engineer

I always ensure I have great coffee brewing throughout the day in addition to putting specific holds in my calendar so that I can get some fresh air and walk. I try and have lunch at a restaurant to engage with people if I'm not working at a co-working spot. I also might ask a colleague to hop on a Zoom call to chat and have a real-time connection if there is a topic that might benefit from that instead of Slack or email!

__Liza Frank, Executive Assistant to CoFounder, CEO __

 *Try to set up your workspace so it catches the sun. Also, keep it free from clutter. *

Pavel Sinev, Customer Experience Specialist

 *Use Pomodoro to balance out your work/rest. Make a TODO list at the beginning of the day. *

Have a work area that is only for work and nothing else

Try choosing a dedicated workspace that is separated from your free time activities – we have a home office I use to get work done. This limits distractions and allows you to focus on your daily tasks!

Have a separate space where you can close the door and get away from noise (especially if you have kids). The secondary benefit of a separate space is mental separation so that when you aren't in that space but at home, you can be present with your family/friends and not be in work mode.

 *Start your day with your laptop fully charged, once your battery runs out, that's time to take care of yourself. Once you've taken care of yourself, charge your laptop back up. *

I tell my kids, "just because you see me doesn't mean I'm available." It's hard to balance work and Dad guilt, but it's a necessary art that must be mastered.

To help me get out of my PJs and make the bed on "self-work days" I make a to-do list. This makes me feel productive, especially if I can clear the to-do list by the end of the day. And yes "wake up, make the bed, make a brew and get dressed" are all viable tasks!

It's important to remember that different things work for different people. Don't beat yourself up if you're balancing working from home with limited space, limited technology, child care or any other challenges. You've got this.

vidIQ has always been a fully remote company so we asked the team for their top tips for anyone new to working from home.

25 Tips To Get the Most Out of Working From Home

Even if your video has nothing to do with the 

, your content still may be demonetized. Worse still, it may even slow down your application into the YouTube Partner Program, so you can't monetize your channel at all.

 bookmarked, now is the time to do so, as this will be a fountain of information over the coming weeks and months.

, YouTube has informed us that to reduce the risk of coronavirus, they are reducing in-office staffing, to quite rightly prioritize the health and safety of their employees. Creators who log in to their account are also seeing this announcement:

The knock-on effect of this for creators is that YouTube will now be relying much more on machine learning to detect potentially harmful content on the platform.

To be clear, this is not just about coronavirus or COVID-19 content. This is all of the other potentially harmful and dangerous content that's pushed onto YouTube every single day and YouTube has comprehensive guidelines for.

What Increased YouTube Automation Means For a Creator

Now there are very few human reviewers looking at this content, and YouTube is relying on AI and machine learning. As a result, what you can expect to see, as creators, is an increase in video removals, even if, ultimately, they don't violate community guidelines.

Why? Because basically, machine learning sometimes gets it wrong, as we well know. Because of this expected increase in errors, YouTube won't issue strikes unless they have a high confidence that the video does actually violate guidelines.

And YouTube does already have an appeal system in place which you can still use but because the human workforce is less likely to be in the YouTube offices right now, you can expect delays in those appeals being reviewed.

Because of this, YouTube will be more cautious about the content they promote. Live streams and unreviewed content may not be searchable, or discoverable on the homepage or through recommendations.

The Impact on YouTube’s Partner Program

So, we know there are fewer people working at YouTube offices and that's completely understandable. Everybody, at this time, needs to be safe, and stay healthy.

YouTube has talked about how video content is going to be impacted on the platform. But what they didn't mention is the YouTube Partner Program. And I think that's going to be under similar constraints because human reviewers do look into each and every channel that they allow into that.

So if you have applied for the YouTube Partner Program or monetization in the last four to six weeks, don't be surprised if there is a significant delay. And folks, we have to accept that.

Now as well as the YouTube Creator Blog website, there is also a super useful support page that I will recommend you bookmark as well. And it's all to do with coronavirus and COVID-19 updates.

YouTube has set up a dedicated update page on the 

, which is being updated on a daily basis. So as well as the stories we've covered today, they are also closing their YouTube Space facilities temporarily and will be allowing creators to actually monetize a coronavirus and COVID-19 content. We'll have more on that in the near future.

As of right now, you may have noticed that if you do try and monetize content that even includes a passing mention of the coronavirus, you will almost certainly get the yellow dollar icon. As well as daily updates, the dedicated support page has a lot more information, including FAQs on monetization around coronavirus, and COVID-19.

YouTube has confirmed that it will be relying on automation and machine learning to detect potentially harmful content being uploaded to the platform during the current crisis. Find out what that means for creators.

YouTube Warns Takedowns May Increase During Coronavirus Crisis

How long viewers watch your content for is one of YouTube’s golden signals. So as content creators we know we need to hook attract viewers with engaging topics. But did you know that quality production values can also help your audience retention?

In this episode of TubeTalk, we’re going to take a deep dive into audio specifically, and give you some must-know tips and tricks around sound quality. So many YouTube creators are not putting the effort into audio, and are losing viewers because of it, even when the content they create is otherwise amazing.

. He’s a recognized expert on audio production, and his 

 is packed full of advice about cleaning up audio, producing podcasts, creating music, and more. He really, really understands the quality and voice that's required to capture an audience and keep them riding along with you. In this podcast you will learn:

Why buying an expensive microphone isn't enough to ensure crystal-clear audio

How a shaggy carpet can help create the best audio

How to mix in a music track so your viewers can still hear you

Best practices for mixing in other sound clips to your video

Why recording background noise separately can boost your audio quality

Why you should build your own library of audio clips

Subscribe to TubeTalk: The Video Marketing Podcast!

TubeTalk has been informing video creators and marketers since 2014, and is one of the most respected and listened to podcasts in the online video industry. Subscribe today so you never miss an episode! You can find vidIQ's TubeTalk at:

Why Great Audio is the Key to YouTube Audience Retention: Podcast Snapshot

Liron Segev: So Mike, just how important is audio?

Mike Russell: Oh, it's super important. You can have a shaky camera, you can record in 10 ATP, but when the sound goes off it doesn't matter how good your content is. It's hard for people to stay focused and pay attention if your audio is off. It also takes away a little bit of your authority because you're sitting there looking fantastic, but people can't hear you.

Also, you can have the best microphone in the world, but if you have not sound-treated your room, you are still not going to sound good. Investing in sound absorption materials on your floor, walls, and ceiling can actually make a big difference. It can cut down on echo and bounce back especially if you live in a noisy location.

It's a really bad experience if someone is listening to a podcast or watching a YouTube video and they have to constantly turn it up and down because you haven’t put the thought into audio.

Liron Segev: Regarding video editors, many creators are so focused on color grading and making sure that we have B roll and making sure that we have the rough animations that we don't give the audio a second thought. Is that a mistake?

Mike Russell:.I do think like color grading is super important. It can give you an edge providing you get it right, otherwise, you look very, very orange or very magenta. But in terms of audio, equalization of the frequencies is very similar to color grading.

You could shoot something on a mirrorless or DSLR camera and stick it straight into your NLE and then mix it, or render it out and upload it and it would be okay. But if you color grade it, it's going to pop out. It's going to look better. Same thing if you equalize your audio and compress your audio. It's kind of like the color grading of audio.

Liron Segev: If you’re doing collaborations with other people, they often send you clips ahead of time so you can mix them into your own track. How do we get the best practice to help them give us better audio?

Mike Russell: It’s all about their setup and what they're using. You don't really have that much control what the other creator is using, but if it's someone you really want to work with you can try and recommend other gear to them or try to work well with the gear that they've got.

So you might say, "Okay, what are you going to be recording with?" And they might say, "Well, I've got a shotgun microphone mounted just off the camera frame. But maybe they can use a handheld mic? You could recommend something like that.

And if you’re really serious about growing your YouTube views and subscribers, sign up for exclusive access to the 

 and learn how to launch a successful YouTube Channel in just 30 days.

Shockingly poor audio can severely damage your Audience Retention rate on YouTube. Learn how to keep your viewers engaged to the end in this week's episode of TubeTalk.

Why Great Audio Can Boost YouTube Audience Retention: TubeTalk 203 with Mike Russell

 which cover a multitude of sins video creators might break be it nudity, harmful, hateful, violent content, harassment and bullying, or spam. Creators can quickly find themselves in trouble if they cross the line on any of these topics.

There are many different Community Guidelines and also a number of places where creators can break them such as:

In the past, the punishment from YouTube differed depending on where the crime was committed. It might be that you lose livestream privileges or that you couldn't post videos for a certain length of time. The rules were somewhat chaotic, so YouTube have cleared up the confusion for creators and made it crystal clear what violates a Community Guideline (

 we’re covering Community Guidelines in the post and not copyright strikes which is a whole different topic and one we’ll be covering soon).

YouTube Community Guidelines February 2019

As of February 19th 2019, the new Community Guidelines are in place for all creators on the platform. YouTube are keen not to punish first time offenders who may not be up to speed with the rules, and as a result, all channels will receive a one-time warning the first time they post content that crosses the line with no penalties to their channel except for the removal of that content. The good news is that this one time warning applies to all channels so even if you do have an existing strike you still get this warning before further penalties. It doesn't matter where you break the Community Guideline whether it be on a thumbnail, video content, playlists, or via the comments - the penalty is always going to be the same.

 The second time you break Community Guidelines will be considered your first official strike. That will result in your content being removed as before. On top of this all your YouTube content posting privileges will be frozen for one week. This includes videos, live-streams, YouTube stories, and community posts. However, you’ll still be able to post comments. After a week you will get all of the posting features back but the strike remains on your account for 90 days in total.

 If you commit another Community Guideline violation within a 90 day period this is your second strike with the same penalties applied except that instead of a one week ban you get a two week ban on publishing content.

 If you fall foul of the Community Guidelines for a third time, YouTube isn’t here to play. Your channel will be terminated!

Obviously the termination of your channel is pretty drastic so YouTube have now promised to be more transparent about the guideline you violated so it doesn’t get to that stage. They will be more specific with information about that violation, communicate it to you through notifications and emails and via the Creative Studio. There will also be an appeals process in place as before.

We applaud all of the changes that YouTube are making here. I think that the first time warning is a fantastic idea because many video creators get terrified over making any strike at any point in their YouTube journey. I think a consistent penalty system makes it very clear to the user. It also eliminates the extremely harsh 90 day livestream penalty there used to be.

In effect, creators are getting an extra strike out of the new rules but you shouldn’t take advantage of that. After your first warning you shouldn't be making any further strikes on your YouTube channel.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

YouTube have just made some sweeping changes to their Community Guidelines which affect every creator. Find out how you can stay on the right side of the new rules.

New Community Guidelines From YouTube: What Creators Need to Know Right Now

If you want to really succeed on YouTube, and I mean really succeed, you need two elements: clear focus and amazing research. On today's episode of TubeTalk, we're going to show you how to do both.

Today I'm very excited to be speaking with Chris Sharpe. He is the co-creator and CEO of a channel called 

. This channel has over five million subscribers, so Chris clearly understands his focus, and knows how to get his videos seen by the right audience, and he's going to share all that information with us, including a 

How to build a YouTube channel around your passion

Why a keyword driven strategy is the key to early success

How to do keyword research for your YouTube content

How email notifications can be your best friend for building a community

Subscribe to TubeTalk: The Video Marketing Podcast

Don't forget to leave us a review if you love the show!

How ‘Yoga with Adriene’ Generated 5M YouTube Subscribers: Full Transcript

	Thanks for having me. I've been listening to this podcast for what seems like years, so it's an honor to be on.

	Can't be more excited to get you on here. Chris, give us like a two-second overview, Chris in a tweet, so people can kind of get an idea of where you fit in and a bit of your background, and then we'll kind of delve into what you have to share with us.

	Sure. My background is as an independent filmmaker, director and cinematographer. When I realized that I couldn't make a living doing that, I started dipping my toes in YouTube and that really took off, and my life has been pretty much YouTube only ever since, with Yoga With Adrienne being my main project. Liron:	How long ago was this? How long ago did you start this journey?

	I started the journey in 2010 with my first channel, which was Hilah Cooking, a cooking channel, back before the cooking niche was so glutted. We did a cooking channel and did really well with that. Once that channel became a success, I wanted to see if I could replicate what we'd done with that channel, and I reached out to another one of my friends, who was Adrienne Mishler, and asked if she would be interested in hosting a yoga channel. We started that channel in 2012, and so here we are, about to hit over five million subscribers.

	Wow. That is some serious journey. Tell me about that conversation that you had with Adrienne. How did that go? You said, "Hey, I've got this thing called a camera, there's this thing called YouTube, you have a yoga mat. I think we could do something"?

	Well, she knew. She was following Hilah Cooking because we were all friends from the theater community, theater and film community there in Austin, and I'd worked with Adrienne on a film project and I wanted to work with her again. She knew what we were doing with Hilah Cooking, so I just reached out and said, "Hey, I want to do another channel to see if I can replicate this, maybe even do it faster, as far as the growth goes. Would you be ... " and she was a yoga teacher. I'm like, "Would you be interested in teaching yoga on camera, and we'll build this channel around it and we'll keep it in sync and congruent with your values and your personality and your style, and we'll see what happens," and she was interested. It took us about a year from that point to actually get the cameras rolling, just figuring out what it was going to be called and what all we were going to do with it. Then once we started, we just went for it.

	Okay. It sounds like a year is a long time. I mean, when you tell people these days that it takes a while to build a brand and a while to build a channel, they kind of think a while is 48 to 72 hours. You're talking about you spent a year in the planning, a year just to get your channel focused, to know who your audience is going to be.

	Yeah. Well, that year was ... you know, it wasn't like a dedicated year spent. We would meet up every few months and talk about it, and some of it was our schedules aligning and just everything else, because Hilah Cooking was really going strong at that time and Adrienne is a working actor also, so she had projects going on. Some of it was, you know, it was like we were both thinking about it the whole time and we would occasionally have meetings, and then we just got to a point where, "Okay, we've got this, let's go."

	Right, so now you have the go, you have the green light, you start.

	We did this with Hilah Cooking too, but my background, after I couldn't make the independent filmmaker thing work out financially for myself, I was basically unemployable and had no decent job history. I didn't know what to do. I just knew that I couldn't make the money that I needed, and this was around 2008, right as the recession was hitting, and there weren't very many jobs. I just kind of hunkered down and figured out I was going to learn how to do this internet stuff, and I started learning about search engine optimization and that type of thing, which led to I really went deep into search engine optimization, and was able to get a job because of that. Once I had the job, then I started the YouTube stuff.

Because of this deep dive into search engine optimization that I'd done, when we started the Hilah Cooking channel, I did some keyword research and I identified ... I made a list, basically, of a hundred keywords that I thought we could go after, and then I shared that with Hilah and she picked the ones that she wanted to do recipes on, and that was like ... because we didn't have an advertising budget, so that was really what got that channel going.

I replicated that for Yoga With Adrienne and did keyword research in yoga and related topics in that niche, and then I shared the list with Adrienne, and we kind of picked what we thought were going to be, first of all, the good ones to go after, but also in the early days, we really wanted to focus on the foundational yoga poses. Our first year was basically getting the foundation, a series called The Foundations of Yoga, which are the core poses that you need to learn and put together into sequences. After we got those done, it was very keyword-driven, such as things like yoga for beginners, beginners' yoga, weight loss yoga, yoga for weight loss, that type of thing. We used the keywords as a base, and then build the content on top of that.

	That's a smart strategy. I mean, YouTube, at the end of the day, is a search engine, so people are going into YouTube, into Google, and they're asking those questions. If you're able to provide the exact solution for what they're looking for, boom. That's going to win. The match is made in heaven and you get all these eyeballs on your side, which is superb.

Chris:	Totally. That's our approach, and I like that people ... there seems to be a trend towards rather than calling it search engine optimization, answer engine optimization, and I really like that, because we want all of our videos to be the answer to someone's question. Because I feel like when people are typing something into the search box, for this type of thing, it's like, "How do I do this," or, "I'm looking for yoga for weight loss, I'm looking for yoga for bad wrists or yoga for a sore lower back," so that's what we begin with, the potential viewer in mind before we create the content.

	Okay, perfect. You know it's going to deliver, because somebody has asked that question. How do you go about finding those questions? Do you have a specific technique that you use? How do you do your keyword research?

	Well, my technique is somewhat haphazard. I know people who have very elaborate systems, but I do use vidIQ, primarily, as my keyword research tool for YouTube. I also use Arefs. I'm always keeping a list of ideas, of things that are in the back of my head. Then I'll take my notebook, I'll put all these keywords in and just see kind of what the volume is. A lot of times I find that what I thought the phrase was is not what the people are actually typing in.

	That's key. You say that you go in maybe to search an idea, like best poses for weight loss as an example, and then you see that the search volume for that exact phrase is maybe not as high as you thought, but if you changed it up a little bit, maybe more in line with what people are searching, then that makes all the difference?

	Absolutely. Yeah, so we definitely do that on every video.

	How do you know how to rephrase your question or your search or what people are searching for? Do you just play around with keys and hope for the best?

	Usually what I do ... and even though I consider myself good at this stuff, there's people that take it to a much higher level than I do, so I'll just look. Usually there's some very similar keywords or a keyword phrase right around that one that have higher volume, and then that's an indicator to me that someone is looking for weight loss yoga poses as opposed to best poses for weight loss. If that one's significantly higher, we'll go with that one.

	Now that you have your question, so now that we know that is the exact phrase people are searching for, you know you can easily make content around that. It falls in line with your brand and what your channel's all about. How close did you stick to that when it comes to using that as your title, or using those in the descriptions?

	I will say we stick to it about 75% of the time now. We have the luxury now of having a significant audience, so sometimes it's a little awkward. Now that we're actually serving an audience that we know ... you know, when you start out, you have no idea what your audience is going to be like, so you have to start somewhere. Now we know the things that are going to resonate with our audience, and they're not always things that have a high volume as far as keywords go, as far as search volume goes.

We try to make 75% of our videos keyword-based, on the research, and then the other are really just there to serve to the community. They use the terminology that our community uses, so they pick it up and it resonates really well with them.

	You kind of found your groove in here. Was there anything specific that really kind of triggered them? Was it just learn the poses and then it kind of developed from there, or was there a different approach to getting your channel to be the authority?

	I will say it took us a long ... we talked about how long it takes earlier, but it really took two years of consistently posting every week before we were seeing ... before it started to feel like this was worth it from a numbers standpoint, right? The thing that really triggered it was in January of 2015. We decided we were going to do a 30 Days of Yoga series, so every day in January, there was a new video. The trending thing, keyword-driven, was 30-day yoga challenge, but we didn't like the use of the word "challenge" as it related to yoga, because it seemed competitive and we wanted everyone to feel like they're a part of it, they're doing this together. That would have been the keyword thing to go for, 30-day yoga challenge, but we didn't. We went with 30 Days of Yoga.

We did a video every day the month of January, and we also did a daily email that went along with it. We got people to sign up for our email list and then we would mail every day, driving traffic to that video. On the landing pages, we had ways for people to share that with their friends. We were like, "This will be much more fun with friends, so tag your friends and share this." That is the thing that really was the tipping point for the channel, because we got people involved. We really fed the community through that, and that's what I really attribute as the thing that was kind of the tipping point for a lot of growth.

	Up until that point, before you had your 30-day challenge, could you remember offhand what your subscriber count was at that stage?

	Okay, so really a fair size. You've got the mass community, they like your content, they keep coming back. Obviously the 30 days have appeal to a much, much, much larger audience who has just got to commit to that. You speak a lot about the landing page and being able to tag your friends or share it with your friends. Was your strategy to drive people not straight to a YouTube but to a landing page, and then kind of get them to the YouTube channel?

	Correct, yeah. You know, we've experimented with driving people to our website versus driving them straight to YouTube, and we like driving them straight to YouTube so they stay in that ecosystem. We did build an external landing page, and we made a video. We made a video announcement in YouTube and drove them to a landing page that was just like a simple Wordpress page with an opt-in, very, very simple.

	Like, "Give us your email address and we'll keep you posted"?

	Yeah. Yeah. They would enter their email address, and then once that was done, it would take them to a thank-you page that said, "Awesome, you're in. Here's what you can expect, here's what's going to happen, and invite your friends," and then we included some social sharing buttons below that. Then of course we promoted that page across our social platforms as well.

	You drove them not to your YouTube page. You first drove them to a landing page, got them excited, and then everything else from that point was all about the YouTube channel as a whole, right?

	Correct, yeah. We actually didn't do any advertising or remarketing either, so it was all based on like a vlog-type video on YouTube. It kind of started on YouTube. The audience saw it there, then we bounced them to a landing page. From then, once they've signed up and shared with their friends or whatever, all the other communications will be driving them straight to the YouTube channel.

	What a pleasure that is, is being able to control your own notifications. Now you have your customers or potential customers, or at least interested people, you've got their email address. You're giving them value. You can decide when to drive people to your site or to your YouTube channel, as opposed to just hoping that the YouTube notification actually works this time.

	Definitely, yeah. Email has been a key component. Our goal with the 30 Days of Yoga series was can we just like boost this channel somehow, increase the subscribers and the watch time, but also can we grow our mailing list, because we do a weekly email that promotes that week's videos still, and we have about half a million people on our email list, so that helps us. That gives us an advantage every week, with we show up in people's inboxes with a nice letter, putting the video in some sort of context, rather than just popping up in YouTube.

	Yeah. Regardless of how many systems we've come through, no matter how many new social platforms there are with different apps that have popped up on the screen, there's one constant, and that's email. It's the one thing we check every single time, and it's the one thing you need to sign up to all these darn systems anyway.

	Yeah. You can knock it, but it is what it is, and it works great for us, so yeah. You know, I love YouTube. If YouTube would have been around when I was a kid, I would have been like all over it, and I love it. You know, everyone gets frustrated with it from time to time, but I think it's just such an amazing thing that it even exists. With that being said, I'm conscious that they can change their algorithm.

'Yoga with Adriene' has not only generated over 5M subscribers on YouTube, it has become a phenomenally successful off-platform business too. Find out how on this week's episode of TubeTalk.

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