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

Can you guess what question we get asked the most? It’s pretty obvious: How do I get more views on YouTube?

The answer, however, is far from obvious; unless you break it down into a hundred jigsaw pieces. And what jigsaw pieces do you look for first? The corners of course.

So let’s look at four crucial pieces of the YouTube puzzle What Do YOU Love to Talk About? YouTube knows what its audience wants, so you need to think like YouTube. Let’s say your passion is videogames. Be specific. If you love Fortnite or Call of Duty or Fifa 18, make sure to focus on that topic.

The more passionate you are about something, the more you know about it and the more confident you will be creating and sharing content about it.

Passion is an invisible vibe, energy and presence that your audience can always see.

Who Should Be Watching and Why? Don’t stop at just your favourite game, film, beauty product or superhero either. Dive deeper. Popular topics attract thousands of video creators, so you need to provide the audience with something they can’t get anywhere else.

Ask yourself this question: who should be watching and why? If you can’t answer that question then your audience won’t understand or (worst still) won’t care about your content. If someone else can answer those two questions better that’s where the audience will go.

This is your target audience and your value proposition and you should be able to sum it up in a sentence. For example: Helping Video Creators Get More Views In Less Time.

A ‘niche’ is an interest that appeals to a small, specialized section of the audience. Let’s say you buy the latest iPhone and you want to do a general video review on it. OK great, but the chances are there is a tech channel with millions of subscribers that has more resources to produce something in a shorter time frame to a wider audience.

But is that massive tech channel interested in EVERY aspect of the iPhone? Probably not, they will have another big phone release to worry about. But you? You could have a special interest in how the camera works or the best apps for productivity or how to record the screen. The chances are, if you are interested in something, there will be an audience out there who is also interested in the same thing.

This is your niche. While there may be millions of people interested in an iPhone, there may only be a few thousand interested in recording the iPhone screen, yet still passionate enough about it to create guides and tutorials that spread a message of value better than anyone else.

Dominate Your Niche and Become the Authority With passion, a target audience, a value proposition and a niche you know better than anyone else, you will start to build an audience.

Usually, there comes a point where one video outperforms everything else you’ve published before: 2x, 5x, 10x, it becomes your viral moment.

When this happens, go all in on follow up content. YouTube is telling you: you have something of value and we want to share it with more people. Your stock rising, your authority is gaining momentum, we ALL want to see more from you about something you are passionate about and can trust you with.

Try this: search for ‘Record iPhone Screen’ and you may see a very familiar vidIQ face appearing over and over again. Who knew such a niche could bring in so many views?

Channel success stories usually start with a niche that builds trust between the YouTuber and their audience. They then take that audience on a journey through more topics that stretch that authority into new, larger audiences.

Try this: do a YouTube search for ‘How Big Is’. This search term is dominated by a YouTuber called ColdFusion. The channel was already successful with tech videos that got 10,000s views. The ‘How Big Is’ video brought in millions of views and now ColdFusion is the authority on the phrase.

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 Always Starts With Something You Love and Ends with Something Your Audience Trusts You With.

How to Get More YouTube Views? Passion and Authority

Here are 10 ways to reach the largest audience with the most impact:

Promote in the first 24 hours to get velocity or what we like to call View Per Hour

Share a playlist link, not a video link so that people can watch more of your videos

Share on other social media platforms like Linkedin and Facebook groups

Upload videos to Facebook directly using our vidIQ tool

Use your email list to push your YouTube channel

Use Incase you missed it posts on social platforms to remind people to watch

You've made a great YouTube video, now you need to share it.

10 Awesome Ways to Promote Your YouTube Videos for FREE

So you can monetize your content. That's a question being asked by many video creators. So here's 10 practical tips you can start using today to help grow your channel!

Be visual and exciting when asking people to subscribe

Use the branding watermark using a red subscribe button

Put the subscribe button in the endscreen

When sharing your channel use the auto subscribe URL

Pin a subscribe link to the top of your comments

Add vaule to other channels to increase your audience

Make sure your channel page is optimized with a great banner, trailer and sections

How to get 1000 Subscribers on YouTube so you can monetize your content: that's a question being asked by many video creators. So here are 10 practical tips you can start using today to help grow your channel!

How to Get 1000 Subscribers on YouTube: Creator Tips

This video breaks down how to get 4000 hours of watch time on YouTube:

Breakdown this into 20,000 minutes a month

Accpet that it takes a long time to grow on YouTube

Use the vidIQ real time stats bar to see how your doing

You now need 4000 hours of watch time and 1000 subscribers to qualify for monetization on YouTube.

How to Get 4000 Hours Watch Time on YouTube So You Can Monetize Your Videos

Here's 10 tips on how to use playlists to get more views on YouTube!

Use keywords and phrases like you would with a title

Use exact phrase keywords on your playlist

Always share a playlist URL not a video URL

You can add videos from other channels in your playlist

YouTube Playlists: you probably use them but do you know just how powerful they are?

Get More Views With 10 Playlists Tips

Build a better community, save time responding to comments and use YouTube's secret comment weapon! All of which is part of growing your channel to gain my subscribers and better serve your audience with the message you want to spread.

Here are 10 YouTube Tips to improve engagement:

React to comments by giving a thumbnails up and heart button

Use the pin comment for content you want people to see

Go through the spam tab to make sure real comments were not put in there

Here are 10 YouTube Tips to improve engagement, build a better community, save time responding to comments and use YouTube's secret comment weapon! All of which is part of growing your channel to gain more subscribers and better serve your audience with the message you want to spread.

How to Get MORE YouTube Views by Building a Community Around Your Content

We created a quick video to help describe how you can take advantage of the Pokemon Go phenomenon:

Install the vidIQ Chrome Extension to Get These Stats.

Pokemon Go is a worldwide sensation right now, and if you are a YouTube creator or marketer, you must be on this.

How To Get More Views on Pokemon Go YouTube Videos

Continuously optimizing your library of content to get more views can be a lot of work!

Which is why we are happy to announce that we just launched Bulk SEO. Watch the tutorial and get started already!

We are happy to announce that we just launched Bulk YouTube SEO

Bulk YouTube SEO for More Views

Replying to comments is absolutely critical for growing your subscribers

Contains Positive Words (positive sentiment)

Contain Negative Words (negative sentiment)

For instance, you can find all positive questions being asked and make sure those questions get answered, oh so nicely. 🙂

This is all available right now with our chrome extension.

What happens when you are overwhelmed with too many comments? We’ve created filters that help you find the comments that matter.

YouTube Comment Filters with vidIQ

After installing our Chrome Extension make sure to do the following searches on YouTube to further enhance your keyword strategy for Title, Descriptions, and Tags. We’ve included a few notes on all the top keywords:

Christmas Tree – “BIGGEST CHRISTMAS TREE FAIL” is the top title. Lots of fails are going on in Christmas Tree search term.

vlogmas – “FINDING THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS TREE | VLOGMAS” is the top title. Everyone is putting them at end of christmas vlogs

Santa Claus “FASCINATING Facts You Didn’t Know About Santa Claus!” is one of the top trending videos. Evergreen.

Christmas “7 Weirdest Christmas Facts” is #3 title

Christmas 2015 “What I Got For Christmas 2015 + Giveaway!” is #2 title

Santa “Adults Sit On Santa’s Lap For The First Time” is #2 title

Christmas music – “1 Hour – Christmas Music Collection Mix”

xmas “Santa’s XMAS Caper – Steam Train” – great use of XMAS in thumbnails

happy holidays HappyHolidays by Boston Dynamics ranking #3 – showing us great content with merged titles can rank

holidays – “Types of People During the Holidays by IISuperwomanII” is top trending video.. very creative

Merry Christmas “Merry Christmas from Bdubs!” showing simple titles are working here Hopefully, this helps your Christmas efforts. Have a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from everyone here at vidIQ!

Christmas is a global tentpole event for YouTube, and we’ve prepared the top 10 keywords for Christmas this year

How to Get More YouTube Views? Passion and Authority

Rob Wilson

10 Awesome Ways to Promote Your YouTube Videos for FREE

Carla Marshall

How to Get 1000 Subscribers on YouTube: Creator Tips

Carla Marshall

How to Get 4000 Hours Watch Time on YouTube So You Can Monetize Your Videos

Rob Wilson

Get More Views With 10 Playlists Tips

Rob Wilson

How to Get MORE YouTube Views by Building a Community Around Your Content

Rob Wilson

How To Get More Views on Pokemon Go YouTube Videos

Rob Wilson

Bulk YouTube SEO for More Views

Rob Wilson

YouTube Comment Filters with vidIQ

Rob Sandie

Top 10 YouTube Christmas Keywords 2015

Rob Sandie