10 Killer Tips to Get More Subscribers on YouTube

Want more YouTube subscribers in 2019? We have 10 expert tips and tricks to build up your YouTube subscriber base starting right now!

When you launch your YouTube channel, remember that you are entitled to absolutely nothing, especially subscribers. You need to work hard, and hustle day and night to earn every single view and every single subscriber. On that note, let us give you 10 expert tips that should get you thinking about how to build your super-engaged subscriber fanbase:

#1 Make Building a Relationship With Your Audience a Priority

Subscribers are earned by building up a relationship with your audience, and that can be done in many different ways. Of course, the most obvious one would appear to be on a personal level. You're standing in front of a camera, meaning the audience can connect with you directly, and vloggers certainly will build up subscribers as they tell more of their story.

But it can also be on an educational level. I know of many videos where I've watched something, and I've had that light bulb moment in the video, and that makes me click subscribe immediately. That sort of subscription happens a lot with educational and How To channels. The problem with that is that the user usually just wants a specific answer to a specific question that you gave them, and then, they're not interested in anymore of your content. But that's the nature of YouTube - subscribers can have different values to different people.

I think ultimately, if you can establish a relationship with your audience and build up a certain level of trust, those are going to be your most valuable subscribers who will invest not only in the video that they have just watched, but in future content on your channel. I think all of the tips that you're gonna see in this post relate back to this one.

#2 Double Down on the Video Content That’s Working For You

Now, there is one tried and tested, guaranteed to work shortcut to getting more subscribers, and that's sub for sub. I am kidding, of course, but there is a hack to getting more subscribers faster, and that's to analyze the data on your own channel to see what videos convert videos into subscribers. This can be done through one of the VidIQ tools. It's called the Channel Audit, and when you open it up, there is a section dedicated to videos getting the most subscribers for your channel. It stands to reason if those videos are turning viewers into subscribers, you should do more content on those themes. The Channel Audit, by the way, is part of our huge VidIQ arsenal that will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your channel as you've just seen, and take optimal steps to help grow your channel. It's free to download!.

#3 Be Consistent with Your Upload Schedule - Give Viewers a REASON to Subscribe

Being consistent comes in many different shapes and sizes, but one of the most important ones is consistency of schedule. Make sure you keep posting so people come back to your content, but most importantly, keep consistent in your choice of topic. Let's say it takes three videos to convert a viewer into a subscriber:

  • The first video creates awareness of who you are and what potentially you do on YouTube.
  • The second video creates that consistency. Now, they know what you do and that they like the content.
  • The third video, build more momentum of what we talked about in tip one, trust, and that's where the subscription may come.

If you're jumping from topic to topic to topic, you may never get past the awareness stage of your content. I know this may sound counter productive at this point, but you really need to focus down on one specific topic. The thing that you're most passionate about and that you can tell the best stories about.

#4 Treat Viewers as Guests - Make it Easy for Them to Understand What Your Channel is All About

Consider viewers as your guests, and welcome them warmly into your home. Give them a guided tour so they know where everything is, and those guests will soon become friends. What do I mean by that metaphor? Sort out your channel page! This will include creating a channel banner that visually tells your audience what you do in five seconds, and uploading a channel trailer video that best represents the kind of content that you do.

Also, always create Playlists that help inform the visitor on the topics that you cover and show recent uploads so people know you are still producing content.

#5 Ask Viewers to Subscribe - They Probably Will

Sometimes, you've just got to tell your viewers what to do because they won't do it themselves. There's nothing wrong with occasionally asking for a little bit of help from your audience, and if you do it too much, your audience will let you know. If you've never tried it before, definitely give it a go, and try and make it something fun.

#6 Get Inventive with Calls to Actions (CTAs)

Generally speaking, when you ask your audience to do something, it's what's known as a call to action. But you can be more subtle. You could have graphics appear on screen that you don't even reference. Simply search for 'subscribe animation green screen', and you'll find plenty of free options on the Internet

#7 Get Savvy with Your Branding Watermark

Want to know about something that could increase subscriber growth by 500% - your branding watermark. Many video creators simply use their channel logo. But we recommend using a subscribe button like this because when you mouse over this button on a desktop, you can subscribe to the channel. It does exactly what it says on the tin.

When we switched to this subscriber button, our subscribe rates from that source increased by over 500%! As a free gift to you, here's a link to the image you can use. For more information about how to implement this on your own YouTube channel, check out this video: 'How to Add a Subscribe Button'

#8 Reach Out Via Community Tab & YouTube Stories

Not every video creator can produce videos every single day, but you should still produce content every single day. How? well, if you have more than 1,000 subscribers, you can post status updates, ask questions, post voting polls, and promote videos through the YouTube Community tab. If you only have time to post one video a week, you always have five minutes to post an update on your Community tab.

The same goes for YouTube Stories if you have access to it. Create short vertical form video clips that you can quickly record to keep your audience up to date with what you're up to. You can even do video responses to questions through this feature, which is pretty awesome for building relationships and establishing trust with your audience.

#9 Help YouTube Engage Non-subscribers!

Now, I know what you're thinking at this point. The Community tab and YouTube Stories are all very well and good for my subscribers, but what difference does that make to non-subscribers? Well, here's the weird thing. Those community posts and YouTube Stories can hit people who have not subscribed to your content but have watched your content or it's related content to what that viewer is interested in. It's true! We post regularly in our Community tab, and we often get comments from users who aren't subscribed to our channel. There's nothing we can do about it, but we do appreciate YouTube reaching out to a new audience on our behalf :-)

#10 Reference Your Subscribers in Your Content

Maybe you don't have access to the Community tab, or to YouTube Stories yet. Fair enough, you still have access to YouTube comments. You should be responding to every single comment you can, because this all links back to tip number one, building relationships and building trust with your audience. It's always a great feeling for the commenter to know that the video creator is paying attention to what they say and responding to their comments. And we try and do that on VidIQ with every single video that we do. And there's other ways to acknowledge your community, as well, such as referencing them directly in videos. If you can make your audience feel special, there's a much higher chance of them investing in you.

Want To Get More YouTube Views?

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 click here to install now!