We are pleased to announce that our vidIQ YouTube Channel has reached an incredible arsenal of (at time of writing) 304,131 subscribers! What did we learn from the journey? This is not going to be a perfect list of how-to tips and tricks to get to 300,000+ subscribers. These are my personal views and opinions from a genuine YouTube enthusiast.
Custom Thumbnails are KEY to Success on YouTube
I have made a lot of YouTube videos. I think around about 1,500 at this point. But for a very long time there is something I always neglected because I wanted to make the video and just get it out there onto YouTube. What I didn't spend much time on was thumbnails. A lot of channels have questionable thumbnails, which doesn't do their YouTube brand any favours, but since vidIQ began focusing on the very best thumbnails for our YouTube videos, our click-through rates have increased from 2.5% to 5% in just one year. That's much more views for effectively the same amount of work, just doing it better. Just as readers judge books by their covers, viewers judge videos by their thumbnails. If you can improve your thumbnails that can have a massive and positive impact on the entirety of your channel.
Improve Something by 1% on EVERY YouTube Video You Create
Something I am a strong advocate for, is striving to improve with every video that you make. Whether it is thumbnails, lighting, camera presence, voice narration or editing, you should always be looking for that 1% where you can get better. Trying to improve 100% every single video is going to drive you insane. But if you can come away from every single video thinking, I like that new thing that I tried there. Or that was some really tight editing, or I like the way I presented at that particular point in the video then that is one more step in the right direction.
Experiment With Your Content as Often as Possible
This next tip may fly in the face of YouTube experts and indeed myself recommend. And that is to experiment as often as possible. Now the reason I say this is because it comes from a foundation of consistency. If you are a regular visitor to vidIQ, you should have a general sense of the type of content that we create. We want to help educate you on your YouTube journey. Get more views, more subscribers, grow your channel, ultimately and potentially earn an income from it. I've been doing that for a couple years now here at vidIQ. Showing you how to use all of our tools and general tips about getting more views and subscribers.
But we decided to do last year was to follow YouTube news stories a little more closely and report on them if we found them interesting to our audience. It's why we jumped on ‘YouTube Hashtags’ as soon as they came out and the reason we rank number one for that search term now.
Going Viral: PewDiePie vs T Series on YouTube
And then we come to PewDiePie versus T-Series. This started out as an experimentation in fame hacking. Seeing if we could latch on to a trending topic and add our own unique analytical spin on things. We didn't realize it at the time but we'd stumbled on some viral content. Now while we we're experimenting, we also practice what we preach. When those videos started to do really well, what else could we do but double down on them and make more content on the already successful stuff on our channel.
YouTube Watch Time: How we Increased Our Numbers
Now people may say that it's all down to PewDiePie versus T-Series stuff. And while I agree it has helped a lot, it's not what we are banking our channel on. These are the baseline numbers I'm more interested in. The day-to-day watch time hours that have increased around 75% in the last nine months. Outside of the viral hits, this is our bedrock. Our subscribers, our fans, the people who are watching this video and are invested in a channel at a much deeper level than anything our PewDiePie versus T-Series content could ever achieve.
Now as is always the case, when you start to create alternative content to what your community is used to, you will get push back. And we have here at vidIQ. But here's the ironic thing, we haven't produced less content than what we normally would do, in fact we're doing more content. On our YouTube channel, we're doing videos on a Monday, live stream on a Tuesday, news on Wednesdays and Thursdays. And beginner's guides on Fridays. What's changed is we're creating a lot more content that includes stuff about PewDiePie versus T-Series. And that is bringing in a lot more exposure for the channel and building a bigger community for the stuff that we're really interested in. Which is helping you grow your channel.
Now I know this post is not full of really useful tips and tricks. Make better thumbnails, make viral videos. That's hardly going to help you day to day. But consider this my open letter to the vidIQ community. This is the type of stuff I learnt in my last nine months getting from 200 subscribers to 304,131 subscribers.
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!
