How do you get to 1,000 subscribers? Starting out a channel and creating content for it is challenging enough. Getting subscribers, 1,000 at that, is also tough. But there are a few things you can do to get there.
At the time of filming and writing this post, I had 826 subscribers. I’m not quite at a thousand yet. And you might think to yourself, well, who are you then to give me the advice to get to a thousand subscribers?
Well, if you check my older videos, I have one where I share tips on how to get to your first 100 subscribers. And as I’m getting towards a thousand now, I thought it’d be a good idea to teach you and show you the things that I did.
Tip 1: Strategic Planning
Plan your content and create a content bank. In December last year, I came up with 12 videos or a batch of content that I can use for my channel in the coming months. This gave me and my team a structure.
As I release this one batch of content, we’re already working on another batch. It’s one way to ensure that I always have videos to share with my viewers.
Tip 2: Long-Term Strategy
If you have long-term goals for your channel, you can lay out your long-term strategies. One important aspect that you need to consider when you come up with strategies is your target market. Who do you really want to target? Who do you want to talk to on your channel?
In my case, I wanted to target business owners and entrepreneurs who want to grow their business with video. I chose my target audience, and I also chose a niche by doing this.
If you want to be strategic, you’ve got to pick a niche.
Tip 3: Understand the Level of Your Audience
So, I target business owners and entrepreneurs, right? And I know not all business owners are tech-savvy.
When I create videos for my channel, I decide whether they’re going to be basic level or advanced level. I can do both. The way I do things, is I try to come up with the basic level video first and then plan how I can expand them later.
A lot of people ask me, once they’re created their own channels if they need to create a channel specifically for a real narrow niche. My answer is no. You can have basic level videos and advanced level videos or have a variety of videos for different ages or whatever you decide, depending on your niche. But you can make it easy for your viewers by organizing them into playlists.
Tip 4: Be Consistent
Consistency is so important. You can’t start a channel and then post every now and then. It’s not going to work.
What you need to do when you’re planning your strategy at the start is aim, at the very least, for one video a week. I would highly advise you to film by batch, around four to five videos at a time. Then create a schedule for these to go out. This means you’ll always be ahead for a month.
You don’t ever want to get to the point where you get to the end of your filming and say, “Damn, I’ve got no more content here.” You need to be a month ahead so that you’ve got plenty in your content bank because who knows what life is going to throw at you.
When you’re consistent, your audience understands that you’re going to post regularly. And you’re telling them there’s a reason for them to keep coming back and checking out. YouTube gets the message that you’re posting stuff on a regular basis as well and can help with the algorithm.
Tip 5: Promote Regularly
I’m not talking about specific videos here. I’m talking about your channel in general.
A lot of people focus on the content they’ve got. They focused on reaching all the different channels and that kind of thing. But you still need to tell people that you’ve got a channel, and you still must ask them to subscribe.
You’ve got to be posting about your channel and encouraging people to subscribe all the time.
Tip 6: Rehydrate Your Content
You can’t just put your videos onto YouTube and expect that people would just find them. Yes, it does happen. The bigger your channel gets; the more YouTube loves you. You will get people that suddenly land on your videos.
But when you’re getting started, you have to get the audience and get the attention of the people that you want to subscribe to. And you also need to rehydrate your content to drive more viewers to them.
For older videos, there are a few things you can do to rehydrate them. You can create evergreen content (this is content that doesn’t really get old) and put it in a content scheduler. This way, the content keeps getting reposted, and some of your viewers might only have found it after you’ve reposted it.
Tip 7: Thumbnail
I sat in one of the sessions at VidSummit about two years ago. And I was amazed that the people onstage we’re saying that probably, the thumbnail is more important than the video itself. Take that in for a second. The thumbnail is more important than the video itself.
Now I don’t necessarily agree with this totally. The content of the video still has to be good. But the point is, if your thumbnail game is good, it’s going to help people click on it in the first place and then get more eyeballs on your content.
That’s it for now, and I really hope you get something from this post. For more details about this topic, I highly recommend that you watch my video.
If you need help with your videos, we can get on a Video Strategy Call so we can work something out in real time. I also offer courses about videos on YouTube For Business.
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See you in my next post!
