Four tips to grow your YouTube channel in 2020

A lot of business owners want to grow their YouTube channel, but they aren’t aware of what it takes to successfully build their subscriber base. Putting a bunch of videos on YouTube that showcase their work is one of the biggest mistakes many business owners make. In this article, I am going to share how to build your YouTube channel from scratch.

Recently, the Blue Lotus Films’ channel reached 100 subscribers, so I figured it would be a good idea to share my own journey.

Whilst 100 subscribers may not seem like a lot, it is important to celebrate every milestone - because the journey to reach 10,000 is going to take a lot of legwork.

(Quick note! If you prefer, you can watch the video below, which covers all the same info described here in this article.)

Prepare for the journey

You might want the quick, easy solution to building your YouTube channel fast.

I hate to break it to you — but unless you have thousands of people on your email list who love reading your emails, you are going to be in the valley of YouTube for awhile. Just ask any YouTuber who has a large subscriber base — overnight success is very, very rare.

I honestly started the Blue Lotus Films channel as a way to showcase the work produced at my video production company. If you take a look, you can see I uploaded several videos that we produced for clients several years ago.

I was really busy with 1-on-1 client work and never really had the goal of building my YouTube channel until a couple years ago. It was at that point that I started a podcast and recorded all the interviews on Zoom - then I uploaded those interviews to my channel.

This year, my main intention is to make video tutorials that help wellness business owners create high quality videos, build their own YouTube channel, and market their videos across social media.

Here are the top four strategies I’ve used to gain my first 100 subscribers

1) Keyword research

You need to use a keyword research tool like Keywords Everywhere, Tube Buddy, or VidIQ to understand what your ideal customers are already searching for.

What knowledge are they looking for?

What topics interest them most?

Keyword research will give you a clear understanding of how you can create videos that reach clients where they are at — instead of shooting in the dark (pun intended) and creating videos no one except you and your BFF want to watch.

2) Promoting videos via your newsletter

Always promote your YouTube videos via your newsletter. Summarise the video content and be sure to include a video thumbnail so people have a visual reference. Provide several links to the video and specify how the video’s length so people will be enticed to watch.

Your newsletter subscribers are much more likely to click on the video link vs. reading all the text in your newsletter, and they’ll be grateful that you provided an easy way for them to consume the information they need.

3) Promoting on social media

Create a short teaser video (30 secs - 1 minute) to entice people to view your full video on your YouTube Channel. Typically I create a teaser video for Instagram and LinkedIn that includes captions and include the YouTube video URL so they can watch the full video. The teaser video is simply a short portion of your full YouTube video that entices the viewer to check out what you are doing on YouTube. Also, be sure to send out the link (by sharing it directly from YouTube) on Facebook and Twitter. 

(Watch this video for my full explanation of Twitter promotion.)

4) Promoting in Facebook groups

You can try begging all your Facebook friends to subscribe to your channel through pinging them an invite, but you might lose some friends. Instead, promote your YouTube videos within Facebook groups that offer a ‘self-promotion day’.

Many groups for business owners have specific days when group members can promote their YouTube channel or promote a recent content piece. Take advantage of this, because you’ll be surprised how much exposure this can bring you.

Fellow business owners are always looking to support likeminded people, and you might gain a long-term fan by using this strategy.

These are my top four strategies for building your YouTube channel from scratch. Of course you can try paid advertising and lots of other social media promotional strategies, but the above is what has worked for me…

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