[Music] hey everyone kevin here today i guess that has kind of become my signature intro now so it’s gonna stick we’re gonna keep on using this anyway today i want to show you 10 different strategies for how you can grow your youtube channel i know that a lot of you and many of my subscribers you also have youtube channels some of them are just starting out and some of them are maybe a little bit more established already i want to share some of the things that i’ve learned on my journey that i think can help you grow your channel as well you know believe it or not i used to work at microsoft and then 10 months ago i decided to leave that stable full-time job to focus on my youtube channel full-time and i’ve learned a bunch of things since i decided to start focusing on this channel and i’ve been very fortunate to gain some subscribers i’ve gotten a few here and there and maybe my channel is a small to medium sized channel now but i wanted to share some of the things that i’ve learned to help drive some of that growth now before we jump into it i do want to share just a funny story anytime i take my son to the playground and i meet other parents one question that always comes up when i’m talking to other parents is what do you do for a living i don’t know it seems like any time you’re meeting other parents that’s just something that has to come up i don’t know why but so i’m always very proud to say oh i work as a full-time youtube creator and for whatever reason the next question that they ask me is always what does your wife do and i know what they’re thinking they’re probably thinking you must have the most loving and patient wife to allow you to pursue your hobby anyway let’s jump in and let’s run through these different strategies [Music] strategy number one and this one is probably the most obvious but it can also serve as the biggest blocker you just need to get started now and it’s really like anything in life if you want to retire well you have to start investing money to grow your nest egg you want to live healthier well you have to start eating better and you have to start exercising creating and growing a youtube channel is the same concept you just need to get started and you need to start working on it and you might be thinking well i haven’t chosen a focus area for my channel i don’t know if that necessarily matters right at the start instead just start creating your very first video sit in front of the camera feel more comfortable in front of the camera edit your video render your video upload it to youtube create a thumbnail write a description and by the end of all that your first video probably won’t be all that great how do i know well my first video there’s a reason it’s unlisted but what you will gain is you’ll learn a lot about the entire process and you’ll start getting better don’t believe me look up any one of your favorite youtubers look at mr beast marquez brownlee mark rober kevin stratford you like how i threw myself in that group sort the videos from oldest to newest and you’ll see how much they improved over time and the one thing they all have in common is they got started they learned and they improved over time [Music] strategy number two know your audience and produce content that they value so i’ll take my channel as an example my channel is not at all about me instead it’s focused on helping people learn how to use their software and their technology better so it’s all about making people more productive at work helping them complete that assignment at school so how do you know if your content is offering value well find someone from your audience a really simple test is you could just get your friend sit them down and have them watch your video while they’re watching your video you can watch your friend watch your video to see how they react do they pull out their phone midway through to check the latest sports scores or to check what the weather looks like or are they fully engaged in your video and to know if you have a winner at the end of your video does your friend say hey i want to watch that again that was pretty good that’s how you know that you’ve delivered a video that offers enough value for your audience [Music] strategy number three ask for feedback aggressively the more feedback you get the more you can improve your channel in fact one of the things that i did on my youtube channel is using google forms i created a user feedback survey i sent it out and i got tons i probably got two 300 responses from people just as an example a lot of people told me that my thumbnails let’s just say kind of sucked they all look the same they weren’t really that engaging so i took that feedback and i started improving my thumbnails now i get feedback from people asking me how i created my thumbnails the best way to think of feedback whether it’s positive or whether it’s negative is it’s a gift someone was caring enough to give you some type of feedback that you can use to improve upon so collect feedback but then also act on that feedback [Music] strategy number four you want to make sure that your videos have good sounding audio here’s an example where i’m using the microphone built into my camera and it’s not very good you’d probably leave this video pretty fast so you don’t want to use your camera’s microphone or your computer’s microphone instead you can invest in an external microphone this is the rode nt usb mini it’s about a hundred dollars and it produces pretty good sounding audio with good audio you’ll find that you’re able to retain your audience longer [Music] strategy number five you should make sure that you light your youtube videos well here just as an example i’m using the cheapest lighting source of all i have a window behind the camera that’s illuminating my face and this looks pretty good if you want to invest a little bit of money you can pick up an led light you could pick one up for maybe 40 50 dollars and then you could shine it through parchment paper or shower curtain just to soften it a little bit and you’ll get a pretty nice effect but that could really improve the quality of the way your video looks [Music] strategy number six you want to make sure that your videos have a good thumbnail so a thumbnail is kind of like the cover of a book you could have the best possible video but if the thumbnail’s not enticing enough to get people to click on it no one’s ever going to know how good that video was and for my thumbnails there are always three elements that i look to incorporate in every single one first off i like having some text that reinforces what the video is about here’s an example where i say scan documents this video will walk you through how you can scan documents on your phone also i like including some type of visual element that supports what the video is about so once again with this scanning example i’m holding a phone that’s currently scanning a document and then lastly i also like including my photo on every single thumbnail so why do i do that well this reinforces the brand let’s say someone’s watched one of my videos before and they found it valuable and helpful when they see a subsequent video that i do they’ll see my photo again and hopefully because they found that first video that they watched really helpful they’ll see this next one and they’ll be more inclined to click on it and here are a few other examples of thumbnails that i recently pulled together that use these three elements [Music] tip number seven you should have some good storytelling and also structure to all of your videos and i always laugh because i kind of follow my high school english essay format i have a beginning middle and an end it’s kind of like i have my intro my body and then the conclusion so just to take one of my videos as an example i recently did one on setting permissions in sharepoint i know it seems like a boring topic but let me walk through what the format is at the very beginning i say hey today i’m going to show you how to set permissions so i’m confirming the reason you clicked on the video then next i also talk about what you can actually do with permissions what you can accomplish with them then i launch into the body of it where i actually explain how you can do it and i try to make it a little bit more fun i have the fictitious kevin cookie company and we’ve recently had an employee who stole our secret recipe so we’re going to use permissions to make sure that doesn’t happen again so it makes an otherwise boring topic a little bit more fun and then in the conclusion this is the chance to summarize what everyone just learned i think i would make my high school english teacher proud [Music] strategy number eight focus on the metrics that matter in youtube there are lots of different metrics you have things like views you have likes you have comments this might be a little bit controversial but the only metric that should matter when you’re trying to build your channel is how long you’re able to retain people when watching your videos and this also goes back to the previous point on how much value are you delivering so what is retention well let’s say someone watches let’s say 80 of your video your retention is then 80 or let’s say someone only watches 10 your retention is 10 now youtube wants people to stay on their platform as long as possible the longer someone’s on their platform the more ads they see so the youtube algorithm will promote videos that have very strong retention so if you want your youtube channel to grow if you want more people watching your videos if you want to earn more money on your videos you have to focus on the one metric that will drive all of those and that’s retention now a good challenge is once you get a video out how can you produce another video that has even better retention than your previous one it’s challenging but if you can get retention over 50 percent consistently on your videos you’re gonna have lots of winners and you’re gonna see some very quick growth strategy number nine creating and growing a youtube channel takes a lot of time and i kind of joke because i had a pretty demanding job at microsoft and i basically exchanged it for another demanding job working on youtube videos on my channel i have over 400 videos now and if i had to estimate it probably takes me about 8 to 10 hours to produce each video that includes research pulling together a script filming editing creating a thumbnail it’s a massive amount of work but if you’re willing to put in that work you can also achieve pretty phenomenal growth on youtube [Music] and this brings us to strategy number 10 you want to make sure that you’re also having fun if you’re having fun you’ll enjoy it and you’ll be more willing to put in the time you’ll also be more enthusiastic about learning and improving your videos all right well those are all the different strategies i had for you today let me know down below in the comments did you learn any new ones or are there any other strategies that you’re using on your channel that have helped you grow if you enjoyed this content please give it a thumbs up to see more videos like this please consider subscribing also if you want to see me cover any other topics on this channel leave a note down below alright well that’s all i had for you today i hope you enjoyed and as always i hope to see you next time bye [Music] you