5 Ways to Get MORE Subscribers to Your Small Channel

So you're new to YouTube and you're looking to grow your subscribership, or you've been posting content a long time and you're like, man, I just can't get this subscribership to grow. Well, I'm going to give you some of my top tips in this video for growing your subscribership. But the first thing I want to tell you about YouTube and the YouTube platform is it's something that does take time. Now, my first year in YouTube, I was doing it very part time. I didn't even get a thousand subscribers in my first year. So I just wanted you to know that this is not going to be an overnight success thing. You're not going to put a video out tomorrow that's all of a sudden going to get a million views. Does it happen? Sometimes it does. It's very rare. So if you are trying to grow subscribership here on YouTube, it's going to take time because essentially what you're doing is you are growing a community around the content that you are creating. So on my guitar channel, I created a community of older guitar students who want to learn and have fun playing their guitar. So whatever your channel is about, we have to think about the long term and we want to gain subscribers. Which takes me to point number one. We have to make content that our audience loves. All right? Hopefully you know who your specific person is. I just told you. On my guitar channel, I teach older adults to have fun with guitar. So I'm always doing content that's related to older adults, particularly those that are beginners. And a lot of the content is focused around things that they're interested in. So it would be music that they're interested. So I'm doing a lot of, like, John Denver ccr. Okay. Not doing modern music because my audience is an older audience. And while some of them might listen to modern music, the songs they want to learn are the songs from, like, their nostalgia days. Okay. So I'm focusing on stuff from the 60s and 70s and sometimes stuff in the 80s to attract this particular person. So you want to think about your. Your audience and the stuff that they're going to want to watch. Because if you do a video that they love, chances are they're going to subscribe to your video or your channel. Okay. Or if they don't and they like you, they might go watch another two or three videos and then subscribe to your channel. So the key number one, if you want more subscribers, you have to make content that they find fun, engaging, and helpful. You want to be Solving their pain points and problems. And you're going to do it for absolutely free. And they're going to watch this video and they're like, wow, this was so awesome. I want to see more content from this creator and they're going to hit that subscribe button. So number one is always the content. Make great content for your audience. Number two, make content around a specific topic. And YouTube or just in marketing in general, we call this niching down. So on my channel, I'm not doing electric guitar, classical guitar, acoustic guitar, I stick mainly with acoustic guitar and I focus on older adults. So I always tell people like, you know, if you have a YouTube channel and you're posting stuff about cooking and real estate, and then all of a sudden you're posting, you know, videos about music and then travel and then all of a sudden, you know, I don't know, it's on dancing, that your channel is just all over the place. So the subscribers don't really have something to latch on to. The people who, you know, liked your cooking video may not like your dancing video. So we want a YouTube channel that is congruent with one specific topic so that you have a focused energy and you have something that they're going to want to subscribe to. So an example I use is imagine you're a cook. Okay, so we're doing cooking, but maybe we're doing how to create tasty gluten free recipes or how to cook gluten free at home for your family and make it taste good. Okay, so that is a very specific audience. And people who maybe have a gluten allergy or have celiacs would latch onto that channel like, oh my God, this is for me. I've been looking for a channel just like this that is for me and that makes them want to subscribe because they know the content is specifically tailored to them, their interests, their problems and their needs. Number three, you can ask people to subscribe. I think in the world today, people know to subscribe to a YouTube channel, but if you want to remind them, you can ask them or even have a little graphic that pops up that reminds them to subscribe. Do not do this too early in the video, especially if it's the first video. It's kind of like asking someone to marry you on the first date. Give them one or two important points and then you can kind of remind them, hey, if you're liking this content, click the subscribe button below real quick so that you can see more content just like this. Okay? Don't make A big deal out of it should only take like three or four seconds and get them right back into the content. But in general, people today know well enough that if they like to content and they like the creator, they know to hit the subscribe button. But if you want to do a little visual pop up, that's totally fine too. And also helpful number four, start a Facebook group. I found this very helpful in the start of my YouTube channel. When it was very, very young. I created a just beginner guitar with Lauren Facebook group and people would go over there and they would join the group. And what I would do is when I released a new video on YouTube, I would post it in the group because I wanted people to go watch the new content so I could get more views on my video. But it also remind them, hey, if you haven't subscribed to the channel yet, make sure to just subscribe. They're in my Facebook group so these are kind of like my people that I'm not a stranger to them. So if they haven't subscribed yet, I just kind of remind them to subscribe to the channel or if you have an email list, if you have the, you know, at the end of an email. P.S. hey, if you haven't subscribed to my YouTube channel yet, click this link and go subscribe so that you don't miss when I post new content. Number five, paid advertising. Now I think the verdict is still out on this one and I'm going to show you on a screen share shortly. But YouTube does have YouTube promotions that can help new YouTubers, especially those who don't have big brands, get more exposure. But I'm going to show you some of the pros and cons of this right now. So I want to show you how the promotions tab works really quick and I want to show you kind of like why I'd be very cautious about it. So yes, YouTube does have under content you will see there is a promotions tab and you will see here that I've, I've ran a couple little test promotions on this and you can either get more views or you can get more subscribers. So I tended to do more subscribers because I wanted people who would watch my content and then subscribe to it. So you can see some of these videos got more. So this one, it was about like 70 cents a subscriber, whereas this one was closer to $1 a subscriber. And I didn't spend a ton of money, I just threw a hundred dollars at some of these videos. This one Was doing really well in terms of when I first released it. So I threw 250 at it just to see. So what this does is it just puts it on the homepage. It gets the video in front of people's faces. So you can see I got a lot more impressions than I probably would if I just released the video on my own. Because this is a smaller channel. Now here's the downside. While I'm getting visibility, the downside of YouTube and paying for these promotions is the engagement is super low. And YouTube doesn't like low engagement. So I'm skeptical whether this really helps you grow your channel at all or not. Or if you're just buying vanity metrics. So this was a video that I did, you can see that was this one here. So I spent about $100 and I got 100 subscribers for that. But I want you to look at the audience retention on this. Okay. So the blue is just regular organic people who found my video organically and chose to click on the video. So these people still have to click on the video, they still have to like it and they have to click subscribe. And with this video, I was targeting an audience. There are some targeting things you can do. So I was targeting a us based audience. So that costs more money. And I was targeting a specific age range and you can choose male or female in the language they speak. Speak. That's about as targeted as you can get through the promotions tab within YouTube Studio. But you're going to see here, my retention is horrible. So on my regular video, about 40 seconds in, I still have 41% of my audience watching my content. Whereas on the display ads, only 13.5%, there's 30% less people watching this video through an ad versus organic. So I just want you to be aware, yes, you can pay for these things, but I'd be cautious at how much it's, it's helping your channel because yes, while I got some subscribers, you know, I don't know if these people are going to keep watching. Maybe it's some of these people at the end here, 2% of people who are watching. So maybe it's some of this 2% that is sticking around that they really did like the content. But I would just be cautious and do some testing on, on your channel because I did do promotions. And whether it's, you know, helping to grow my channel or not, I'm not really sure the verdict is still out on that. So I would be cautious know that there is this promotions tab in YouTube but I personally feel growing your channel organically is the best way to grow a community that is really inspired by your content and wants to continue to watch your content. Now, when it comes to growing your channel, Lauren, should we do short form or should we do long form content? I have some very, very strong opinions on this. Go watch this video over there where I'm going to tell you the pros and cons in which I prefer.