A brief YouTube Creator Academy video advising businesses on how to grow and retain subscribers. It emphasizes three practical strategies: maintain a consistent publishing schedule (set expectations and assign days for formats), explicitly ask viewers to subscribe (intro call-to-action and channel watermark), and use channel customization/sections to highlight videos with high subscriber conversion.
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Want to know the key to channel success on YouTube? According to the YouTube Creator Academy, subscriber count is a critical metric that best predicts the performance of a channel. Now developing and retaining an audience on the platform doesn't happen overnight, but there are a few things your business can start doing today to help you grow your following. Let's walk through them Commit to a publishing Schedule Think about the television shows you watch on a weekly basis. Let's take Saturday Night Live, for example. Saturday Night Live has aired on Saturday nights for 43 seasons. Thanks to this consistent airing schedule, the show continues to boast impressive ratings and a loyal fan base season after season on YouTube. Sticking to a regular release schedule will help you build viewership by setting your audience's consumption expectations and giving them a reason to come back to your channel. If you offer several different video formats, such as blogs, educational videos, or Q&As, you might consider reserving a specific day for each format to keep your output balanced and dependable. Regardless of the schedule you choose, be sure to communicate your publishing plans regularly, whether that be during your intros, in your description box or through your channel trailer. Ask people to subscribe As a marketer, you're no stranger to the concept of a call to action. In fact, you probably use them all the time to convince website visitors to download a piece of content or subscribe to your blog or request a demo. That's why it should come as no surprise that adding a call to action to your video is a great way to encourage viewers to stick around by subscribing. This is because people are more likely to take an action when you actually ask them to do it, and there are a few ways to go about this. The first option is to incorporate the Ask into your Intro talk track. This ensures that you're getting the word out within the first few seconds of the video before folks start to drop off. The other way to ask your viewers to subscribe is through a custom subscribe button within your videos. To add a subscribe button across all of your videos, click Creator Studio and then click Channel on the left hand side. Under Channel, click on Branding and then click Blue. Add a Watermark button. This will open up a screen where you can upload your watermark. For optimal visibility, YouTube recommends sticking to one color and using a transparent background. Once you upload the image and click Save, a second screen will appear where you can specify when you want your watermark to appear. That's it. That watermark will now appear across all of your videos and reveal the option to subscribe when a viewer hovers over it. Use Strategic sections to attract subscribers Audience growth is easy when you take advantage of the customizable features available to you. But before you tap into these growth opportunities, you need to start by enabling channel customization. Here's how. Under your Channels banner, click the Settings icon and click the Customize the layout of your channel to on and click Save. With customization enabled, you're ready to make some changes aimed at audience growth. The first thing you want to do do is identify and highlight the videos that have the best subscriber rate using custom sections. To do this, start by using YouTube analytics to pull a handful of videos that have a high number of views and subscribers and a strong average watch time. Then, to create the actual section, click Edit Channel. From there, click Add a Section and then under Content, select the type of content, videos, playlists, or shows from the drop down menu. Finally, on layout, select either the vertical or horizontal layout and click Done. So there you have it. Three strategies that will help you build your viewership for more tips on how to grow your business channel on YouTube, check out the other videos in this series.
