7 Best Tips to Grow your YouTube channel in 2018

If you are struggling growing your YouTube channel, you're struggling with getting more subscribers and more views on your videos and heck, even getting more comments on your videos to actually feel like you're speaking to someone. Stick around because in this video I'm going to share with you my seven best tips that have helped me grow my channel. Hi, my name is Trena and on this channel I help creative entrepreneurs just like you can get on YouTube to grow your business. Now, whether you currently have a channel and it's stalled out or you are just getting started with a channel, these tips are going to help you get more subscribers and get more views. If you do the tips that I give you, okay, the first thing you have got to do and I did not do this when I got started and once I took a YouTube course, I went to a YouTube workshop and listened to Derral Eve speak. This is the number one thing he suggests. Become a student of YouTube. You have got to watch YouTube videos to make good YouTube videos. This is something that I wasn't doing. I watched a few videos but I wasn't looking at different niches and different types of videos to help me make better videos myself. So take a couple minutes out of your day, every day to watch some videos. What are they doing in those videos? What is standing out? What is something you can incorporate into your videos? Trust me, this will be game changer in your channel growth if you just take some different aspects of different channels and incorporate it into your videos. Now the next tip is something I talk about all the time here on my channel because it was my biggest mistake that I did when I got started and it is checking your analytics. You have to look at that data if you want to get better, if you want to reach more people, if you really want to grow your channel. So if you are only getting a few views on your videos, you may not have the data to see your audience retention graphs, but you're still going to have data on how people are finding you, what traffic sources are bringing you traffic to your channel. I have an entire video on that. I'll link it right up above so you can go watch what areas of your analytics you need to look at to really see growth in your channel. The next tip is to research your content. I don't know how many times I need to say this, but you really got to research what what people are searching in your niche to know what you need to create. You can't just throw videos up on the wall and expect them to stick. You've got to get into the head of your viewer, you've got to anticipate what they are going to search in YouTube so that you can have your video there right in front of them. I really like to use a tool called Vidiq to help me research a little bit more than using YouTube search because that's a perfectly great place to start and it's totally free. But if you want to look at how I use Vidiq to research my videos, I will also link video right up above for you to check out when this video is over. Okay, now onto another tip that's going to definitely help your channel grow and it is collaborating. Reach out to people who are doing content similar to you or who are talking to people that you want to be your audience. So I teach YouTube strategy to business owners. So obviously a great collaboration would be someone who teaches YouTube, which I did one with Michelle B. Over on Channel Notes and I think I got 400 subscribers the month I did a collaboration with her. But I could also do collaborations with photographers because photographers need to learn to use YouTube and so if I am on a photography channel, I get access to their clients or their viewers or a social media strategist. So think like six degrees of separation who you could collaborate with. And here's the thing, don't be afraid to reach out. When I reached out to Michelle of channelnotes, I never thought she would respond to my email and now she did. We collaborated and we're having a monthly date on analyzing our channels together. So you would be really surprised. Just hit that send button because the worst that could happen is they don't respond. All right, the next tip is another one that I definitely saw change my channel and that is your thumbnails. YouTube now has an analytic that actually shows you how good your thumbnails are. It shows a click through rate to see every time that YouTube is showing your videos. How often are people clicking that video? So it's in your analytics. I'll be showing on your screen right now how you can check that. And this is something that I learned. You'll know that I've said here before on my channel when I change my thumbnails, when I change the look of my thumbnails, we increase my click through rate by 300%. If you're not seeing a lot of traffic or you go to that statistic in your analytics and see that your click through rate is like 1, 2, 3%, what can you do differently on your thumbnails? Make them really pop and stand out. Plus I have a video that I will link down below as well that you can check out. I've got plenty of tutorials that help you up your thumbnail game. The next tip is to really define your niche. I just noticed this here on my channel. I started branching out into some other topics like productivity and healthy lifestyle and a couple other types of topics that weren't YouTube centric. What happened was my channel began to plateau. I wasn't gaining a lot of subscribers or views during that time, so I went back to the heart of my channel and just focused on YouTube tips. What happened was my channel started to skyrocket again because people come to a channel for a specific thing, so you cannot be someone for everyone or you end up being no 1 for everyone. So pick your niche and hold strong. Stick with Pinterest strategies, stick with Instagram strategies, stick with photography for beginners. You've got to stick with that niche and just keep creating content around that topic. Even though I may create multiple videos around how to get views and how to get subscribers, it may take your audience to hear it in multiple ways for it actually to set in. So don't worry about being too niche. This is good on YouTube. The next tip is to engage. Now if you're struggling with getting comments on your videos, all you have to do is ask. Ask in the video. I also like to post my own comment on my own videos, asking a question, and then respond to comments. I know for me it sometimes gets hard to respond to every single one of you, but I still try to. Even if it may be a couple of days late, you're taking the time to comment on my video. So I try to get in there and respond to everybody. So if you have a YouTube channel with people commenting, make sure you respond to them, engage with them, ask them a question, get a conversation going. Because YouTube is a social platform and it is a great place to build your community. If you're ready to learn how to make your YouTube channel even better, just get more views and subscribers. Make sure you click that playlist that is on your screen right now and don't forget to subscribe to this channel for weekly tips and strategies on how you can use YouTube to grow your business. Thanks for watching. Bye.