Starting a YouTube Channel: How to Achieve YouTube Growth

Do you have a YouTube channel?

Want to optimize it to get more subscribers?

To explore how to build and grow a YouTube channel, I interview Tim Schmoyer.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Tim Schmoyer, founder of Video Creators, a YouTube channel and website that helps people grow their YouTube subscribers. With 10 years experience, millions of video views, and more than 200,000 YouTube subscribers, Tim is the world's leading expert on building YouTube channels.

Tim explores what you need to know to build a successful YouTube channel.

You'll discover how to customize your channel.

Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below.
Listen Now

You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher.

Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Starting a YouTube Channel
Your YouTube Channel Approach

Tim says if you aren't trying to grow a community, have no need for subscribers or conversions, and only want to share your videos with your family, then posting anything and everything is fine.

However, if you want to build a brand around your video content to grow subscribers, views, sales, conversions, etc., then you need a more focused approach.

A channel, Tim explains, is another word for your YouTube account. It's where your videos reside. For example, Tim's videos are on YouTube.com/videocreators, and when people are looking for his videos, they know that's where to find them.

A YouTube channel can be focused on a topic, but it doesn't have to be, Tim says. It could also revolve around a belief, a person, etc. He stresses that your YouTube channel should be very specific to target a specific group of people and deliver a very specific value.

Listen to the show to discover who comprises the demographic on YouTube.

Common Mistakes

People make three big mistakes on YouTube. First, many feel like they need a high-end production team and fancy equipment. Tim says you can grow a very successful channel with basic equipment.

Your smartphone may be sufficient, depending on the type of content you want to make, the audience you want to reach, and the image you want to present for your brand. Start with what you have, and possibly invest in a lens for your camera and an external microphone to clip into your phone.

Sometimes, a full production studio works against you, because the people have a different content focus and expect higher quality. YouTube viewers, on the other hand, are very forgiving of a shaky handcam if the value of the content is high.

Second, people don't pay enough attention to the titles and thumbnails of their videos. Most of your YouTube traffic will come from related videos, suggested by YouTube, when users are viewing other content; an enticing title and thumbnail drive those clicks.

Tim says a lot of the top YouTube creators he knows spend just as much time, if not more, developing their title and thumbnail than they spend on the actual content.

Start with your title and thumbnail in mind before you start shooting the video. This enables you to capture the thumbnail you need. For example, a video about how to look better on stage needs a thumbnail that portrays that; it could be as simple as a picture of a crowd of people with a spotlight on the main focal point on stage.

If you shoot the video first and figure out the title later, the opening may not quite connect to the title until two and a half minutes into the video.

The third mistake people make is taking too long to hook viewers. Tim says that when someone clicks your video, you have 15 seconds maximum to relate to the title and thumbnail. That way, viewers feel like they're getting the value they were e...