YouTube Secrets: The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Following and Making Money as a Video Influencer

by Sean Cannell

If you’re targeting a younger demographic, then Snapchat or Musical.ly might be relevant for you.

If you know your audience is predominantly female and interested in things like cooking, DIY, fashion, or style, ...

A few platforms, specifically Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, are relevant for a wide variety of peop...

Don’t neglect them, whatever your channel nich...

Use your existing engagement as a starting point to build your audience.

Often, your target audience is made up of people just like you, people who share the same interests. That’s why the social media platforms you already use can be a great starting place, especially if you’re unsure of how to build your audience. Pick the social platform you are most passionate about and start engaging people with quality content related to your channel.

One big mistake many creators make is to create videos for YouTube and then simply upload the same exact video on every social media platform. Although that might be better than nothing, typically it doesn’t do nearly as much as creating unique and different content for Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, or even getting deeply involved with the community on Reddit, if it’s right for your niche.

Never forget, each social media platform is unique. You can’t approach them all the same way.

Know the dress code of whatever platform you’re attempting to use.

Snapchat is best suited for behind-the-scenes, raw video footage.

YouTube, on the other hand, allows you to upload much nicer content, widescreen video at 1080p or more, and good audio.

The same goes for static images.

Instagram works best with square images, while Facebook and Twitter pref...

The Future of Social Media

Here’s what we recommend you do.

First,

pick two social media ...

Pick the platforms that are most complementary for you, your niche, and your target audience.

Second, we recommend blocking some time on your calendar to research and experiment with the two social media platforms you’ve chosen.

Try some Google searches like “best practices for Instagram” or “how to use I...

The reason we’re recommending a Google search rather than offering specific tactics is because specific social media tactics change constantly. You need to stay on top of the latest changes to platform strategies.

Spending just thirty minutes to study and learn about each platform might not seem like much, but it will place you in the top 10 percent of experts on those platforms.

Third, after you’ve spent some time studying and practicing on your chosen platforms, create a simple content strategy for how you intend to make the most of them.

Always utilize hashtags for every post. This involves your posts in ongoing conversations, which helps people find your content. Plus, it helps you to find potential viewers. Click on a hashtag, and you will see a list of other posts and pages that you can engage with. Reply to their posts, comment, and start conversations.

This works on Twitter. It works on Instagram. In fact, you can do this anywhere you find a hashtag. Even YouTube has a hashtag function now. The hashtag is one of the easiest ways to find specific groups, audiences, and niches, and one of the easiest ways for people to find you.

Frequently visit other influencers’ comments to engage with their audience. One of the best ways to find the tribes you want is by looking at the tribes of influencers who are like you. For value-added engagement, respond to ...

Ask yourself what value you add for others. Do you contribute to conversations in meaningful ways? Do you utilize the value you create to build relationships, gain attention for yourself, and lead them to your channel?

Discoverability: Attract Your Ideal Audience on Autopilot

“The best place to hide a dead body is on page two of Google.”

Google remains the number one search engine for just about everything, but very few people know what the second largest search engine is.

actually, it’s YouTube.

What Is Discoverability?

don’t neglect strategically optimizing your videos for search if you want to build your influence.

Climbing the search rankings needs to be part of your ongoing growth strategy.

Enhancing Discoverability

The three most important aspects of video SEO for YouTube are your title, your description, and the tags you add to your video.

To enhance your video discoverability, ask yourself what the top ten to twenty questions are that your target audience might be searching for on YouTube.

One practical way of doing this is by using the YouTube search bar itself.

it provides a list of pop-up predictions underneath your search.

Don’t try to cover too many topics in one video.

You’ll get far better results by creating narrowly focused videos to address specific questions that your audience is asking.

make sure you create a title based on the exact phrase YouTube predicted and include variations of that same phrase in your description, as well as the tags.

Another aspect of discoverability on YouTube that you can tap into is suggested or related videos.

Optimize Content Before You Create it

Another great tool is called the Google Keyword Planner.

A huge mistake we see people make is recording videos and trying to optimize them afterward. We believe you should reverse that order. Strategically plan the optimization of your video before you press record. That way, you’ll be able to create the most relevant content possible for that exact search term.

This focus on video SEO needs to happen from day one, before you have a single subscriber. In fact, SEO should be a priority from the moment you begin planning your channel. If you build it into the foundation of your channel, you will generate more traffic long-term. A well-designed video with a focus on SEO will continue to get recommended long after you’ve forgotten about it.

However, the best video SEO in the world won’t do any good if your content isn’t good.

Collaboration: Grow Your Audience Exponentially

“Competition makes us faster, collaboration makes us better.”