So, you want to know how to get more views & subscribers on your youtube Vlog? This is one of the questions that everybody wants to know and the answer to it really is not that difficult. If you want to reach 1 million Youtube vlog views or subscribers, then the key is to put in the work. With that said, I do have some tips and tricks for you to get more Subs and views.
Getting more views on your channel is critical to it being successful. I say this because we both know that you won’t keep recording videos if nobody is there watching them. Do yourself a favor and make sure you follow the tips below so that you get the most vlog views possible.
How to Get More Views & Subscribers on Youtube – 15 Free Tips
1. Title Your Videos Correctly
This is perhaps the biggest tip that I can give you. If you are vlogging about travel, then title your video so people know where you are going. If your vlogs are about fashion, then title your videos about the clothes you are wearing or the tips that you are giving them. Nobody wants to try and guess what your video is about.
So remember at the end of the day YouTube is simply a search engine for other people to find things. So ask yourself this:
What are the search terms, words and phrases that represent your content that people are actually searching for?
Because at the end of the day that is what’s going to get you those evergreen views when it comes to people who use YouTube as a search engine. With that in mind, if you can choose keywords that people are searching for online, then your video will get many more views.
2. Add Video Descriptions
I know this is something that nobody wants to do, but it does work. When you add a description to your video more people will see it. The reason behind adding the description is so that Google and the other search engines will have words to tie your video to, which will give you more chances of coming up in the search engines.
This also works because sometimes bloggers and other vloggers will add your videos on their site, which by adding a description and linking to your other videos it will give you a backlink from their site.
Things to include in your video description:
- Keyword phrase towards the front of your description (don’t keyword stuff the description though, make it natural to read).
- Include a subscribe button.
- Recommend other videos or playlists related to the topic of the video.
- Add links to your social media accounts or website.
I know what your thinking, this is quite basic stuff, but to be honest, a lot of people forget these simple steps. These things may not have a big impact in the short term but in the long term, these tips will help get people to watch more of your videos.
3. Turn Your Watermark into a Subscribe Button.
You probably already know that you can add a branded watermark to your YouTube videos. The branded watermark is the little logo/icon that is positioned in the bottom right-hand corner of videos.
Watermarks are a great way to get people to subscribe to your channel without them having to stop the video or leave the video page. Most people, however, use watermarks that don’t work as they don’t stand out enough. So you need to try and use a watermark that stands out from your video.
I would recommend making a watermark that looks like a subscribe button. That single change can increase your number of subscribers by a massive amount. After all, that’s the goal of your watermark, to turn viewers into subscribers.
4. Include annotations in your video
YouTube annotations are a great way to enhance your video view count. Interlinking of videos or linking a video to your playlist becomes so much easier with annotations. They help to guide your viewers towards watching other videos on your channel and keep them engaged to your content. A ‘call to action’ annotation can also get you more subscribers.
This is one of our favorite things to do on all of our videos. We ask our viewers to please share the link to the video if they found it helpful at all. It doesn’t take anything more than simply asking for a share to see results. I remember the first time I did this and to my surprise, 16 people shared my link on Facebook, which ended up getting my video thousands of more views.
6. Work on your Channel Trailer
It is no secret that your channel trailer can turn random viewers into loyal subscribers. Here’s how it works. First, you want to address your target audience in the first 10 seconds of your trailer. When a person comes to your channel they might not be sure if it’s the right channel for them. That’s why people often watch the trailer.
So you want to start your trailer by addressing who your channel is for. Does your channel help people starting a business? Or maybe you do makeup tutorials. You need to address that group directly. Within 10 seconds, your target audience should know they’ve found the channel for them.
Next, it’s time to tell your origin story. Here’s your chance to explain why you created your YouTube channel. And make no mistake, the origin story is very powerful. That’s because your origin story helps your channel stand out from the thousands of other channels in your niche. Your origin story also helps your viewers relate to you as a person. Which makes them more likely to subscribe. For example, tell the story of your struggles and successes and how you got to where you are now.
Finally, cap your trailer off with a pitch to subscribe. At this point, the person watching a trailer is so close to subscribing. They just need a little push. So don’t be afraid to ask people to subscribe to your channel. In fact, YouTube recommends that you end your trailer with an explicit call to action for viewers to subscribe.
As a pro tip, don’t end your trailer right here. Instead, add a five to 10 second end screen that displays a prominent subscribe button. I’ve found that this helps convert even more viewers into subscribers.
7. Send an Email to Your Followers
When I have a video that I really want my followers to see, I simply send them an email and tell them about it. This is something that I was not able to do in the beginning because I didn’t have an email list.
Just know that if you have friends or family’s email addresses then you could always send the link to them that way. The more views you can get initially the higher chance more people will see in as the days go on.
8. Reply to Comments
Did you know that replying to comments can help you get more subscribers? It’s true. In fact, YouTube states that when creators take the time to interact with their loyal community, it can encourage audience participation and ultimately result in a larger fan base. And I’ve seen this play out first-hand time and time again.
One guy who did this was Jeff Rose. When he first started on youtube he made sure to reply to every single comment that came in, even if it was a simple thank you or thumbs-up emoji. In fact, Jeff believed in this approach so strongly, that he even replied to haters. And this is one of the main reasons that Jeff’s channel is able to get so many YouTube subscribers. He may not reply to all comments anymore but he still replies to a lot of them.
9. Link from Other Social Media Accounts
It’s not enough to upload a well-edited high-quality video. If you want to increase the number of views for your video & more subscribers, you need to promote it. Promoting your videos on popular social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook can go a long way in increasing the view count & subs.
How many people are you friends with on Facebook? Do you have a decent size Twitter account? Maybe you have 20K people following you on Instagram. If any of these are true, then link from those accounts back to your video.
What you will see very quickly is that your video will get a large number of views early on. Once this happens the number of likes, shares, and thumbs-ups will also increase. What happens then is your video is well on its way to going viral. Trust me, social media exposure is great when used correctly.
10. The Winner Videos
This is one of my favorite ways to get more subscribers on YouTube. Here’s the step by step process:
First, log into your YouTube analytics and click on ‘Audience’ and then click ‘See more’. And voila, just like that, you should then see which videos that generate the most subscribers for your channel. We’ll call these videos winners because they’re proven to generate an above-average amount of subscribers. If you can get your winners in front of more people, you’ll get more subs.
Here’s how you do it. Your first option is to make a winner video your channel trailer. This option makes the most sense if you don’t have a trailer set up yet. Because remember, your trailer is the first thing people that aren’t subscribed to your channel see when they visit your channel page. So it makes sense to show them a video that converts these people into subscribers.
11. Show a Next Video
If someone watches one of your videos, you have one chance to turn that person into a subscriber. But imagine that you can get the same person to watch one, two, or even five videos from your channel. They’d much more likely to subscribe, right?
So how do you do that? Promote the next video on your end screen. You see when someone’s done watching one of your videos, they’re thinking what’s next. Okay, now what? And when you feature a video as a next video, you give them a clear answer to that question. And another opportunity to watch your content and subscribe.
Here’s how to set this up, first include 10 to 20 seconds of time at the end of your video for an end screen. Obviously, you want to add a big subscribe button to your end screen. Make sure to add a prominent subscribe button to all of your end screens. Although many of your viewers aren’t ready to subscribe yet. They need to see more of your content first. And that’s where your next video comes into play.
To set up a next video, simply include the text next video to your end screen. Now I like to use the phrase next video, but you can word this however you want. For example, you can use terms like watch next, check out this video, or any other phrase that works for you. And then link to one of your videos above that text using YouTube’s built-in end screen feature. In general, you want to use a video that’s closely related to the one they’re watching.
Now if you’re not sure what video to use as a next video, no worries. Just use a winning video that you found using the strategy above. That video is proven to generate subscribers. So you really can’t go wrong by using it as a next video.
A quick pro-tip, the next video strategy increases your viewer’s total watch session. And according to YouTube, channels, and videos with higher watch times are likely to show up higher in search results and recommendations. They go on to say watch time benefits don’t evaporate when viewers stop watching your content.
If a video on your brand’s channel drives them to watch more videos, the channel earns some watch time credits for the cumulative minutes accrued. In other words, when someone watches one of your next videos, it’ll help your videos rank higher on YouTube. Which will result in higher rankings and more views.
If you want to find some fun ideas for Youtube channel check out our 10 Fun Youtube challenges ideas post.
12. Focus on Quality Rather Than Quantity
When I was launching my YouTube channel, I read every article out there written by so-called YouTube experts. And I could sum up their advice like this. The secret to growing your YouTube channel is to publish videos on a consistent basis. If you don’t publish at least one video per week, you won’t get any subscribers. As it turns out, this advice is well-meaning but misguided.
Most so-called YouTube SEO experts started their channels back in the day. Back then you could actually grow a channel by just publishing lots and lots of videos. Today, not so much. In fact, YouTube reports that 300 hours of video are now uploaded to YouTube every minute. That’s insane! So to stand out today, you can’t just publish a bunch of videos and hope for the best.
Instead, you need to focus 100% on producing amazing videos. Instead of publishing lots of videos, focus 100% on producing amazing video content. When you publish your videos using this approach they will tend to outperform all of the lower quality videos.
13. Boost Audience Retention
I probably don’t need to tell you that audience retention is a massively important YouTube ranking factor. As a reminder, audience retention is the percentage of your video that people watch. For example, if you publish a two-minute video, and people tend to watch one minute of that video, your audience retention is 50%.
When it comes to audience retention, YouTube states that your goal is to keep audience retention as close to 100% as you can because this means viewers are watching all the way through your videos. And videos with consistently high audience retention and watch time have the potential to show up more frequently in Search and Suggested locations on YouTube.
In other words, the better your audience retention, the more views you’ll get. And in general, more views equals more subscribers. And I found that my videos with audience retention also tend to do a great job of converting viewers into channel subscribers. And there’s a simple reason for this, when you can get someone to watch your video all the way to the end, they’re much more likely to hit the subscribe button compared to someone that only watches half of your video.
The question is, how can you improve your audience retention. Pattern interrupts. Pattern interrupts are elements that you add to your video that change things up. And according to research studies, when someone sees a pattern interrupt, it resets their attention which makes them more likely to keep watching your video. This could be something simple like changing the camera angle. Or adding text to the screen. Or a pattern interrupt or something more drastic. Like changing what you’re wearing. As you can see, you don’t need anything fancy or complicated. Just toss something into your video that’s different than the rest of your video. And you’re set.
14. Optimize Your About Tab
Most people sleep on their channel’s About tab. And the thing is, your channel’s About section is where a lot of people go to learn more about you. So if you write a compelling description here, you can turn those people into subscribers.
Here’s exactly how to do it. You want the first sentence of your about tab to be your channel’s positioning. As you might remember from earlier in this post, your positioning is a single sentence description of what makes your channel unique.
Now, this sentence is important because it tells potential subscribers why your channel matters right off the bat. But it’s also important because this sentence shows up when people search for your channel in YouTube. So people will see it here too.
Next, expand on your positioning. Specifically you want to answer questions like what makes your channel different or better than the others out there, what topics do you cover most, describe that here.
For example, you can see that I emphasize that the content of my videos are insanely actionable. I also go on to list out a few of the topics that my videos tend to cover. As a pro tip, sprinkle in a few keywords that you want to rank for here. A well optimized About section can help your channel rank in YouTube search.
Finally, end your About section with a call to action to subscribe. For example, I end my About section with a strong call to action that asks people to subscribe to my YouTube channel.
15. Turn Comment Hearts into Subs.
A while back YouTube rolled out a feature called creator hearts, that let you acknowledge awesome comments that people leave on your videos. And when you heart a comment, it shows a little icon next to the comment with your face. That way everyone can see that you really liked that particular comment.
The question is how can you use hearts to get more subscribers? Well, when you heart a comment, that person gets a notification. And according to YouTube’s internal data, they found that viewers who have received a heart on their comment are three times more likely to click on the notification than with other types of notifications, potentially leading more viewers back to your channel.
So if someone leaves a great comment on your video, make sure to reply and heart the comment. That way, when that person sees that you hearted their comment and replied, they’ll be primed to subscribe.
Conclusion
Everybody wants to know how to get more youtube views and subscribers, but few are willing to put in the work. Do you need to work 40+ hours per week to see huge views, no, but you will need to put some time and effort into this. Just know that in order to get more views you should always be producing lots of good quality videos.
