Although they may be interesting, uploading videos to YouTube is not enough these days to attract and retain loyal subscribers. People spend a lot of time on their phones thanks to social media. SNS (social network services) are also known as. Social media can consume up to 145 minutes per Internet user.
As a creator, your goal is to build an audience and make sure users spend as much time as possible on your channel. You need to create a YouTube Community in order to do this.
How do you do it? How to begin? How do you engage people?
These questions will be answered and your strategy will be enhanced with 13 simple, yet powerful recommendations.
Building Your YouTube Community Vs. Growing Your Channel
Let’s first clarify the terms.
Growing your channel:
- Creating new engaging content
- Target audience research and content tailoring
- Encouragement and promotion of subscriptions
- Increase the views of your videos etc.
Building YouTube Communities is:
- Establishing relationships with viewers
- Engage people with your content
- Make them really interested in your content
- Encourage them to focus on actions such as visiting your website, purchasing products, and so forth.
What is the YouTube Community Tab?
YouTube Community Tab is a component that allows creators to interact with their viewers beyond videos.
You can share polls or posts about channel updates, announcements and images, so that users can interact via likes and comments.
Anyone with 500+ subscribers may post to the Community Tab.
This tab lets people see content from different channels even if they’re not subscribed. You can access the tab via the homepage or a specific channel.
It is very simple and will inspire you to write more.
A viewer who comments or likes your post will be able to see more of it in their feed.
These 13 hacks and tips will help you build and maintain an exciting YouTube Community.
Interesting read: How to Promote Your YouTube Channel in 9 Effective Ways
1. There is a healthy balance between informational and promotional content
YouTube creators often use ads to make money. If the ad can be seamlessly integrated into a video, it can be very useful.
Your channel will look like an advertisement board if you stuff your content (both videos and Community posts) and promote too much. This is not what you want.
A 20-minute video with 16 ads integrations may be too long for the average viewer.
Find the right balance between informational and promotional content, and then keep it.
Ask your community for their opinion on ads. Then create a content strategy that includes the right promotion to help you monetize your videos and allow viewers to still enjoy them.
2. Search Engine Optimization
SEO is important for both search engines and social media.
Each SNS has a smaller search engine you can optimize for. You’ll appear in search results more often as a result, which will lead to more views, subscribers and community members.
These are some YouTube SEO tips:
- Your meta titles, descriptions, tags, and tags should be improved. These should be specific and compelling.
- Keywords should be used in the description, video title, metadata.
- You can use a keyword rank analysis tool for the most popular keywords to spot keyword gaps in your videos and track your YouTube rankings.
- To find out where your competitors are, do competitor research. Pro tip: A digital SEO tool can help you do this in just a few clicks.
3. Get excited with polls and quizzes
YouTube Community has many features, including polls. You can use them to increase your engagement with the community.
Create a poll to ask people what the topic is before you reveal it. You’ll spark curiosity and get a sense of what viewers are most excited about.
If you are having trouble deciding what topic to discuss in your next piece, you can still use the same strategy. Sometimes, it is as easy as asking your audience what they would like to see.
4. Comment Management
The Engaging News Project reports that more than 50% of Americans leave comments online and more 77% read and comment on social media.
These stats show that comment management is crucial for brand profiles on social media.
YouTube is a powerful social media platform that has over 2 billion monthly users worldwide. This makes it an ideal place to engage with your audience.
Creating a YouTube community is all about observing positive comments and answering customers’ questions and concerns.
Communication is key in any relationship. Make sure you respond to all comments and engage in conversation with your audience. This shows you care about your viewers, and that you value their opinions.
5. Discussion Drives: Pinned Comments
Pin important comments to add additional information, links or questions that will spark a conversation.
People should be engaged with your content as much as possible. Allow them to interact, question, and answer.
For this purpose, pinned comments are great.
You can make it even more fun by creating a competition to see which comment gets pinned and who the winner is. Engaging your community will bring out the best in you and encourage many jokes and creative ideas.
6. Make the Community Feel Involved
Your YouTube Community should be your co-creators. Ask them for feedback and opinions in the comments. Use their feedback when creating new videos.
This will help you to come up with new ideas and improve the content. It will also make it easier for people to connect with your finished pieces and future work.
To interact with the audience more, you can use a Q&A live streaming feature. You can get to know your audience by sharing information about yourself, your goals, and experience. Ask viewers questions, and then answer them honestly and creatively.
7. YouTube Stories: Keep in Touch
In between video uploads, reach out to your YouTube Community, show BTS footage, tease the audience, and share trailers for future videos.
You can upload videos only and not use Stories or the Community tab. However, viewers will still be there, but on a smaller scale.
Internet users are looking for entertainment. Creators who spend as much time as possible with them often win.
8. Community Customization
Use GIFs, stickers and other visual elements to personalize your community.
Using the same reaction GIFs builds a personal brand that viewers remember when they see them on other platforms or channels.
The Annoying Orange YouTube channel is a great example of viral reaction GIFs.
These elements can also show your wit, and make a post funny.
9. Channel Organization
Your channel should be easy to use.
Create playlists using existing videos to create a positive first impression for new viewers.
Take a look at the Nike channel on YouTube. It is extremely organized and features a variety of playlists that are based on current topics.
This will improve the user experience of existing viewers.
10. Get a sneak peek behind the scenes
It’s always fascinating to see behind-the scenes pieces because they reveal the secrets behind creating something.
Fans of certain movies will be impatient to see the BTS clips and bloopers.
You can create engaging and funny stories about filming a new video every day. This could be anything, from technical views of your equipment to simple bloopers that show you spelling mistakes.
11. Create a network of affiliates
Affiliate programs offer financial incentives for people to click links, engage in content, purchase and recommend stuff, etc. These programs are used to increase traffic and sales on websites, but they also help your YouTube community.
To grow your audience, you can create such a program. Or allow your most loyal viewers and friends to join an already existing one.
This will ensure that you have loyal affiliates and partners who will support you and your videos whenever you need them.
12. Collaboration and cross-promotion
Creator collaboration can deliver excellent content. You can find another YouTuber who is in your niche and you both will be popular. The collaboration sparks curiosity.
You’ll soon see the results of your efforts if it’s a relevant, high-quality piece that hits the needs of your target audience.
13. Social Media Promotion
Social media promotion is powerful and hard to undervalue.
Social media has revolutionized our lives with engaging content that corresponds to nearly every aspect of our daily lives.
Every social platform has its fans who choose it as their top source for information and communication.
The Audience Project recently found that more than one-third of US users use Instagram to follow brands. Meanwhile, 19% use YouTube and Facebook for the exact same purpose.
Choosing a single social media platform drastically reduces the chances of your brand being shared.
Cross-promotion is a great way to build a high-end YouTube audience. It allows you to attract more prospects and admirers by sharing your content on multiple social media networks.
Cross-posting on social media allows you to reach people beyond YouTube and get familiar with your content.
If you have a blog, promote your YouTube channel and community via other social media.
Take, for example:
- You can notify your Instagram followers if you post a new video to an Instagram account with active followers.
- Tweet the Twitter link along with an attention-grabbing thumbnail if it is Twitter
- Use hashtags.
- In your Facebook posts and tweets, use keywords to describe the video.
Interesting read: How to run a successful YouTube channel
How to empower your YouTube community
You must be consistent and active in your YouTube community to make it a success. Also, ensure that you highlight your content on other social media channels to get more attention.
You can manage a lot of content, which requires constant monitoring. This takes a lot of effort and time.
You can use sufficient tools to keep your head above water, even if you are overloaded with business processes, increasing sales, and brand promotion.
SocialPilot allows you to achieve your social media marketing goals in a calm, organized environment. It has powerful scheduling and posting features that can dramatically reduce time and save resources.
A Social Calendar allows you to track your success and modify your posts with a variety of customization options.
To summarize
You must build relationships with your YouTube viewers to grow and develop your YouTube community.
People will wait to see your next poll, poll, contest or video. Engage them, speak to them, answer all their questions, show gratitude, and give them bonuses.
These are the essential elements you need to remember for your YouTube strategy
- You can build a personal brand using unique language, GIFs and stickers.
- Engaging with the audience between posting videos via posts and stories
- Responding to comments from viewers and pinting the most interesting (yours or that of a fan).
- Promote your channel and community via social media platforms that have a large following.
- Sharing exclusive content and showing behind-the scenes.
Your videos will be seen, liked and promoted by a community you create on your channel.
SocialPilot’s first article was 13 YouTube Community Building Hacks That You Need to Know.
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