YouTube Marketing 101: The Ultimate Checklist to Skyrocket Your YouTube Channel in 2021

YouTube-ing isn’t just about uploading video content and then waiting for people to find your video. You have to make your video discoverable through various mediums and tactics. Getting plenty of viewers and subscribers is very much possible if you get the fundamentals right.

After all, YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world with:

• 2+ billion monthly active users, which is equivalent to almost one-third of the Internet.
• One billion hours of video are being watched daily on the platform.
• The number of channels earning six figures per year on YouTube growing more than 40% YoY.

Furthermore, when it comes to making purchase decisions:

• Over 40% of global shoppers surveyed say they have purchased products they discovered on YouTube.
• Over 90% of people surveyed around the world say they discover new brands or products on YouTube.
• 70% of shoppers said they’re open to learning about products on YouTube from brands.

So having a strong presence on YouTube can make all the difference for your business (solo or enterprise). This infographic is for you if you:

• Have a YouTube channel
• Do not have a YouTube channel but wish to learn the things you need to start a youtube channel
• Want your specific videos to rank at the top on YouTube search
• Want to learn the things you need for a YouTube channel
• Wish to leverage YouTube as a source of side income
• Wish to increase your subscribers, watch time, and viewers
• Wish to know more about beginner YouTube setup
• Wish to gain more audience engagement on your channel
• Wish to have a remarkable YouTube presence

How to make the best of this infographic blog post:

• If you want to get the most of this infographic, read the entire blog post too. It describes all the things to know before starting a YouTube channel. No fluff, just actionable points.
• In the blog post, we’ve elaborated every point and aided it with real analogies. These little examples will aid your understanding of how to promote your YouTube channel.

Bummer alert:

Your YouTube growth lies in applying techniques that your subconscious has known for long, but your conscious hasn’t applied yet. This is a twenty-step journey through the maze of YouTube success: covering A-Z.

Long story short, this infographic comprises research-based statistics and 20 surefire guidelines that will help you grow your YouTube channel in terms of loyal subscribers, massive engagement, and brand credibility.

So if you wish to know how to start your YouTube channel on the right foot, or grow one to new heights, let’s begin.

20 Surefire Guidelines for YouTube Marketing Success:

1) YouTube Channel Checklist #1

If you get the gateway right, traction will follow.

Set up your Channel with these 3 essential components:

A. Channel Name:

Your YouTube channel name should give the audience an idea of what your channel is about.

Example #1: If you have a recipe channel, it is advisable to suffix terms like “Recipe”, “Cooking” or “Food” in the channel name so that the audience is inclined to learn more about cooking unfailingly reaches your channel. Your audience might not be able to find you if you simply keep your name as the channel’s name.

Example #2: If you do not have a specific channel genre, then you can pick a name that reflects your channel’s values. Here, you have all the eccentric and creative liberty for your channel name. It can be anything but a mediocre name.

Naming a YouTube channel is the same as naming a company. In a company, brand strategists work on getting the brand name and logo, and tagline aligned. Companies pour so much time, art, and tech into deriving their names. Your YouTube channel is your very own company! Then, why not put a little effort into it? Have a channel name that stands out from the crowd.

NameSprint Activity: Search competitor’s channel names. Sit with a pen and paper (or a spreadsheet for the tech-savvy), write down keywords that your channel focuses on covering. Encircle the words that can be mixed. Do the wordplay. Add some millennial terms. Again, mix-and-match. And derive a channel name that can move mountains.

Simply put, you need to have a meaningful channel name that is unique. It will boost your discoverability to the YouTube audience.

B. About Channel:

Does your channel “About” bio even help the YouTube algorithm? Heck yes, it does! The YouTube search crawler crawls your Channel’s “About” section, “Video Titles” “Video Descriptions”, “Video Tags”, and every activity that isn’t anonymous.

Crawling your channel’s “About” section helps YouTube comprehend what your channel is about. YouTube in return favors you by showing your video to the YouTube searchers who are searching for the terms you already have mentioned in your channel About, video title, description, and tags.

But make sure not to stuff keywords! Try writing a lucid and honest channel “About”. Your channel “About” bio can comprise topics that you will be discussing in your videos.

Example #1: If you have a tutorials or tips channel, your “About” section should mention the topic names (episode names if possible), your background which confirms your credibility as a mentor, your story (what propelled you to start this channel) and value proposition (what makes your channel the best).

Write a unique value proposition. Explain why people should watch your video and not your competition’s. Clearly explain the value your audience will get from watching your videos.

In short, make sure you write an informative description that also contains important keywords that reflect your channel’s significance.

C. Channel Email:

When your channel exceeds 10,000 subscribers, product companies, brand sponsors might try to reach out to you for sponsored content. You sure don’t want to miss such an opportunity.

Your channel email is your gateway to networking with your audience and earning through potential brand deals. Thus, make sure to include your email ID as it helps your audience, brands/sponsors approach you. This can tremendously help your small business grow.

YouTube’s channel email features allow you to add more than one email address. So you can add multiple emails just to make sure you don’t miss out on any such opportunities.

2) YouTube Channel Checklist #2

A. Logo:

Have a customized logo for your channel. It should reflect the values and content of your YouTube channel.

Hire a professional illustrator or graphic designer to design the logo for your channel. Initially, if you do not have any budget for a logo, try creating your logo for free in Canva.

Before you barge into the logo-making process, you’d need to get the fundamental concepts for your brand right. Read this guide to gain insights into what makes a stellar logo.

B. Social Widgets:

Include links to your social media accounts – Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, etc. This will help the YouTube audience reach out to you in an easy way.

If your audience lands on your Instagram or Facebook page and loves it, then you just bagged one loyal follower (admirer). Hence, social widgets help boost your social media reach & engagement.

C. Channel Art:

Adding channel art to your profile hugely aids your channel branding. Make sure it aligns with the values of your channel and the insights you provide.

Power Tip: Change Channel art once every month.

D. Channel trailer:

Imagine you run a YouTube channel that covers diverse topics (like vlogging or interviewing). Now when visitors come across your YouTube homepage, and if they see your channel trailer which gives them a brief idea on why they should watch your videos, they’re more likely to subscribe instantly.

Having a channel trailer is an ingenious way to help visitors know what your channel is about. Get the hook right by having a channel trailer video that is impactful, creative, or entertaining, and nothing but valuable.

3) Video Title, Description, and Tags

A. Video Title:

It is highly advisable to have your video title include keywords that your niche target audience might search for. Also, include your channel name in all your video titles.

Power hack: Try renaming the video’s “Filename” before uploading the video. For Example: If your video is about you vlogging Google Headquarters and its existing filename is: “20120.mp4.”, then try renaming it to a proper name like “Vlog_GoogleHeadquaters_Growfusely”.  This allows YouTube to focus on your target keyword and comprehend easily what your video is about.

B. Video Description:

YouTube algorithm crawls your video description. This is one of their ways of knowing what your video and channel are about. Thus, you would want to send the right signals to YouTube’s algorithm. You can do this by putting relevant information in your video description.

You can find accurate keywords by using the “SORT BY” filter and choosing “Most Popular”. Next, choose a video that has the highest views. Examine the title, description, and tags (use VidIQ chrome extension to see hidden video tags) of that video. Detect the keywords used in that popular video.

Next, make a list of keywords. Now, find the most accurate keyword from the list and use that keyword in your video description and title.

Use tools like Google’s Keyword Planner, Moz, Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, etc. to find the best keywords.

Here’s a YouTube checklist of content to be included in your description:  

– Summary of your entire video. This should also include the key focus keyword that you found

– Include timestamps. This helps the viewer gain insight into what you’ll be talking about. As the agenda is to events, so are ‘timestamps’ to videos.

– About your channel or the services you provide

– Links to your websites

– Your social media profiles links

Power Tip: If you want your video to rank #1 on google as well, then follow these steps:

Search for your keyword in Google

Now, if the search results display any videos, redirect to those videos. Analyze the title, description & tags of that video. Repeat the same keyword hunting process you did earlier

Optimize your video description details around the keywords of those popular videos

Do not stuff keywords. Refine and use keywords that have high search volumes. (Use the keyword research tools mentioned earlier)

C. Video Tags:

Stuffing irrelevant tags in the YouTube video tag section is against YouTube’s guidelines. Thus, include tags that are highly relevant and specific to your video. You might as well include the misspelled keywords as your tags as a lot of people mistype during searching.

To see the tags your competitors are using use the VidIQ chrome extension.

4) YouTube Analytics

Leverage the power of Analytics to grow your YouTube channel. Analyzing your current YouTube data metrics will help you improve and correct the mistakes you’re making. The more you optimize your video content and channel, the more subscribers you can bag.

If you want to do an advanced analysis to grow and manage your channel then use these 2 Tools: TubeBuddy and vidIQ.

TubeBuddy is packed with various features: 10 Bulk processing features, 14 Video SEO features, 6 Promotion features, 18 Productivity features, and 14 data & research features.

VidIQ helps you maximize organic reach, engage effectively with influencers, track social conversations, create relevant content, and foster collaboration.

Take this free course to get started.

5) Audience Retention

YouTube favors you if people stay for a longer time on your videos. Strive for increasing watch time. Create content that hooks the audience.

If viewers keep bouncing from your videos, YouTube considers it as: Viewers aren’t liking this video much, hence this video shall appear less on their feed.

But on the flip side, if viewers watch your video till the end, YouTube promotes your video by making it appear often in viewers’ feeds. Isn’t that great?

Hence, retain your audience for the longest time possible. The only way to achieve audience retention is to create viewer-centric content which is extremely valuable, creative, and engaging/entertaining.

6) End Screens

End screens help the user to take desired call-to-actions such as subscribe, answer to a poll, or even go to a suggested video. This feature can potentially boost your video views instantly.

Open the videos page in YouTube Studio beta -> Select any one of your videos -> from the left menu, choose Editor -> Select Add An End Screen.

You can also customize an end screen by applying a template. This is super easy, saves a ton of your time, and also helps establish your brand name in your audience’s mind.

7) Video Quality

Alright, so when it comes to “Video Quality” a lot of excuses pop up – especially tons of excuses regarding the budget. To simplify this dilemma of yours we recommend three channels that have tons of tutorials on “How to make a low budget video/podcast?”.

Here are our top favorite channels that teach how to have a great video quality in your defined budget:

• Video Influencers – Learn here.
• Think Media – Learn here.
• Justin Brown – Primal Video – Learn here.

Strive to create at least a 1080p HD video. Try investing in a proper camera setup. It always pays to have stellar video quality.

In short, investing in good gear is a valuable investment. Your viewers will adore the crystal clear quality of your video. This also will automatically help you increase audience retention.

8) Video Length

“Video Length” has been a topic of discussion for a lot of creators. And guess what? It’s worth having this debate!

When it comes to YouTube SEO, longer videos tend to perform better than shorter videos. It is advisable to have a long video as it suffices and enhances the criteria of audience retention.

But how do you decide that your particular video seeks a longer length or shorter length? Well, to be honest, there is no secret recipe for video lengths. Try creating videos of different video lengths. Further, track in your Analytics which video is performing well – the longer one or the shorter one.

Above all, make sure your channel has videos of all lengths and tailored specifically for different types of audiences.

9) Consistent Upload Schedule

Consistency outstrips cameo. Don’t ghost your audience.

Imagine, if you uploaded 7 videos every day, or once a week, and then you do not upload a single video in the upcoming 5 months. This undoubtedly will drop your subscribers and audience engagement.

Yes, it isn’t mandatory to upload a video every day (not everyone is GaryVee). But, at the same time as a creator, it should be your willingness and persistence to upload at least one video a month. YouTube favors creators who upload consistently.

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin

You need to unfailingly keep posting, engaging people creatively, and revising your video strategies. The more you upload, the more benefits you reap. Create a monthly or yearly content calendar, and later schedule it with tools like TubeBuddy or YouTube’s free feature – Premieres.

10) The Initial 15 Seconds

The first 15 seconds of your video will most certainly define whether your audience will engage (watch your video till the end) or not. Thus, make sure the initial 15 seconds of your video is nothing but spectacular.

You can retain viewers by giving a video gist or showcasing your final outcome. This will make people want to watch the entire video. Here are some guidelines on how you should start your first 15 seconds:

• A creative video intro (<6 seconds)
• Introduce yourself in the most creative way possible.
• An answer to how your video will help the viewer. Explain an existing problem and how this video will provide a feasible solution.
• If your video is a vlog, then you can show top glimpses of the video during those 15 seconds.
• Announce giveaways or surprises.
• Personalize the video by using the word “YOU” in this video. The user should be able to connect with you. Make sure everything you speak is genuinely out of the willingness to help your viewers flourish.

To win viewers’ attention and engagement in the initial 15 seconds and for the rest of the video, you need to craft “Valuable and ethical HOOKS”. You can do this by focusing heavily on your content strategy. This won’t happen overnight. A true valuable hook will be the result of successive creative strategies.

Your videos may not be compelling at this point, but you definitely will manage to have influential videos if you stay consistent in building creative strategies, writing, and execution.

Viewers who continually find your videos interesting are more likely to tell their friends about it and hence your fanbase hikes. Your audience will unfailingly do referral marketing for free if they really love your video.

11) Upload Defaults

Well, video descriptions are crucial for your video’s SEO. But mentioning the same websites or social media details every damn time can be tedious. To save you time, YouTube has a feature called “Upload Defaults”.

This feature will save you a lot of time from writing default texts for description. Go to > Creator Studio > Channel > Upload Defaults. Make sure you leverage ‘Upload Defaults’ features: – Description, Tags, Category, Comments & Ratings, Video language, and CC.

With the “Upload Defaults” feature you can include a common description (like a website, your social media links, and your channel about) for all the content that you used to input in your videos every time.

Example: If you have a food channel, you can include general tags like food recipes, recipes, healthy, lifestyle, dishes, dinner recipes, breakfast recipes, cook, cooking, chef, cooking show, etc.

Time to save some more time? Let’s keep going.

12) Video Playlists

Arrange related videos into playlists. This is to help viewers consume more of their desired content in one place. Having a video playlist also helps you increase audience retention (your video’s watch time).

For example: Suppose you run a photography tips channel, you can create different playlists of videos for DSLR, iPhone, vlogging, AMA sessions, and everything that possibly can be clubbed together and categorized.

Thus, make sure you club similar genre videos into playlists!

13) Customized Thumbnails

Create creative and splendid (not clickbaity) thumbnails for every video.

Example: Suppose, you have a yoga channel and you have a video related to “Surya Namaskar”. Now when somebody searches for “Surya Namaskar”, your video appears #1 on the YouTube search result. But which result do the viewers click on? Your video or another channel’s video? The user clicks on other channel’s videos because their thumbnail was more concise, creative, and magnetic. Despite you having the #1 rank in YouTube search, the viewers choose to see other channel’s videos as they have creative thumbnails.

The percentage of people that click on your video/website is known as Click-through-rate (CTR). The higher your CTR, the better. YouTube boosts the video which has a higher CTR (which is most clicked by the user). Similarly, YouTube drops your ranking position if viewers are skipping your video in the search results.

Thus, make sure you create creative and customized thumbnails for all your videos! If you do not know any designing, start designing thumbnails easily and FREE here: Canva

14) Branding

A. Consistent intro and outro:

Have a classy, standardized intro and outro to all your videos. Make sure that the videos always reflect your brand. A creative video Intro is a hook for audience retention and a creative video Outro is a hook through which you can gain subscribers, and social media boost engagement.

To simplify, hire a video maker (who can create videos in Adobe Premiere Pro or After Effects) to create a common template for your video intro. Example: 1 intro template for regular videos, 1 intro template for vlogs or AMA videos, and 1 extra intro template for random videos.

If you are too short on budget, you may use these budget-friendly video editing software or get started with Adobe Spark for free. If you don’t want to dive deep into editing, you can start with templates from VideoHive.net.

B. Watermark on each video:

Many users prefer to download the video to their device to be able to watch it offline or use it for their own purposes. Having a watermark will ensure & claim that the video remains under your authority. Having a watermark prevents the misuse of your video and the characters in it.

C. No copyright music:

Using copyrighted music is a big no-no! Try using music from Audio Library which has free music and sound effects or from NCS (No Copyright Sounds) royalty-free music.  

If you have a music-related channel, we recommend using third-party platforms like Songtradr which helps you distribute and license your music everywhere. Songtradr, helps artists retain control of their publishing rights and royalties.

15) Video Engagement

Video engagement means how much your audience interacts with your content. Often, it needs some extra attention from your end. But it’s so worth it. Here are some essential strategies to boost video engagement:

• This one is a no-brainer. Encourage viewers to like, comment, share, and subscribe in a creative manner
• Conduct ‘Giveaways’. It will help you gain +ve ROI in terms of visibility, authority, and even loyalty from your audience
• Collaborate with other YouTubers
• Ask your viewers to drop a question in the comments section
• Run contests. Example: tell your viewers that you’ll be answering the best question from the comment section in the next video or the top 5 creative questions will get some amazing gifts

Power Tip: Apart from the YouTube engagement, you can also funnel your audience outside YouTube by moving them to your personal platforms (like your website, email newsletters, and other social media accounts). So, even if your viewers haven’t clicked on the bell icon, they’ll still receive your channel or product update through your email newsletter or social media. So how do you get your YouTube visitors into your email lists? You do this by giving away FREE downloadable (and of course valuable) guides, free training, exclusive content, checklists, templates, scripts, etc. – all for FREE. With your FREE high-value content, your audience definitely wants you to be in their email!

16) Do Not Clickbait

Always follow the principle of “What you see is what you get” or WYSIWYG. Getting a million views by click-baiting leads to massive hatred and a bad reputation. Thus, make sure that the video’s title & thumbnails align precisely with your video content.

We all come across clickbaity videos in our YouTube feed. And if you’ve ever clicked and watched such videos, either you have hit the dislike button or unsubscribed to that channel, sometimes even reported and blocked the channel.

It is time that every creator focuses on creating a legacy. It won’t happen in a fortnight, and it takes years to build loyal followers through really valuable content. Focus on the big wins, instead of the short-term gains. If you dwell on the no. of views, you will make short-term decisions that hugely affect your long-term results and your overall legacy.

Pursue only ethical strategies by all means possible.

17) Engage With the Community

Here’s how you can effectively engage with your community:

• Leverage the power of YouTube’s Premiere feature.
• Upload posts with YouTube’s Stories feature.
• Reply to every comment. A lot of you may not agree to this, but this is essential if you want to win in the long run. Ever wonder what these small conversations can help you with? These tiny conversations can provide you honest feedback and let you know in-depth consumer behavior which you may never discover in a design sprint session.
• Again a no-brainer – Conduct polls. Be as creative as possible while drafting the poll questions & answers. Polls are possibly the easiest way to dive into your viewer’s perception. In return, you tend to make more inclusive and user-centric videos.
• Live stream as often as possible. Your audience loves to see you raw and rad. Live streaming mainly rose in popularity due to gaming channels. But it proves to be extremely effective for all types of channels. Without any hesitation, give it a shot!
• Do interactive Q&A sessions (through YouTube’s Premiere feature). During the Q&A, give a shoutout to viewers who ask the best questions or pass on a valuable message.
• Host a meetup in your town for your subscribers. This is an awesome investment to get your audience to engage and open a gate to a plethora of networking opportunities. 

18) Promote

To make sure every video gets the attention it deserves, try to go above and beyond with 360-degree Digital Marketing.

• Promote your videos on social media platforms like Instagram, Quora, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat/TikTok, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and so on.
• If you have 10,000+ subscribers, YouTube offers you to share a post in the community section. If you have exceeded 10k+ subscribers: go to one of your videos: click on the “share” icon -> click on the red button “share as a post” -> write meaningful description -> Hit send. You can also learn more methods here.
• Promote your video by embedding the video link to one of your blog articles (if you write). This will increase viewer traction if plenty of people are reading your blog.

19) Merchandise

Sell your products directly to your audience with your virtual store shelf – with the YouTube Merchandise feature. YouTube’s ‘Merchandise’ feature is your gateway to a parallel revenue stream.

For example, you teach art & craft on your YouTube channel. You can launch your own merch with customized products made by you and sell it directly to your viewers from YouTube.

Sounds interesting? Get started with merch on YouTube.

If not merchandise, you can also focus on affiliate income (i.e. getting paid for referring products to the audience). To get started with affiliate marketing, consider reading this definitive guide to affiliate marketing.

20) Keyword Rich Transcript

Attract your target audience organically. And to do this you’ll require a keyword-rich transcript. Your video transcript should comprise the best keywords you are targeting. For example: if your video is about a software product, make sure you utter the software’s name in your video’s first 30 seconds. This will help YouTube (and Google) comprehend your video clearly.

Power Tip: Add your own subtitles and CC (closed captions) for a keyword-rich transcript. Having subtitles & CC immensely helps YouTube to crawl better. Also, it opens up your video to a larger audience spectrum who speak different languages, including hearing-impaired viewers. We recommend using the tool Rev or Translate by Humans.

Bonus Knowledge

• Google is now able to extract specific parts of a video and show it as a featured result for a user’s search query in the search engine. So for example, if you have an 8-minute recipe video on “How to make pasta”, and if a user searches for pasta’s ingredients in Google, they might be shown the part of your video where you describe the ingredients. However, there is no precise way to determine how Google deems a video to be worthy of being shown as a featured result. The only way you can hope to get up there is by properly structuring your video with a proper transcript. Hence have accurate video transcriptions as Google is extracting snippets from your video to display it to the user’s desired search query.
• Achieve Youtube SVO (Suggestive video optimization): When it comes to YouTube SEO, you should focus on hitting the “Suggested Videos” section. To do this, try to come up with similar descriptions and tags of your competitor’s videos which are already ranking at the top. “Similar” doesn’t mean to produce a replica of the most popular videos, instead, it means to produce a similar topic more creatively. YouTube says that if your metadata matches another video’s metadata then you are likely to be included in the YouTube suggestion side panel. The idea is not to be a spammy or redundant stealer but to rank next to the other popular videos of your niche.
• Making a video around the most demanding keyword is a powerful strategy to gain organic traction. The strategy is to create an organic traffic engine for your YouTube channel so that you don’t have to spend on running Ads every time. Thus to gain massive organic traffic it is very crucial for you to create content that has massive demand.

And how do you find out keywords that have “massive demand”? Through careful keyword planning and research.

Search for the keyword/topic (from your video) which you want to rank first on the YouTube results. Then apply “_” (underscore) before the keyword you’re searching. This shows the phrases people use along with the keyword you were searching.

Ex: If your keyword is “Soups”, here are some queries you can search in the YouTube search bar:

• _ Soups
• How to _ Soups

YouTube’s auto-suggest feature shows suggestions when you type in the search bar. Use those auto-suggested keywords in your title, description, and video tags.

And that completes our YouTube channel setup checklist!

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YouTube is an evergreen content platform and just like any other huge platform, it keeps adapting and embracing new technologies. Keeping the marketing factors aside, if you really want to grow your YouTube channel we highly recommend you to take FREE courses from the YouTube Creator Academy.

So there you have it — the YouTube channel starter! Now you know all the things to do for a YouYube video and your channel to be a success.

If you’ve come this far reading and if you find this guide valuable, share it with your peers, family, acquaintances, and bosses (who do not agree on starting a new YouTube channel or disregard your video ideas). Share it with a YouTuber who you feel can benefit from reading this guide.

Happy Creating!

Editor’s Note:

None of the recommendations made in this blog post and infographic are affiliate links. These recommendations are based solely on our experience and reviews.

Author

Pratik Dholakiya

Pratik Dholakiya is the Founder of Growfusely, a SaaS content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO.