7 Tips to Increase Your YouTube Subscribers for Free

You have the potential to become one of the most known YouTubers of all time but have already hit a roadblock in the initial stages of building your channel. Don’t worry, you are not alone, every new content creator on this biggest video sharing site is struggling with those initial views. I’ll share the tips for getting success with YouTube views and subscribers in the beginning and you can use it as a first step towards building a great YouTube channel.

Participate in Forums

This is a great way to promote your website online but it works even better with YouTube channels. If you discover forums or online communities built around the theme of your channel, it is easier to promote a video than a website. If you share a video that provides insights to the industry the forum is related to, it can receive praise whereas a website link can get you banned right away. There are communities built around categories of YouTube channels which you can participate in and promote your channel.

Promotion on your Personal Social Profiles

If you are new to YouTube, chances are that your YouTube channels’ social profiles are lacking followers resulting in no contribution towards the growth of your channel. Using your personal social profiles can be a great idea in the beginning phase. Promote your channel and videos on your personal Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social media profiles you use regularly. This might be the exact initial traction that your channel needs.

Keyword Research

Use tools like keywordtool.io to search for keywords before uploading a video or even creating it. Remember that while you research keywords for YouTube, it is not a bad idea to research keywords for search engines like Google as well. As YouTube videos are also indexed on Google, ranking your video on Google can bring you a lot more views and subscribers specially if you have a new channel as you are not automatically receiving new views from subscribers.

Maintain Quality but Quantity Matters!

The most subscribed channel on YouTube, Pewdiepie has uploaded a total of 2,292 videos so far. Consistently uploading quality videos and working on promotion alongside will do wonders for your channel. Maintain a schedule if possible and stick to it. If you are receiving lower number of views, look for the reasons for same and make adjustments accordingly to the new videos you upload.

Use Annotations and Cards

Use https://www.youtube.com/featured_content and https://www.youtube.com/branding under Creator Studio of your YouTube profile to promote your channel and videos. Adding a watermark will lead the viewers of your videos to your channel resulting in more subscriptions. Promoting videos can help you receive more views for the video you set as featured. Also, leverage the newly launched cards feature. Edit an existing video and add a card which links to your website, merchandise or another video/playlist. Using annotations is another great way to link to similar videos inside another video. Use annotations and cards on your popular videos to promote your significantly less popular videos. If your videos are part of a series, link to the previous video at the end of every video with the help of annotations.

Promote on Your Website/Blog

One of the simplest ways to promote your YouTube channel can be linking it in the sidebar of your website or blog. You can place it among the list of social profile links or add a specific link for YouTube channel. If your articles or website pages are visited by notable amount of users, you can embed your videos on these pages. This not only increases the views on your video but also makes your webpage more interactive.

Look for Opportunities

Different categories of YouTube channels may need different tools and resources for promotion. While managing a gaming related channel, I found some excellent forums where I met people who have channels exactly like mine. They are willing to view your videos, provide you feedback and you can do the same for them in return. You can search for people with similar taste on social media. Twitter is a great place to start. Reading descriptions and recent tweets can give you idea about the interest of a person on Twitter. Follow them and if they follow you back, you can start the conversation and link them to your YouTube channel. Reddit can be a great place for many YouTube channels and videos. Search for a subreddit based on your channel’s category and share your video/channel link if appropriate.

Take the time to search for all the available tools and opportunities for your channel’s category and create a timely strategy to leverage these sources. Creating a great channel with videos following a specific theme will make the marketing process a lot easier and will deliver the results faster.