5 Tips for Catapulting YouTube Views

Our organization’s YouTube channel is one of the largest in the world within our industry. Currently we have over 785,000 subscribers and 145 million views. It’s grown incrementally at a consistent pace since 2006, and then three years ago we started implementing the following tips and saw an immediate upward spike that has continued growing rapidly to this day. In three years, our channel has nearly quadrupled in size. There is no magic formula to anything in life, but these five principles have been essential for our growth, and I trust they will for yours as well.

1. Content is king

Your footage quality can be bad, editing clumsy, font foolish, but if the subject matter is interesting, people will watch in droves. Engaging content is the key to success. In the past, we’ve spent weeks brainstorming, outlining scenes and writing voiceover scripts, hiring film crew to capture multiple camera angles, and then after days of editing and adding custom motion graphics, it eventually squeezes out 50k views… only to find a few days later that a video we randomly threw up of an unscripted, one-angle street interview, which was shot on an iPhone, got as many views overnight. A high-quality production is no guarantee of success—it’s always content over quality. Upload things people will want to watch. Nothing boring, nothing mundane, nothing moderately interesting, it must capture them and add value to viewers lives.

2. Titling is everything

Years ago, someone reuploaded one of our videos without our permission, and when they did, they retitled it. When we noted it, our video had 31k views, but their upload had six times the number of views (187k)—and it was uploaded 4 years after ours! To date it has had over 420k. Their subscribership was a tiny fraction of the size of ours, and the videos were identical outside of a 3 second logo they added at the opening and removing our short teaser. Our title was something like, “A fascinating interview on Hollywood Blvd.” Their rebrand was, “Ray Comfort Gets DESTROYED By Free Thinking Caribbean Woman.” Their provocative title worked. As the old newspaper adage goes, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Filmmakers add conflict to a story for a reason; it draws people in. Your one-line title is the biggest reason people will click. It will make or break everything. People want something interesting, something that will help them or entertain them. It must arrest their finger from scrolling. Your title is your main marketing pitch so make it a good one! Get a plucky title, and don’t upload it till you do. As you title, beware of creating clickbait—misleading or outlandish titles with weak or unrelated content, which lacks integrity and will hurt you in multiple ways. Make sure your content is strong and title is accurate, but fascinating. Studying the titles of trending videos will help you brainstorm ideas.

3. Thumbnail is vital

Your title will make or break getting your video clicked, the content will determine how much of it people watch and if they share (which YouTube’s algorithm captures to determine if they should push it to more people), and your thumbnail is third down the list of impactful tricks. This visually supports your title. It’s a billboard for the content. This doesn’t have to be fancy, but it should be eye-catching. A simple screenshot from within the video can work great, but hand select the most interesting image. An action shot is often the way to go. Depending on the type of video, a short bit of descriptive text added across the thumbnail can really help catch people’s eyes.

4. Consistent content is key

One of our secrets to success is regularly posting videos. It builds your base, and they get in the habit of coming back for more. There is a bit of a dance to it, and you must find the rhythm that works best for your constituency. We film all the time and don’t lack for footage, so we experimented with one video a day (for a season we even uploaded two a day), but found it was overload for our audience. The views per video dropped and we didn’t see the overall growth we hoped for. We landed on one video every 2-3 days. Find what works for you but be consistent so people know if they keep coming back, they’ll keep getting great content.

Again, content is king, so spending weeks working on a video with a topic that just isn’t that interesting is like putting lipstick on a pig—no matter how much you dress her up, no one will want a kiss. As counterintuitive as it sounds, if you need to dumb down the production quality, better to have simpler clips that come out at the pace of one a week than one every two months (unless it’s genuinely amazing). You’ll build your subscriber base quicker and grow your impact through your consistency. Like anything, try, test, evaluate, repeat. Find the pace and blend of ingredients that works best for you and that you can sustain.

5. Call to action is smart

If you have a commercial intention with your channel (it may simply be to share your message or be a marketing outlet to build awareness of your company, etc.), there are several ways to do it. The two we’ve focused on are monetization and end of video ads. As we have a large online store, and are a non-profit, ending ads have been a great way to create awareness of our products and the opportunity for people to partner with us. After a good video, we’ll see a spike in sales of the item we pushed. We’ve experimented with uploading product ad videos by themselves, but they never do well. They get low views and hardly get shared. While occasionally we still upload these solo commercials, what we’ve found most successful is to include them as short endings to normal videos. While folks won’t click on an ad, if they’re fully immersed in a random video, they’ll often stick around to watch a short plug at the end. They’re invested. YouTube also has “end screen” elements, which allow you to include a clickable link to your store or donation page (as well as to subscribe to your channel and to promote other videos), which is very handy.

As you build your social media empire, stay encouraged. It rarely happens overnight. If your content is worth sharing, keep at it, and be patient. There is much more that could be said, but these fundamentals can make all the difference. As you go, keep growing, keep reading articles, keep learning. If a few months go by and you’re not gaining traction, it’s probably time to reevaluate. There is always trial and error. Make sure you stop and see how much ground you’ve covered, lest you find yourself on a treadmill without knowing it. Ask for feedback, read people’s comments, examine your analytics, discover, and grow. Stay creative and have fun!