YouTube is currently the second largest search engine and the most used social media for watching videos in Portugal.

There are videos on every topic you can imagine and there are many successful Youtubers on this social network.

However, to be successful on YouTube, it is not enough to record videos and publish them on the platform. You need to have a strategy and know how to evaluate your videos to achieve notoriety on this social media.

Reasons to create a YouTube channel

The video format has gained more and more strength and this trend will certainly grow in the coming years.

With the growing appreciation of video content, YouTube currently has 2 billion monthly users worldwide. This social media is preferred for watching videos and the second most used search engine, after Google.

In Portugal, 96% of people with Internet access watch videos on this social network.

And yes, there is really a lot of content available on YouTube and new successful Youtubers are constantly emerging. But there is still space for you and your brand on this social media.

Having a presence on YouTube will allow you to increase the visibility and reach of your brand, achieve notoriety and authority in your area and promote your products/services in a visually attractive way for your consumers. As a result, you can strengthen the relationship with your audience.

However, in order to be successful on YouTube, you must have a previously defined strategy, otherwise you will have the work of producing videos that no one will see. And believe me, there are a lot of ghost videos on YouTube.

Steps to an Effective Strategy

Starting a YouTube channel requires planning and strategy. Do not create a channel without first being sure what you want to talk about and if there will be an audience for that channel.

There are a few steps that can help you define your YouTube strategy.

1.Decide your channel theme

Yes, you really have to define what your channel will be about.

Think about your area of ​​activity and, within it, also understand if you want to invest in general subjects within that area or if you want to position yourself in a specific segment.

Search for content within your area and understand what kind of searches users do about it.

You can use tools like Google Trends, Buzzsumo or KwFinder that will help you search for content.

For example, if you have a clothing brand, you can create a channel to talk about fashion in general or you can talk about fashion for people over 60 years old.

The more specific the topic of your channel, the more qualified your audience will be.

Therefore, think about what you’re really good at and how you can use it to your advantage so you can achieve success on YouTube.

It’s really important to have this step well defined to make sure that you send a clear message to your audience.

2. Find out what’s in your area

Realize which channels already exist within the area you chose. Analyze them, understand what type of content they produce, how they communicate with the audience and read their comments.

As a result, you will be able to understand how you can do differently from these channels.

It will also define if you want to impact the same audience, or a different audience, if you want to have a formal or informal style of communication and if you want a more serious or more relaxed channel.

3. Understand how you will solve your audience’s problems

If you want to be successful in video production, keep in mind that your videos must always solve a problem for your audience.

Even the funniest videos help the viewers just by having a few minutes of good mood.

Before producing your videos, always understand what is the problem of your audience that you will solve with that content.

4.Create algorithm-optimized videos

The algorithm is always present and this social network is no exception, so optimize your videos for it.

YouTube’s algorithm is responsible for 70% of video suggestions to users, so it’s really important that you think about the algorithm when producing your videos.

Titles: use the keyword as far to the left as possible and create titles always thinking about what users search to find you;

Description: it is essential for the algorithm to understand what the video is talking about and understand, whether or not, it will be relevant to users. So, create a description as detailed as possible, with moderate keyword usage and never less than 2000 words.

5. Respect the sizes of the social media

YouTube has specific sizes for each of the images on your channel:

Profile picture

The profile photo must have a minimum dimension of 800 x 800 pixels to ensure it fits all devices.

Cover photo

Although the dimensions of the channel cover photo are 2560 x 1440 pixels, all the important information in this photo should be within the safe area that corresponds to 1546 x 423 pixels. In this way, on all devices, mainly on mobile, the user will see the most important information in their cover photo.

Thumbnail

The Thumbnail has a dimension of 1920 x 1080 pixels.

This image is the first contact the user will have with your video. Therefore, it should be attractive, well composed, have a catchy title and reflect the content of your video.

This image can dictate the success or failure of your videos, as it is often through the impact it creates that the audience decides to open the video or not.

6. Publish often

To be successful on YouTube, you have to publish videos frequently. And that frequency must be consistent.

In other words, always keep the same publication frequency. You don’t need to post every day, but it also doesn’t make sense to post 5 videos in one week and 2 in the next week.

Frequency and consistency are important both for the algorithm and for reaching your audience.

Therefore, define how many videos you want to publish each week and on which days you will publish these videos. In this way, you will be able to retain your audience because on those days your audience knows that a new video will be released on your channel.

7. Set your video script in advance

Before you start recording a video, define your script.

Even if you don’t follow it exactly, you’ll know which paths to take and which paths not to take.

Recording videos without any prior structure is very risky, especially for those who have no experience in the area.

When defining the script, you will understand if you need any accessories for your video, what sound effects you can use at a certain moment and avoid having to stop recording or repeat the same.

8. Use the AIDA method

When recording your videos, use the AIDA method to ensure that they are watched until the end and to get the audience to perform the desired action.

First draw the ATTENTION of viewers. The first 15 seconds are crucial to capturing that attention. You can, for example, ask a question that will be answered throughout the video, in order to generate curiosity in the audience and make them want to watch the video to know the answer.

After the attention has been aroused, it is time to conquer the INTEREST of your followers. At this stage, you should start developing your video content. If you previously left a question up in the air, now you must develop the theme of that question and start giving the answers to your followers.

Arriving at the DESIRE phase, this phase is crucial to get the viewer into the next phase to carry out the intended action. So, it should arouse a desire in your audience, so that they are willing to take an action. First the desire, then the action.

In the ACTION phase you can then ask viewers to take a specific action. This action must then meet the desire. You shouldn’t ask them to take more than one action, so choose the one that seems the most important to you, be it subscribing to your channel, sharing it, buying the product. The important thing is that it is just an action, so it does not confuse the public.

YouTube metrics

The final step to an effective YouTube strategy is results analysis.

Like all strategies, the YouTube strategy also needs to be analyzed in order to understand its success or failure and how it can be better.

But which are the most important metrics in this social network?

Views

This metric reflects the number of views your videos. Although, it is important it should not be analyzed alone, but at the same time as the following metric.

Viewing time

With this metric, you can understand the viewing time of your videos. The previous metric should be analyzed with this metric, because your videos may even have a lot of views, but if the watch time is too short, it is because they are not offering your audience what they want and they need to be improved.

Average viewing duration

Through these data, you can understand the average time people spend watching your videos. Of course, the higher this metric, the more satisfied your audience is.

Subscribers

This metric is very important because when someone subscribes to your channel, it is because they are really interested in your content and want to be notified whenever you launch new content.

To be able to reach subscribers, you need to ensure that your content is very good and that you will be able to attract a loyal audience.

Interaction

The interaction represents all the actions that are performed on your videos. These can be likes, dislikes, comments and shares. Each of the interactions should be analyzed separately as there may be a high number of interactions but these are not positive, as is the case with dislikes.

Click-through rate per impression

An impression is counted each time your video appears as a suggestion to users. If your click-through rate per impression is high, it means that your thumbnail and video title are attractive enough to win over users. However, if the click-through rate per impression is low, you really need to improve the thumbnail and/or title of the video.

Average views per visitor

This average indicates how many videos from your channel each unique visitor watches. The more videos a visitor watches, the more value your content is generating for that same visitor.

Ready to create your channel?

Now that you know the steps to create your channel, it’s time to put them into practice.

And practice is really the best word to follow you in this process. With practice you will eventually improve your videos and soon you will see your channel having the expected results.

And if you don’t have time to waste analyzing your videos’ metrics one by one, in Swonkie you’ll find effective and complete YouTube reports. You will see how easy and fast it is to analyze your strategy on this social media.