4 Ways to Rev Up Your YouTube Channel

YouTube continues to be a high-traffic site, particularly because of its close connection to Google and Google searches. Whether you’re using YouTube as a repository for your videos or you treat it as a channel for regular video "shows" such as podcasts, there are a variety of things you can do to optimize your channel. Here are some ways you could potentially gain new viewers and subscribers while better serving your current audience.

Customize your thumbnails

Thumbnails are the static images that appear on your YouTube channel page. While you can select one of the frames within yours as the thumbnail image, verified YouTube accounts have the option of creating custom thumbnail graphics that you can upload as you publish a video.

To verify your account, you’ll need to provide YouTube with your phone number and enter the verification code you receive. Once verified, you’ll have access to the custom thumbnail option.

Designing and uploading custom thumbnails allows you to control the look and feel of your channel, creating greater visual cohesiveness and a more branded presence. You can add short titles, catchy phrases, or calls to action as text overlaid on the image to attract attention and encourage clicks and views.

The recommended YouTube thumbnail graphic size is 1280 x 720 pixels or a 16:9 aspect ratio and under 2MB in size.

Caption your videos

Adding captions to your video serves several purposes. First, a captioned video accommodates viewers who are deaf or hearing impaired. Captions are also useful when a viewer has the sound turned down or off, allowing them to understand what is going in the video by reading versus listening. Overall, captioning makes your videos accessible to a wider audience.

YouTube can use speech recognition technology to automatically generate captions. The technology, while helpful, can also be inaccurate. Even YouTube recommends using professional captioning or other captioning methods rather than relying on auto-captioning. You do have the ability to review automatically generated captions to edit them in YouTube Studio.

When you’re in YouTube Studio prepping your video, you can add captions by selecting Subtitles, picking the language for your captions, then choosing from the options for how you’d like your subtitles or captions to appear. You can have more control over captions by uploading a file containing the text for everything said in the video. During the editing process, you can also use the Auto-sync feature to type in the words you hear on the video manually as it plays. There is even a fully manual way to type in the spoken content, as well as designating other sounds in brackets such as [dog barking] or [water running.]

Use trending audio

Trending audio can include music, dialogue, or other sounds and noises. You can discover trending videos on YouTube by visiting their Trending feed. Seeing current popular YouTube videos can reveal audio that you may be able to repurpose. Always be careful about copyright issues.

Choosing trending audio can boost your views and potentially put your video content in front of a new audience. Trends, in general, can be a temporary boost to visibility, but should not make up the bulk of the content you post.

Take the multi-format approach

If you’re producing videos regularly and uploading them to your YouTube channel but not getting much traction, try mixing it up. There are many different types of YouTube videos you could be producing but some of the most common ones are Shorts, long-form videos, live streams, and podcasts or shows. Here’s a breakdown:

Shorts - YouTube Shorts is a newer category of videos that are one to three minutes in length with a square or vertical aspect ratio. You can upload Shorts through the YouTube app or YouTube Studio. Catering to a shorter attention span, Shorts require you to be more concise with your message. Shorts often use trending audio, and YouTube offers a trending Shorts page so you can stay on top of what’s popular.

Long form - Typical YouTube videos can vary from seven to 10 minutes long. Video length often depends on the content you’re sharing. Some types of content, such as how-to or product demonstrations might run longer than a video providing quick tips. If you have an unverified YouTube account, you’re limited to 15-minute videos. If you have a verified account, you can upload videos up to 12 hours or 256GB, whichever is less.

Live streaming - Streaming live video on YouTube gives you the ability to broadcast video in real time to an audience and to interact with them via chat. To livestream on your YouTube channel, you must have a verified account and either a web cam or device along with access to WIFI or cellular. More advanced streamers, such as gamers, often use a streaming software or a hardware encoder. If you’re livestreaming from your desktop, there is no minimum subscriber count required. However, if you want to livestream from the YouTube mobile app, you need at least 50 subscribers. You can stream anything that is happening in the moment, from an event to a behind-the-scenes peek to a lecture or workshop. If you are live streaming something on a particular date and have not live streamed before, enable this feature in advance as it could take up to 24 hours to become accessible.

Podcasts - A YouTube podcast is a series of videos that are organized into a playlist. The episodes are often in a specific order or published as a regular series. The regularity of publishing podcasts can encourage people to subscribe to stay on top of the episodes. When you upload a podcast to YouTube, it can also be available on YouTube Music. While video podcasts make the most sense on YouTube, you can also upload audio podcasts with visuals or audio-only podcasts that will appear with a static image while the sound plays. You can opt to upload an audiogram, a graphic with a soundwave that moves as the audio plays, using a third-party software such as Descript or Audiogram.

Optimizing your YouTube channel can help gain audience, but tactics and techniques can only go so far. Know your audience and produce content that appeals to them, but don’t lose sight of your key messages and calls to action that can help you achieve your business goals.