For ordinary people, v-blogs are a source of entertainment. For entrepreneurs, videos help them become a reputable authority in their business. So, why don’t you use this knowledge to your advantage and lift your own brand with your YouTube channel now?
Don’t stress yourself out too much. You don’t have to be a professional filmmaker to be a successful YouTuber. Because, once you enter the v-logging world, you’ll receive lots of helpful and valuable advice concerning how to build an attractive channel, how to get more subs and views, and how to keep it ranked higher in YouTube search result.
Yes, doing so is not easy at all. But we can now figure it out together, step by step and begin with the most basic features.
Targeted Audiences
Identifying your targeted viewers as soon as you think of establishing a YouTube channel will push you a step closer to success. Everything only actually begins with and after you’ve set your targeted audience. After all, a seller needs to know what the demand is to supply accordingly. Find your targeted viewers by answering these questions:
- For whom am I going to make these video creator for?
- What are the videos’ core values?
- What content my future viewers want, but the YouTube market is presently lacking?
YouTube Channel Art
Let’s start with the easiest step – customize your channel art (also known as YouTube banner). An artful adjustment can make your page stand brightly out from a sea of vlogs.
You should begin with the banner design. You need to be careful to choose patterns that must be consistent with your business’ branding. Also, watch out for photos with copyrights – you don’t want to be fined or, worse, sued for using someone’s picture without their permission.
There is a specific requirement when finding a nice picture for your channel art. That is, when you preview the picture, it must look good on other devices like televisions, phones, laptops, tablets, and desktops because your artwork will be shown across different dimensions. A good picture is the one that won’t be blurred or pixelated across multiple devices. For the best results, use the recommended YouTube channel art size of 2560 x 1440px.
Sounds like a lot of complex works, doesn’t it? To make matter more complicated, this particular dimension is really huge and may not be easy to find for some people. But worry not! There are two other ways to find such a qualified image if you can’t find one yourself:
- YouTube banner templates: Supplied by YouTube itself in both .PNG and .PSD formats. You’ll stop having a hard time figuring out what is the perfect design for your YouTube channel and wonder if it’ll look okay across different platforms.
- Online YouTube banner maker: Go to websites, such as DesignBold, to pick yourself a perfect YouTube cover (including the channel art and banner) in the various collections of beautiful ready-made templates. All of them are in high definition and of .JPEG, .PNG or .PDF format. On top of that, DesignBold also allows you to customize its templates flexibly before you can download your artwork freely.
Use a Proper YouTube Thumbnail
You won’t be getting any view, let alone new subscribers, for your video if no one clicks on the thumbnail. This important feature is the video’s “face” that gives audiences a first impression of your v-log. So, you need to get it right.
YouTube Thumbnail dimensions play a big role. For nobody in their right mind would want to click on a video that doesn’t display any preview, or that the image of the thumbnail is distorted or pixilated. So, if you’re going to spare some of your precious time creating a thumbnail to attract viewers, you might as well create a really professional-looking one by making sure you’re following the proper thumbnail sizing and dimensions.
What are the proper dimensions, you ask? – YouTube recommended that a standard YouTube thumbnail resolution should be 1280 x 720px, accompanied by a width that is no less than 640px. YouTube players and previews most often used the ideal ratio of 16:9.
Choosing a poor-quality image for a thumbnail is a big mistake, and so is choosing a too small one. The thumbnail images may appear small in the search results, but YouTube video records can be embedded, too. This is why you need to look for a large enough photo which can be scaled down when needed, rather than a small picture that will be strained to scaled up.
Set a Niche of Your Own
You should take time to figure out what your fellow YouTubers are doing, and find your own way to differentiate yourself. Choose your own niche, then stick with it. Ideally, you’ll find one that’s your strong point and still distinctive enough to avoid the rivalry. Once you’ve found such a niche, you can start drafting your first content. This may take some time, but there’s no need to rush anyway. YouTube always welcome newcomers and it’s no different if you start a channel now, tomorrow, next month, or next year.
Speaking of being yourself, this leads to the topic of avoiding copying other successful YouTubers’ styles, tags, titles, descriptions, or whatever else. This basic mistake is made by new YouTubers mostly because they hope that, by mimicking a YouTube influencer, they will rank just as high. Or that they believe that the original YouTuber, whose style they take after, may take notice of this and be honored or happy that their work is good enough to be imitated.
Don’t do or even think about that. Because you will only wind up annoying these people and. If their fans really don’t like you, you may get “flamings” and your channel may get reported after it’s become infamous.
Final Words
It’s great fun to dive into becoming a YouTuber. We hope you find our tips above useful. If you already have a YouTube channel of your own, other readers and we would love to hear from you and learn from your experience in the comments below. Thank you for reading and sharing!