It’s time to become YouTube famous. I feel like I’m the last person on Earth who isn’t.

How do you become YouTube famous? Well, there are A LOT of ways people suggest to do it, so I went through the top 20 most popular articles and combined them ALL in one place, like a cheat sheet, mainly because there are A LOT of steps, and I’m lazy.

So here we go, the ultimate guide to becoming YouTube famous (in 13 steps).

  1. Keywords: Hop over to Google’s Keyword planner tool and Google Trends and KeywordTool.io and TubeBuddy to see what keywords are hot, and stay clear of long-tail keywords.
  2. Transcript: Uploading a transcript of your video will give Google more context to index your video, driving more search power to you.
  3. Share: share your video 3 times A WEEK on social media (and aggregators like Reddit and Scoop.it), and after 1 week, write a blog post about your video and then share that post.
  4. Call to action: add CTA buttons to the end of your videos that link to a playlist instead of a single video. Just add &list=”youtube playlist ID”  For example: your normal video URL looks like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkxeqomggF4 You need to modify it and add the playlist ID like so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkxeqomggF4&list=PL3Ikn3SKdJHh3ydUUZpusjBVgt3PTPmeH
  5. Subscribe Watermark: Instead of uploading a watermark of your logo, upload a subscribe icon as your watermark so it’s on the screen, discreetly, all the time.  Located in Creator Studio > Channel > Branding
  6. Check your stats: Each week check your video stats to see where viewers are leaving your videos. Add a YouTube card at that time code inviting viewers to watch different content on your channel to help retain viewers.
  7. Branding: Brand your content and channel consistently. Use branded thumbnails. Here are some tools to help you.
  8. Add featured channels: parter with other YouTube Content creators. Click Modules > Other channels > Save changes – Then add a few like-minded channels and save.
  9. Keep “related channels” on: this will keep you in the YouTube recommended network of channels.
  10. Link your website: go to Creator Studio, then hit the channel settings link to add your blog or website URL, and hit link your associated website.
  11. Interact: Ask questions for your audience, like other videos, leave comments.
  12. Sub Confirmation: when linking to your YouTube Channel add “?sub_confirmation=1” to the end of your URL. This will prompt the viewer to subscribe immediately upon clicking the link.
  13. Consistency: Post once a week, Thursday, at 2pm, for a year, at a time when your demographic of viewers typically consume your type of video (check other similar channels to see when this is) – check your analytics monthly, and adjust your release time to 3 hours before your peak time.

I’m not going to mention you have to make good content, or how to make good content, or any of that business because that’s like telling someone in order to learn how to swim you have to get wet.

I hope this helps you guys… as I attempt to build an audience for my new Travel Channel venture The Travel Agency, it was interesting boiling down all these different articles into a concise list of “how to get YouTube famous”. Good luck and see you online!

 

 

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