You want your YouTube channel to stand out from all the others, right?
Duh… of course you do. And we’re going to tell you how to do just that.
Developing a strategy for your YouTube channel is the most crucial step for building your brand and audience. However, we all know that the entertainment industry is constantly changing and evolving. It seems like everyday there’s some new viral trend breaking the internet.
Don’t be a drop in the bucket. If you want to make your mark, it’s time to step it up and integrate some sure-fire 2021 YouTube strategies into your channel's content.
Keep reading to dive deeper into the following:
- Valuable Practices
- Slow Living
- YouTube Shorts
- Storytelling
Now that we’ve established our roadmap, let’s take the wheel!
# Valuable Practices
There are certain steps that every successful YouTuber should take on their creator journey. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, these include five basic, but necessary, measures:
- Set a goal
- Define your audience
- Create a distribution strategy
- Content scope and research
- Create a production system
To begin, pick a 10-year goal and work backwards. Short-term thinking might fail you, so don’t be afraid to go miles down the road. For example, ask yourself how many subscribers you’d like to accumulate by 2031.
Next (and this should go without saying), you must define your audience. Think about who your videos are for. What are their interests? Remember - the answer is not “everyone.” You need a niche!
Now, it’s time to get your target audience to discover your channel - you can’t just rely on YouTube for this. Some appropriate distribution channels include:
- Facebook groups
- Instagram reels
- Quora
- Reddit forums
- LinkedIn groups
After choosing your channel niche, it’s time to research and come up with ideas to entice your audience. What do your viewers care about? Once you come up with topics, decide how often you will create and post videos on a consistent, long-term basis.
Finally, you need to create a production system. Come up with a format and style to use in your videos that establish a consistent feel for your target audience. In addition, write and edit your script beforehand.
Let's dive into the specifics.
# Slow Living
The slow living movement advocates a cultural shift toward slowing down life's pace. Now, more than ever, people have been searching for meaningful activities to do as well as possible, rather than as fast as possible.
Alfie Adamson from Kairos Group shares valuable insights that he and his team found, regarding this trend:
Our teams at Kairos dug deep into viewing habits and found a stunning 4X increase in views of videos with “slow living” in the title in 2020 compared to 2019. The data indicates many of us have been inspired to take up hobbies and explore interests that we previously considered too time-consuming. It will be interesting to see if that trend continues in 2021 as the world hopefully begins to open back up.
The slow living movement resonates with so many because people are trying to avoid fast-forwarding through their lives. As fast-paced lifestyles are beginning to take a toll on people's production and creativity, they want to start living in the present and creating memories.
# YouTube Shorts
YouTube Shorts is a new short-form video experience for creators and artists who want to shoot quick, catchy videos using nothing but their mobile phones. More and more, people are taking advantage of the incredible power of smartphones to easily create and publish high-quality content whenever and wherever.
Tanner Bernard from Kairos Media shares his observations on these:
YouTube Shorts in 2021 is a massive opportunity for brands. It combines the low barrier of entry and incredible organic growth opportunities that short-form content provides with a Google product's power. YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, so being able to tap into that massive scale in a new organically driven way means the sky is the limit when it comes to reach and engagement with branded content on owned & operated channels and content creator partners' channels.
YouTube encourages all mobile creators and artists to begin uploading their existing short videos today to start getting discovered.
# Storytelling
Ahhh, yes. Back to our roots with good ol' storytelling.
Storytelling is an invaluable art that all content creators should practice, no matter their industry. Stories are universal - they move us, they motivate us, they inspire us. Our brains are simply wired for them. Thus, it only makes sense that narrative videos see optimal success on YouTube.
Todd Clouser from CustomerGauge shares his beneficial experience with storytelling:
One of my best performing pieces of YouTube content ever, getting 3 million views in its first month, wasn’t the “optimal” length, it wasn’t highly produced or edited, it wasn’t a highly searched topic; heck it wasn’t even a video that most people liked! But it blew up because it told a story that kept the audience hooked until the end. And that’s the hack. When you quit trying to hack the YouTube algorithm and start telling stories that evoke emotion (good or bad); that’s when you’ll see explosive growth.
Storytelling is simply imperative. It's a powerful journey that bonds our audience to us, as creators.
And there you have it - some awesome 2021 YouTube strategies to build your channel, straight from the pros. New trends arise and evolve everyday, so don't sit on them!
High-quality content and consistent engagement will get you a long way, but it doesn't hurt to try something new now and then. Stay real, stay reliable, stay relevant... and don't forget to communicate with your audience along the way.