How To Start a YouTube Channel in 12 Steps

Every day, YouTube users watchover a billion (yes, with a B)hours of YouTube videos and yetonly 9% of small businesseshave bothered to start their own channels. As YouTube usage continues to soar, the opportunity is getting bigger for businesses ready to jump in.

In this guide, we'll sharehow to start a YouTube channelfor your business and how you can create compelling videos to engage current customers and attract new ones, too. We'll also cover the most effective strategies forbuilding a successful YouTube channel.

Starting a YouTube page isn't as hard as it seems. You don't need expensive video equipment or years of experience makingYouTube videos. Use this 12-step guide to create your channel today and start growing your business.

12 steps to start a YouTube channel

1. Create a YouTube Channel
2. Design your Channel Art
3. 填写你的资料
4. Plan your content
5. Create a channel trailer
6. Upload your first YouTube video
7. Optimize your videos for search
8. Upload new videos consistently
9. 促进你的哟uTube channel
10. Engage with your community
11. Run YouTube ads
12. Analyze your results

1. Create a YouTube account

To set up a your Youtube account for your business channel, you''ll need to be logged in to the Google account you want to use to manage the channel.

Having a brand account to run your channel, instead of using a personal channel, can help you scale more easily down the line, because you because you can add more than one manager through their own Google logins—no more sharing the password information to your personal email.

Here's a quick overview of the steps for setting up a new account for your business' YouTube channel.

1. Visit YouTube while you're logged in to the Google account you want to use to manage your account and head to theYouTube Channel Switcher.

2. Here you should see your personal account, any brand accounts you currently manage, and the option to create a new channel.

3.当你点击“创建一个新的频道,“你孩子l be taken to a screen to create a new brand account. Choose a channel name for your new account and click “Create.” Here you can also upload a profile picture such as your brand's logo.

4. Congratulations! You're now the proud owner of a YouTube page for your business.

2. Create your channel art

OK, so now that you know how to create a YouTube channel for your business, let's take some time to get it looking its absolute best.

Here are a few easy steps you can take to give your channel a more professional look and make sure your customers know how to find you online.

Channel icon

When you start a start a channel from scratch, your channel icon will be linked to your business account's profile photo. To change it, YouTube will direct you to update your account.

It's recommended that your picture be aJPG, BMP, PNG, or non-animated GIF, saved at 800 x 800 pixels. You should also make sure it displays well at smaller sizes and in both a square and a circle crop for the multiple places YouTube will use your channel icon.

Channel art

Adding channel art is a great way to show off your brand's personality and create a more visually engaging YouTube profile. Your channel art should be under 4 MB and at least 2048 x 1152 pixels, although YouTube recommends going with2560 x 1440 pixelsfor best results on all devices.

Tip: Taler is a free tool from Shopify that can help youcreate a Youtube channel banner.

YouTube will give you a preview of each image you load to show you how it will display on multiple devices. You can also edit the crop of your image.

3.填写你的资料

To unlock all of the customization options for your channel, you’ll need to click the gear icon in the section beneath your channel art.

A pop-up titled “Channel settings” will then appear. Look for the “Customize the layout of your channel” option and enable it. Click Save. You'll now be given a wider range of options sorted into five tabs: Home, Videos, Playlists, Channels, and About.

Head over to the About tab to edit your store's details.

Under “Description,” give a brief outline of your store, products, and mission. Keep any core keywords for your store in mind and make sure to use them in your channel description to help people find you when they search YouTube.

Be sure to include your contact email as well. You should also include links to your social media accounts and your store, since these links can be set to appear over your channel art and will be highly visible to your audience.

Most of your links will default to just the favicon (the small image that shows up at the top of your browser), but the first link in the lineup will also show the link title, so make the most of those 30 characters, like 100% Pure has done with its “Shop Now” call to action.

On the top right hand side, you'll find a section titled “Featured Channels” where you can feature other YouTube channels that are owned by your brand or managed by your employees.

4. Plan your content

Now that your channel is ready to go, it's time to start thinking about your videos.

Video can be an integral part of your content marketing strategy. It's a fantastic way to provide your customers with high-quality, informative, and entertaining content that keeps them coming back again and again.

Plus, YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, so if you optimize your videos to be found in search, it can also be a great place to connect with new customers looking for what you offer. While video quality does matter, keeping your target audience in mind is just as important.

Often times you can come up with a dozen or so YouTube channel ideas by having a quick brainstorm with your team.

Here are some of the different types videos you can use to create content.

Educational content

More and more, people are turning to YouTube to learn new things. In fact, searches for how-to videos have grown140%over the past decade, which means there is an expanding opportunity for businesses to capture new audiences by providing educational content around their products.

Videos that teach new skills are great for building trust with your audience and nudging them further down the conversion funnel. I recently came across a solid example, courtesy ofRetro Supply Co.

It sells retro effects you can use in Photoshop and Illustrator, including brushes, fonts, and more. On itsYouTube page, Reto Supply focuses on teaching viewers how to use Photoshop and Illustrator more effectively. Sometimes that means a step-by-step tutorial that involves using its brushes, and other times it's teaching tricks likekeyboard shortcutsthat could help anyone, regardless of whether you use Retro Supply's products.

Another great example comes fromSnowboard Addiction已经建立了超过140000个YouTube subscriberson its channelby teaching people how to improve their snowboarding skills.

Not only do its videos help people level up their snowboarding, the how-to content introduces Snowboard Addiction to new audiences via YouTube search.

In terms of alignment with its products, you couldn't ask for a better example. Snowboard Addiction sells training products and videos to help you improve your snowboarding skills, so there's a natural progression from interested viewer to happy customer, thanks to its video content marketing on YouTube.

Brand storytelling

When it comes tocreating compelling video content, few things are more effective than great storytelling. Inspiring videos that fit into your business' identity are perfect for communicating your brand's image and ideals to a wider audience.

These types of aspirational videos should be geared toward building a lifestyle around your brand and showing customers that when they purchase your products, they aren't just buying a thing, they're buying an experience.

GoPro has become a leader in this arena witha diverse arsenal of YouTube contentthat builds an identity of adventure, exploration, and adrenaline around its line of action cameras.

Fromhelicopter skydivingtoa fireman saving a kitten, its videos showcase the many ways GoPro customers can use its products to embody the brand's tagline “Be a hero.” "Unboxing" videos have also grown in popularity. The idea here, is to unbox your products and discuss each item. This also makes for some great user-generated-content when your fans and best customers review your products on their channel as well.

Entertainment

Building a YouTube strategy around fun videos that cater to your audience's interests is one of the best ways to capture viewers' attention and focus it onto your products. Comedy videos can be especially great for not just generating laughs, but sales as well.

Vat19, an ecommerce gift shop that specializes in offbeat products, has built an impressive online empire with its engaging, highly targeted content. Its YouTube strategy focuses on buildingabsurdist comedy sketchesaround its wide selection of novelty gifts to introduce new products to its audience. It's currently sitting at over two million YouTube subscribers, which means this approach is definitely paying off.

One of Vat19's most popular videos features a five pound gummy bear being destroyed in a series of slapstick experiments. The video looks and feels much more like a late night comedy show than a traditional video ad, making the CTA at the end encouraging viewers to buy the gummy bear that much more appealing.

While Vat19's sense of humor may not be for everyone, its videos are undoubtedly effective. Its gummy bear video has been viewed over 25 million times. Vat19's approach really shows what it takes to attract attention (and new customers) on YouTube with entertaining and unique types of content.

5. Create a channel trailer for new page visitors

When you go to create a new YouTube channel, be sure to make a compelling channel trailer. A channel trailer is like a movie trailer. It's designed to give people a preview of your channel's offerings.

你的拖车可能接下来一个vi频道ewer sees after your channel art and channel icon. It automatically plays when non-subscribed people visit your YouTube page. When done the right way, your channel trailer can help turn visitors into subscribers.

You can set up your YouTube trailer in seven steps:

1. Upload the video you want to be your channel trailer.
2. 你想要去英吉利海峡to manage.
3. Select Customize channel.
4. Go to the “Home” tab.
5. Click the “For new visitors” tab.
6. Click Edit.
7. Select “Change trailer” or “Remove trailer.”

When creating your trailer video, think about what makes your own channel unique, your brand personality, and why people should subscribe to your channel. There's no one right away to make a YouTube channel trailer, but start with trying to hook your visitors in the first few seconds. Make a good impression on views and finish off with asking them to subscribe to your channel.

6. Upload your first YouTube video

Now that you've covered all the basics to create a YouTube channel and spent time creating and editing your videos, it's time to go live in just a few clicks! Head to your channel and click Upload Video to upload your video file using the YouTube video creator.

Once you upload your first video, you'll land in YouTube Studio, where you can edit your video's details, upload videos, manage your channel, and grow your community. Here you can enter a detailed video description as well as more context as to what the video is about.

7. Optimize your videos for search

Staying on top of yourYouTube SEOis critical if you want to get your videos noticed. Every minute500 hours of videoare uploaded to YouTube, so you need to be doing everything you can to stand out from the crowd. There's no way around it, you're going to need to produce quality content consistently to have a chance.

Every element of your videos, from the video title to the description to keywords, can have a huge impact on how prominently they get featured in search results. Let's take a look at how you can improve your rankings on YouTube and get in front of viewers when they need to see you most.

Keywords

Before you start optimizing your videos, you should narrow down which keywords you'll be focusing on.

Brainstorm which keywords someone might search to come across your video and run them through a keyword planning tool likeKeywords Everywhere, a free Chrome extension. It works directly within YouTube's search bar and gives you three key pieces of information for each term: the monthly search volume, the cost per click to advertise against that term, and the competition. This type of Youtube analytics is incredibly helpful to ensure your Youtube efforts are ultimately effective.

The suggested search results can also be a solid source of inspiration for future videos. It's a good idea to experiment with keywords and build future content around popular search terms in your industry.

Engagement

One of the most important things that YouTube takes into consideration when determining the quality of your video is its engagement.

Encourage your viewers to leave a comment, subscribe, share, or hit the thumbs-up button after they've finished watching to increase your chance of showing up higher in search results. If you want to boost your engagement levels, tryrunning a contest. Giveaways and contests are an excellent way to increase viewer participation and connect with your audience.

When YouTube is determining your rank, it will also take your video's view count into consideration. To kickstart your views, make sure you're distributing your new videos through your email list and all of your business' social media channels soon after you publish it on YouTube.

Format.The format of your video also plays a role in your overall search ranking. Although YouTube can't watch your videos to determine their content, there are a few other things that it looks at to make an educated guess.

Filename.Be sure to include your target keywords in the name of the file that you’re uploading; YouTube will pay attention to it.

Length.In general, longer videos tend to be of higher value, so try to make them as substantial as possible—but always balance this with keeping the content valuable, because “watch time” is another key metric for search rankings. If your video should be two minutes long but you stretched it to 10 and viewers drop off after one, you won't rank higher just because your video is longer.

Title.The title of your video should be concise, descriptive, and feature your target keyword near the start.

Description.The longer the description, the better. Add as much content as you possibly can: include a detailed overview of everything in your video and any relevant resources your viewers might need. Your keywords should also show up in your description, with a special focus on getting your target keyword into the first sentence.

Relevant Tags.Do your best to include your target keywords and a handful of other associated terms as tags on your videos. Tools likeTube Buddycan give you some insight into the tags your competitors are using on their videos. Tags can help determine whether your video shows up as a suggested video as well, so tagging competitors and people who make related content can be a good use of the 500 characters available for tags.

8. Upload new videos consistently

If you want to your Youtube efforts to pay off for your business, it's critical that you are creating videos on a regular basis. It's very rare to find your YouTube journey a success overnight, so consistency is key.

Channels that are consistent in their approach reliably increase viewership because it's easier for people to watch more videos and subscribe. You'll probably notice this when scanning the feeds of your favorite YouTubers.

The First We Feast channel, featuring celebrities eating food, uses a consistent posting schedule and breaks out videos into different series, such as “Cone Heads,” “Hot Ones,” “Tacos Con Todo,” “The Burger Show,” and more.

The consistency in First We Feast's content creation helps drive subscriber growth. If a video goes viral, new viewers can find fresh, new content with the same premise throughout the channel and subscribe. Since First We Feast's humble beginnings in July 2016, the channel has grown to over nine million subscribers and features celebrities such as Drew Barrymore, Dua Lipa, T-Pain, and more.

9. Promote your YouTube channel

There's never been a better time to promote a your YouTube videos and channel. YouTube has become thesecond most visited siteon the internet, and people are now watching up tosix hoursof video per day. It's time to tap into people's binge-watching tendencies.

Cross promote your YouTube channel across your other networks to help maximize your YouTube ROI. You can promote your videos on social networks like Instagram (through posts and Instagram Stories), Facebook, or TikTok, or even partner up with other YouTubers to increase your content's reach.

If you decide to create product tutorials on your channel, you can promote them across yourShopify storesto convert website visitors. With a Shopify app likeYottie, you can add playlists to your Shopify store and promote product demos and other videos from your YouTube channel. If someone likes your content, they can subscribe right from your website.

When it comes to YouTube channel promotion, you have many tactics to experiment with. Test different channels where your audience lives and keep the ones that work to maximize engagement and promote your YouTube channel to new followers and customers.

10. Engage with community

Your job as a YouTube creator doesn’t end after publishing a new video. To make a YouTube channel successful, you want to interact with your viewers to create conversations on your videos andget more YouTube subscribers.

You can respond to people’s comments (even negative ones), ask and answer questions, and “heart” people’s comments so viewers can see which comments are most important to read. You could also poll your audience to see what content they want to watch to increase viewership—which is critical if you want to make money on YouTube.

For example,Kelly Noble Mirabella, entrepreneur and founder of theBaby Got BotYouTube channel, uses YouTube’s comment features to engage with her audience and build community around her brand.

The more you engage with your viewers, the more likely they'll be to keep watching your content and spreading the word about videos.

11. Consider YouTube ads

Speed up your new channel’s growth with an effective advertising strategy. In addition to promoting your YouTube channel organically, you can also invest in YouTube ads to reach and engage more viewers.

Before running a YouTube ad campaign, make sure you define the audience you want to reach. Focus on understanding:

• Who you want to reach.Choose specific audiences based on demographics, language, and interests. For example, you could target 28-to-40-year-old new dads who subscribe to home improvement channels and watch DIY videos.
• What topics they search for.With YouTube ads, you can reach viewers searching for specific topics or choose the video or channel you want to show ads on.
• Where they live.Consider the location of your audience—country, region, city, or post code. You can also define a custom location by radius or point of interest.

一旦你知道目标,您可以创建一个budget and explore different ad formats to encourage people to engage further with your content. Remember that while YouTube ads are helpful, they shouldn't be the primary driver for growth. They should work together with your organic promotion to maximize visibility and presence on YouTube.

12. Analyze your results

Once your YouTube channel is up and running, you’ll want to track how it’s doing. Here are some of the metrics available in theYouTube Analytics:

• Watch Time.Estimated amount of time spent watching your content.
• Traffic source. This shows how people are finding your videos by displaying the various sources of traffic and total amount of views per source.
• Subscriber rate.这告诉你多少followers you lose or gain on a video-by-video basis.
• Audience retention.This shows the exact times when people stop watching your video. You can use this information to figure out where you lost a viewer’s attention and what may have caused them to leave, which helps you improve future videos.
• Comments.In your YouTube Analytics dashboard, you can monitor who comments on what videos so you can respond easily and make your brand look approachable and engaging.

Decide what success looks like and then translate that into metrics that are relevant to your business. For example, if you want to know how your target audience is engaging with your content, you can look at watch time and see how many viewers convert into subscribers.

A successful YouTube channel achieves your goals as efficiently as possible in accordance with your strategy. Remember, you may need to fine-tune it along the way. Review your analytics monthly and see where you can make long-lasting improvements to your channel's performance.

4 Additional tips and tricks for starting a YouTube channel

After covering everything above, you should be on your way to building an audience and maximizing your business' potential on YouTube.

However, if you're feeling a little adventurous, I've put together some nifty YouTube hacks that you can use to increase your subscribers and generate more traffic for your website.

1. Add a watermark

A watermark is perfect for driving new viewers back to your channel and encouraging them to subscribe. These customizable images will be overlaid on every one of your uploads and offer a clear and easy way for viewers to subscribe, making it easy for them to hear about your newest videos (and building your subscriber count while you’re at it!).

To add a watermark to your videos, take a look at your channel page and click on “Video Manager.” This should take you to the Creator Studio, where you’ll be able to access some more in-depth settings for your account.

Once you get to the Creator Studio, click on “Channel” in the sidebar.

A dropdown will appear. Click on “Branding” and then on Add a Watermark. You’ll now be able to upload an image that will show up in the corner of every one of your videos.

2. Enable an automatic subscription prompt for your YouTube videos

It's important to not only be driving people to your YouTube page but to also be encouraging them to subscribe while they're there.

If you've got an existing subscriber base, like your email list or your social media followers, you can make it easy for them to subscribe to your channel. Whenever you promote your channel to them with a “Remember to subscribe!” call to action, add “?sub_confirmation=1” to the end of your channel's URL and a pop-up will automatically appear on your channel prompting visitors to subscribe.

3.Link cards to your website

As long as your account is part of theYouTube Partner Program, which currently means you have at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time in the past year, you can add cards to your videos that link to external websites. If you have a Shopify store and you're part of the YouTube Partner Program, you can use cards to link your viewers directly to your store to buy the items featured in your own videos.

Learn how you can further monetize your YouTube efforts with the ShopifyGuide to Making Money on YouTube.

4. Use end screens effectively

When viewers have finished watching all the way to the end of a video, you want to keep them around and make sure they don't leave without subscribing to your video. YouTube makes this really easy with end screen elements you can layer over the last 20 seconds of your video.

You can add other videos, a subscribe button, or a link to another channel to keep viewers engaged. This is important becauseYouTube's algorithmrewards both your total watch time and how long you keep people on the platform, so ideally, you want someone to watch more of your videos.

Here's howFirst We Feastsets up its end screens to keep you watching.

It’s linked to a playlist of videos and a standalone video, both of which will take you directly to something else to watch.

Here’s how to set it up yourself.

• Go to your Creator Studio and select a video you want to edit.
• From the main edit screen, click “End screens & Annotations” along the top menu, which will take you to the end screen editing screen.
• You’ll be able to add four different elements to your screen.

You’ll see that the Link option is not enabled because, on this test account, I’m not yet part of the YouTube Partner Program. Once you are, you can add links to your website as part of your standard end screens.

Become a successful YouTuber today

If you've followed all of these steps closely, you should be well on your way to becoming the next Youtube success, but the fun doesn't stop there.

Always learn from other successful YouTubers, test different types of content and listen to your feedback from your customers and fans.

Now it's time to start uploading videos!

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