It’s easy to become caught in a cycle of comparisons when you’re beginning or expanding your YouTube channel, mainly because your channel is among 38 million that compete for views. However, the way your channel ranks to other YouTube channels isn’t in the way you imagine it does. Although you can gain many things from audits of competitors, they don’t give you any information about how to enhance engagement with your target audience, engagement, and outreach. Although it’s a bit cliché, the best comparison is between the present and the previous versions of your channel. If you’ve experienced stagnation in your subscriber growth and engagement lately, this type of information isn’t easy to confront. However, for better or better, tracking the analytics of your subscribers over time can help identify what’s not working and enhance what is working.
In contrast to what you believe, increasing engagement isn’t a simple task as the size of your channel increases. (In fact, it’s contrary.) This guide will discuss why this is the case and give seven tips to increase YouTube engagement when you increase your subscribers.
How does an increase in subscribers impact the YouTube engagement rate?
For content creators who create content on YouTube or other popular social networks, one of the main (albeit continuous) objectives is to achieve an impressive number of subscribers. A higher number of subscribers mean more active viewers, surely? Okay, maybe not so much.
It’s been demonstrated to be true that content creators who have smaller audience sizes — between 5,000 to 100,000 followers generally have more engagement rates than creators that have millions of followers. (For instance, micro-influencers have 6.7 percent greater engagement than macro-influencers.)
If you take a close look, you can see how the numbers are what they are.
YouTubers on the micro-influencer scale are much easier to connect and feel connected more easily than YouTubers at the micro and the mega influencer levels. Therefore, when new users are made subscribers, the sense of belonging results in increased trust and engagement — which, in turn, can lead to an increase in YouTube engagement. As your subscriber list gets larger, it is harder to keep the same amount of engagement due to various reasons: It’s challenging to keep the micro-influencer feeling when you have a massive YouTube presence.
For a highly high YouTube engagement percentage as a macro influencer in general, most of your viewers will need to be highly engaged. (Numbers-wise, this is much more feasible when you have a smaller audience.) Your demographics of your target audience are bound to change based on the fact that you’ve widened your reach to a wider audience.
An extremely high YouTube engagement rate allows you to achieve greater milestones, but when you’ve hit those goals, engagement tends to take the plunge. With the best strategies implemented, you have an excellent chance of keeping the upward engagement trend, but it’s not an easy task and requires time. Before going over seven strategies, let’s look at the essential engagement metrics used by YouTube.
Determining the engagement rate
Suppose you’re looking to assess whether you can measure the engagement effectiveness of a particular YouTube video (or your channel in general). In that case, you can calculate how much YouTube engagement rates by collecting information on the following essential measures:
- Subscribers count
- Likes/dislikes
- Comments
- Shares
What you’re doing is to divide the number of viewers’ interactions (i.e., likes, comments, and shares) with the total number of subscribers and then multiply the total by 100. These metrics can allow you to determine the degree to which your audience is engaged; however, they’re not the only things you need to be frequently monitoring.
In the case of YouTuber Adam Bell, three of the most important metrics to monitor is the rate of click-through for thumbnails, average view time, and video performance over a prolonged length of time. Bell adjusted the list after he realized that Bell was obsessing about the analytical aspect that is YouTube content production:
“I used to be extremely interested in analytics, to the point that I would sit for hours after each video was published just studying the figures. I realized that there were only some things I could learn from studying numbers, so I’ve reverted to only looking at a handful of indicators after videos have been uploaded.”
Therefore, even though likes, comments, shares, and subscribers are crucial factors, you can evaluate your channel’s overall performance using other metrics, too.
7 methods to increase engagement on YouTube
It is invested if you take it apart from the definition of an engaged audience. If you have an incredibly significant engagement rate, your viewers leave comments or subscribe to the channel and watch your content from beginning to end. They are engaged in every way they can.
If you’re just beginning the process of creating your YouTube channel yet, increasing the engagement rate is always a top priority. When you are focused on increasing your viewers, there are seven steps you can implement to sustain and increase engagement with free YouTube views, likes, comments, and subscribers for your channel.
Know your engagement baseline
Before anything else, it is important to be aware of the actual engagement rate. This is where DIY calculations or using a tool like Grin will pay off. Once you have established your baseline, you’ll be able to find out the places where your engagement rates lie across the spectrum from good to poor.
Let’s suppose that the like to dislike ratio is 97.4; However, your rate of view to subscribers is just 6.1 percent. This could mean that people like watching your YouTube videos but don’t need to subscribe.
If you are aware of this, you could develop more calls-to-action in the video (CTAs) to motivate viewers to take the next step.
If you calculate the current engagement rate (and repeat this method for some time), you will be able to determine how your channel’s performance is compared with the typical engagement rate. You can then identify specific trends in your audience’s engagement and implement changes based on the data for the future.
Make sure you are part of your YouTube community
You can be sure that your audience will change over time as more people discover and sign up for the YouTube channel. When you increase the number of subscribers to your channel, your viewers will increase, and, consequently, it becomes less specific.
The biggest challenge for many YouTubers is maintaining a tightly connected community feeling with a big channel. (It’s simpler to establish connections with just 10,000 channel subscribers than one million subscribers.)
Once you know the engagement rate, you can focus on your target audience. What demographics do they have? What is their experience in your content? Why would they want to join your list?
People’s tastes change The best way to stay ahead of the curve is to keep an eye on these changes and be aware of the demographics of your viewers today and not only the last six months. You can provide your new channel with an individualized feel when you understand your audience’s needs and preferences.
Master YouTube SEO
For more viewers to discover and interact with your channel, you must make sure that you optimize. In particular, you must make use of YouTube SEO.
Optimizing search engines (SEO) refers to developing and perfecting content so that it can rank high on search engine result webpages (SERPs). YouTube SEO is a process of conducting keyword research into the most popular video topics and titles optimization, tags for videos, and more.
One of the ways to increase the engagement rate is to create excellent content that people want to share with them. With a bit of SEO study, you can identify the subjects that your viewers are most interested in. You can then utilize specific keywords to ensure your videos appear in YouTube search results and recommended videos.
Make sure you have a regular upload schedule
Let’s say an uninitiated viewer stumbles upon some of the YouTube videos, likes the content, and is eager to see more. However, when they visit the profile on your YouTube account, they discover your profile only post each three months.
An inconsistent and unreliable upload schedule could be an absolute turnoff for viewers, and it’s understandable the reason. The inconsistency of uploading videos can indicate that your channel isn’t structured and credible. Viewers cannot know when the next one will be released; therefore, they may put off subscribing or seek an alternative channel in the same field.
The most effective and simplest method of motivating (instead of restraining) new subscribers is to post on an ongoing basis, either every week or biweekly. It is possible to say that the number of posts is not as significant as the consistency. After all, a great video every other week is superior to mediocre videos uploaded every other day.
Include end screens and other CTAs
You can motivate and increase engagement by including CTAs on your uploads of YouTube videos in terms of incentives. One of the most effective ways to accomplish this is putting the end-screen card in every video.
An end screen card can be the 5-20 second clip you use to promote your business to the close of your film, allowing viewers to stay engaged.
You can include a link to the subscribe button and a playlist of videos on one video, site, or other channels in your YouTube outro. This way, viewers can conveniently access additional content in a matter of seconds.
Make your visual designs with creativity
YouTube is a video-sharing platform, so aesthetics and visuals are crucial. Although YouTube SEO is excellent to get your content to many more viewers, an excellent thumbnail design for your video will help them get hooked (and improve the YouTube engagement number by as much as 154 percent).
The thumbnail is the initial opportunity to display your channel’s unique style. However, a great visual design extends beyond the thumbnail. Every element — banner, logo or profile image, the end screen, and more. Represents your brand image as YouTuber.
Therefore, you should take the time to design and develop the design of your channel that viewers will want to watch.
Enhance the quality of your YouTube videos.
The good thing with YouTube content production is that it doesn’t require an expensive production setup to produce high-quality videos. You can work with the money and resources you have.
To elevate your production quality to the highest level, it could be worth investing in a high-quality (and inexpensive) Vlogging camera and light kit for a softbox. Whether you’re recording content within the same studio or not, excellent lighting and video quality go an extended way to making your viewing experience better.
Wrapping Up
It can take weeks or months before you begin to see a significant increase in your YouTube engagement percentage. (In the sense of a metaphor, growing the number of subscribers to a YouTube channel can make you feel like you’re a tortoise racing against a hare. This is especially true when you observe other channels growing more quickly.)
But, if you invest in the quality of your YouTube channel’s content and its community, users will pay attention.
If you’re not consistent with your publishing schedule, your performance will likely negatively reflect this. However, if you’re consistently uploading and optimizing your videos to be appealing to your intended viewers, you have more chance of converting new viewers to long-term subscribers.
I hope that the seven steps in this guide will prove helpful in maintaining and growing YouTube engagement when your YouTube channel grows.
