Building YOUR Audience from the Inside Out!

“Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol, and an audience is electrified.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Even though Emerson uttered these words long before the time of YouTube, this sentiment rings true for the YouTube community.  Whether you are thinking about starting a YouTube channel, own a channel, or work at a YouTube multi-channel network, audience is key.  

Setting up a YouTube channel to make money is fairly straightforward. YouTube pays channel owners once the associated AdSense account is activated.  As soon as your channel is monetized, advertisements can be placed on your videos and your videos can make money. 

Once you're set up with an AdSense account, you'll want to focus on gaining a large and reliable audience. The more people watching your channel, the more money you will make. YouTube pays based upon the total watch time of a channel’s video. This means in order to bring in as much revenue as possible, you need loyal viewers.  If you are able to tap the right audience, these viewers will return week after week to see what you have posted and to watch the full length of your video.  

So, how do you find and keep a loyal and engaged audience? The keys are to find the audience suited for your channel, post often and regularly, and provide engaging content to keep your viewers coming back. I'm going to share how one channel, Entertaining with Beth, applies these strategies with resounding success. 

To begin, you need to figure out what kind of audience is best suited for your YouTube channel.  Is your channel informative? Beauty related? It’s okay if you have a channel that is niche and it is also okay if you have a channel that relates to the masses.  Regardless, you need to know whom it is you are targeting so you can properly appeal to them. 

Let’s examine the entertaining and food channel, Entertaining with Beth.  Beth’s entire channel focuses on food and entertaining and this is made incredibly clear.  The name of her channel, “Entertaining with Beth” speaks to the channel subject.  Her videos have to do with either entertaining or cooking; often, a combination of the two. Furthermore, both her “about” section and trailer video explicitly describe her channel’s purpose in a concise and creative way. 

Beth knows that her audience encompasses individuals looking for entertaining ideas and food recipes.  As a result, a viewer who stumbles upon her channel will not be confused or annoyed at false advertising in the channel name or video titles. What you see is what you get.  This transparency helps Beth’s appropriate and targeted audience find her.

Second, once you decide who your audience is and take the necessary steps to make sure they can find you, it’s important that you keep your audience.  There are two essential steps you can take to ensure that your audience remains loyal.  Primarily, it is crucial to post videos on a regular and consistent basis. 

The YouTube community respects and responds to channels that are “there for them” on a consistent basis.  You should determine when you are able to consistently release videos and set a schedule, making sure to release a video every time you say you will. This reliability factor is similar to how viewers count on scheduled television programming.  Audiences return to shows when they know the show is going to be there week after week.  If you are not sure if you are going to be able to post a video, don’t say anything!

Last, it is incredibly important for you to interact with your audience in order to build a devoted following.  Part of the beauty of the YouTube community is that users are able to engage with both each other and with channel talent.  For this reason, it is important for you to reply to comments and engage with them on a regular basis.  By no means do you need to reply to every comment left on your video.  However, the more you are able to interact the better. If an audience member feels that you are hearing them, they will likely feel a connection to you and return to your channel.

To illustrate, Entertaining with Beth’s channel interaction with her audience is frequent and has created a very loyal following of 53,832 subscribers. Her audience loves her videos and her engagement with the channel has aided her in gaining subscribers on a steady state basis.  Beth used to post a new video on Saturday's but realized Sunday's were more effective.  This is because she realized her viewers were planning meals for the week on Sunday's.

In order to make your channel as profitable as possible it is important to tap into and retain a strong following. Targeting a specific audience, setting a consistent release schedule and interacting with your viewers are all incredibly beneficial steps to take in order to grow your channel.

How are you going to electrify your audience today?

Thanks for reading!

Christen