6+ New Year’s Resolutions To Make So You Can Grow on YouTube in 2020

Track your growth vs. channels that focus on similar content as your channel, and show brands why they should sponsor you. In the Growth Story Teller tool, you control everything from the time period, to the scale, to the colors and labels.

This is YouTube’s self-professed top algorithm determining who gets exposed and who gets buried. The Watch Time calculator breaks down Total Watch Time into its component parts, revealing two basic numbers that you are in control of fixing, and once you do, your Total Watch Time will go up.

When selecting Influencers to work with, brands want to separate the truly influential from those who just create noise. Their yardstick is conversion or click-throughs. Do you know what your Click Through Rates are? The E-Commerce tool includes a worksheet to help you calculate the value of the click-throughs you can create for brands.

This tool was imagined for everyone that’s ever opened dozens of YouTube analytics tabs to compare videos against multiple stats. With the Library Analyzer tool, you’ll see every video-based stat in one place, making it so much easier to spot patterns (and problems) so you know what needs work.

Most creators group their content into buckets, or series. The Series Additions tool instantly shows you which of those series significantly outperforms the others, and which of those buckets you should fill with more content.

Do you know how long you should make your YouTube videos? The answer is, it depends on what kind of content you make. You want your videos to be as long as you can hold people’s attention, and the longer you can hold their attention, the better. But do you know how long that actually is? The Lengths tool helps you see whether your videos are shorter or longer than average compared to your competitors, YouTube overall, and the best of the best in your Topic.

Bookmark My Creator Hub as your daily starting point. There you’ll get a quick and easy-to-read snapshot of key data including your channel’s weekly YouTube Search Presence*, month-over-month Ranking Summary*, daily Content Cadence, monthly Subscriber and View Trends, monthly Relative Growth Rates, and as-they-occur Alerts* related to your keywords, comments, and more.

*Modules Launching Soon

VideoAmigo keeps track of every YouTube video upload, every minute of every day, so you can see not just your uploading record, but your direct competitors’ as well. Maybe you’re getting beat by a channel that uploads the same volume of content that you do, but more regularly. You’ll spot that and more with the Content Cadence tool, so you’ll know what to adjust.

VideoAmigo gathers hourly data from 10,000+ YouTube Topics to reveal the best/better/good/bad times to upload based on when there is the highest viewership demand for a Topic plus when there is the lowest new video supply. Our When To Upload tool is the ONLY place to find out exactly when those perfect “golden” upload hours are.

New hours are published weekly, because seasons change, viewing habits change, your video Topics change, and the competition changes. So, be sure to check this tool before you schedule every upload.

Find out if you should upload shorter videos more frequently, or longer videos less often. The answer is different for every Topic, country, language, producer type, and channel size.

In the Upload Success Formula tool, you’ll create an analysis that will give you a scientific answer to this question, custom-tailored for you and your channel.

Now that you’ve committed to a content cadence, when you’re stuck for what kind of content to make, turn to the Editorial Calendar, a comprehensive list of holidays and celebrations. Sort by date and discover global events — or events for just your neck of the woods — and add topicality to your videos. 

Sometimes you need to take down (sunset) a video at a precise day and time due to rights management, and sometimes you have a video that you’re ready to publish, but you’re waiting for an exact moment.

The Sunsetting and Publishing tool “talks” to YouTube and makes it easy to sunset or publish, complete with an email reminder you set in case something changes.  

This annual conference is for everyone… Fans, creators, and industry folks. In the past, there have been massive days-long events in the United States (Anaheim, California), Asia (Singapore), Great Britain (London), Australia (Melbourne), and Mexico (Mexico City). VidCon events are chock full of YouTube celebs, panels and workshops for you to learn from experts, and plenty of time to meet fellow YouTubers to grow your own community of collaborators.

This annual conference held in Los Angeles purposefully excludes fans. Instead, VidSummit is for industry insiders, influencers, and marketers. Don’t think you don’t qualify… if you have a YouTube channel and want to learn how to grow it, this two-day event with multiple sessions per day is for you. If you can’t attend in person, look for Live Stream content and session replays.

Geared toward the industry (as opposed to including fans), the Video Marketing World annual conference — held in a suburb of Dallas — is the most intimate of the three and focuses on creators helping other creators.

You’re already on LinkedIn, right? Expand your community by joining YouTube-focused groups where you can ask like-minded creators for input on your most pressing questions, or offer your expertise and coach others about how you’ve grown your channel.

Go to LinkedIn and type a few keywords in the search box and filter for groups. Some allow you to join instantly, while others vet you before allowing you to join.

A few of our favorite LinkedIn Groups include:

• YouTube Marketing
• Social Media, Social Selling, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter
• YouTube Creators and Advertisers
• YouTube Fans
• YouTube Marketing Professionals

Did you know that the content on your About Page is indexed by search engines? Take a critical look at what your About statement says. Does it really reflect who you are today?

Be sure to incorporate well-researched keywords while you describe what your channel is all about. The first 150 characters are the most important as that’s what shows up when someone searches for you.

So begin your description using enticing words, even if those words don’t include your most important keywords. The first 150 characters need to draw the searcher in.

1. Log in to YouTube…
2. Click your channel avatar and choose Your Channel…
3. Click Customize Channel…
4. Open the About tab…
   • … if you’ve never added a description, select +Channel Description
   • … if you already have one, click it to start editing

You know you need to add tags to every video you upload, but when was the last time you looked at the Channel Tags you probably set up when you first launched the channel?

You have about 340 characters before you’re using words that won’t do you any good, so make sure they’re relevant and begin with category keywords first.

• Log in to YouTube Studio…
• Go to Settings in the far left column…
• Choose the Channel tab…

Another critical form of channel optimization is Playlists. It’s still news to some that Playlists show up in YouTube and even Google search, so the very act of creating them is an optimization move for your channel.

Don’t know how many Playlists to have or how many videos to put in ‘em? You’re in luck because VideoAmigo studies the enormous amount of data in our system to tell you just that, based on your library size. Check it out in our free Playlist Builder tool.

Do you know if your Thumbnails are good enough to “win the click” now that Thumbnail clicks really matter?

Earlier this year, YouTube announced that Thumbnail Click-Through Rates are as important as Watch Time in YouTube’s video discovery algorithm. So how do you know if your Thumbnails are click-worthy? Our free Thumbnail Explorer tool shows you.

You’ll be surprised at how fast you can grow your YouTube channel by responding to and knowing more about your commenters.

Our Comment Manager app lets you easily see which commenters are not subscribers so you can individually encourage them to subscribe, or conversely, thank your commenter for being a subscriber.

You can also see which commenters are creators with an audience of their own so you can trade shout-outs in your videos and broaden your community.

This tool includes an exclusive feature: add your own sentiment analysis so you can assign a value to individual comments, from best to worst. Comment Manager also “talks” to YouTube and makes it a breeze to review and respond to all of your comments in one place.

For every million YouTube views on your channel, how many subscribers do you get? We call that “Conversion.” This stat demonstrates whether you’re just passing time making videos or actually building a fan base.

The Conversion tool starts by benchmarking your performance against others, for example by comparing your Conversion to YouTube overall, to your direct Topic competitors, and to the best of the best in your Topic. If your Conversion is low, we suggest ways to improve. If your channel has insanely high Conversion, we’ll warn you about what that could mean, and how you may be penalized for it. Get to know what works on your channel and do more of that to grow.

You hopefully already look at your engagement stats in YouTube Analytics to see all of the many ways that people interact with you and your channel. Our Engagement tool kicks it up a notch and compares your channel to others in your Conversation, country, language, and more.

Demographics and Geographics are two separate tools that add convenience and perspective to what you already get from YouTube analytics.

On a channel level, find out how your audience Demographics compare to YouTube overall or your Topic’s averages. On a video level, VideoAmigo gives you one chart with the Demographics of every video in your library. You’ll also find out which of your videos or video groups do better against specific demos and geo-borders.

Understanding your viewer’s Demographics and Geographics is a great way to know your audience, and if you are talking with brands about sponsorship opportunities, it’s one of the critical factors they’ll be interested in.

This tool takes YouTube’s already incredible information about where your views come from and shows it to you in ways you’ll use to grow your channel.

Use View Sources to see which of your videos and video groups are doing best with Premium, so that you know when to use YouTube’s Premiere promotion tools. And understand which of your videos and video groups have the most volume for a particular view source, so you can understand which of your optimization and content marketing efforts are paying off.

Measure what percentage of a video’s viewers click the Like Button so you can easily see which of your videos are liked more than the others… and then make more like them. Each of the videos in your YouTube library has its own Applause Rate and this tool shows which of your videos are liked more than the others. You can also use this tool to compare the Applause Rate of your videos to those of your Topic competitors.

Find out whether or not too many of your views are coming from too small a number of videos. The most successful YouTube channels – the ones that are most sponsorable – have views that are spread out relatively evenly across the content library. The Audience Concentration tool shows you your curve, explains what it means, and lets you plot key competitors and the Top 10% in your Topic, so you’ll learn how to get a truly great story.

After you make sure you are in the correct VideoAmigo Topics, the Competition Story Teller tool shows where you rank among all of the channels in your Topic.

Where do you fall? At the top, where you demand a premium? At the bottom, where you should offer a bargain? Or in the middle, where showing growth gives brands a reason to bet on you?

You might rank #20 million on YouTube overall, but among Travel Vloggers from your country, speaking in your language, you might be near the top. Even if you’re not pitching yourself as an Influencer yet, open this tool and learn where you rank.

Category Rankings is one of our deceptively simple list tools only made possible because of the depth of data in our Touchstorm Video Index. Here you can create your own combination of Topics and get a ranking chart. It’s your ability to combine marketing categories that make this a powerful tool to study your current competition or find the competition you want to go after.

If you’re a brand — or want to study brands — there is one more tool you should pay attention to.

YouTube is the only social media that offers the perfect formula for Paid, Earned, and Owned, allowing you to break through and create real relationships with consumers. How is your brand doing on YouTube? Specifically, how is your brand doing against your closest Topic competitors there? Find out with the free Top Brands on YouTube research tool.