If you aren’t already aware YouTube is the second biggest search engine after Google. YouTube is also from Google, which means Google owns both the first and second-largest search engines.
What does it mean for you as a teacher? You have a tremendous opportunity to find students where you won’t only find people to consume your content, but you can also monetize your free content with ads and earn ad revenue.
Getting started on YouTube may sound intimidating, after hearing that there are already hundreds of thousands of creators uploading millions of videos daily.
In this article, I am putting my years of experience in making videos on YouTube, and it will probably help you get started on YouTube the right way.
Videos on YouTube generally fall in one of these categories
- Tutorials
- Unboxing videos
- Event videos
- News
- Demo videos
- Interviews
- Live streams
- Entertainment videos
If you plan to teach people a skill through your videos, you will fall into the tutorials category, which is pretty lucrative. But that does not mean that you cannot create videos in other categories.
It’s just that most videos are going to be in the ‘Tutorials’ category. And you can do occasional interviews with successful people in the area/topic you are trying to teach, you can also do live streams to take questions and answer them, you can do demos of products, and you can also cover news that comes from the area of the topic you are targeting.
1. Create a YouTube Channel
This may seem like a no-brainer, but creating just any account won’t do the trick. Fill in all essential details, especially the About section must include,
- A witty description of your business
- Email address
- Your other social media links
After that, think about branding your channel. Start with the YouTube banner image and channel icon. And like me, most of you won’t have a degree and graphics and design, so I highly recommend you use tools like Canva.
Canva provides thousands of templates for creating YouTube thumbnails, Instagram stories posts and even reels, Facebook posts and many other things that require good designing skills. The free version is enough for getting started. Use Canva to create an exciting display picture across all social media platforms, not just on YouTube.
You can also use Canva for creating Channel art for your YouTube channel. It is unnecessary to have the perfect YouTube Channel art from the start of creating a new YouTube channel, but you should give it some thought and try to make it appealing. You can check out other people’s YouTube Channel art to get inspiration, and Canva also gives you tons of templates to get inspired.
Make Videos About Your Audience’s Interests
Now that we are done with the part of creating a YouTube channel. It’s time to put your thoughts into you, making videos.
The first thing that you should keep in mind is making videos to Cater to a specific audience. Because you want only particular people looking for a specific problem to create a community of like-minded people, this is very important if you’re going to optimize your channel.
A small but highly targeted audience is much better than a larger audience with multiple interests.
If it has been a while since you are creating content on other social networks, you are in luck because then, you can find some interesting topics or even ask your existing audience on other platforms.
But if you are just getting started and are choosing YouTube to start teaching a skill, you can go through all the YouTube channels in your area of expertise and find what type of videos people are watching. How the videos are performing, and what problems are not being addressed.
You need to brainstorm this part in a notebook or an app like Google Docs. I suggest you go through the article before you get started online, which talks about all the tools required to optimize everything you are trying to do online.
Publish Videos Consistently
This is one of the most common types you will get from every YouTuber or more broadly content creators creating content for any platform. It would help if you were consistent.
It is natural for us to lose the excitement after a week, which stops the majority of YouTube inhabitants from becoming successful influencers.
This is why the previous section is more important than actually making the video because to make the video; you need to have an idea about what type of content you should be making. Most of the creators get stuff at phase, clueless about what to do next.
To kick yourself out of your comfort zone, collaborate with people, and create a content calendar. Make it a habit to plan the videos for at least a month so that collaboration becomes smoother and your schedules predictable.
Also, make a note of all holidays and upcoming events so that you can seize the opportunity to create unique videos. Just like any other type of marketing activity, if you’re considering YouTube, you need to be consistent for a considerable amount of time.
Engage with the Community
YouTube is not just about you creating videos, it is about the community you build. So you must address any question you have been asked in the comments section and interact with the audience.
This will make them spend more time on your channel on your videos, indicating YouTube that they are interested in.
The more similar people watch your YouTube videos, the more data YouTube gets to show your videos to more similar types of people.
The first thousand subscribers are the toughest
This is where you would need the most motivation you can get. When you start a channel, your videos won’t get any views. There are a lot of creators out there creating content, and YouTube is busy serving them.
Instead of putting up one video and spending your time inside the analytics, you should keep creating videos; YouTube will take a while to show your videos. This is all an automatic process, and you cannot blame YouTube for not showing your videos to their audience.
They need a sample size that watches your videos. So that they can match it and show your videos to a similar audience because only then they will be able to know your content is being watched by people with specific interests.
The first 1000 subscribers are the toughest for every new YouTube content creator unless you have another big YouTube channel or a large following on a social media platform. Because then you can drive a lot of traffic to your videos and speed up the process of YouTube getting enough data to recommend the videos to other people.
This is all you should know no for creating a successful YouTube channel. Everything else you would be reading from here on would be to keep yourself updated with what’s new, what’s happening and how to optimize your YouTube workflow.
The technical part of YouTube, such as Pre and Post Production of Videos, is mentioned in a separate article found here.
