20 Smart Ways to Increase Your YouTube Subscribers

If you currently have a YouTube channel, you must be wondering how you can get more YouTube subscribers.

Should you buy YouTube subscribers?
Are there free ways to get more subscribers on YouTube?

With a smart strategy and persistence, you could be the next big YouTube star with tons of subscribers.

Because I have applied it and here is what my YouTube channel subscriber count looks like with only 200 videos.

Video content is leading the way in the content marketing scene. YouTube is currently the leading platform for video blogging (vlogging), video sharing, and video marketing. It is a free platform offered by Google, and many love it.

Facebook and Twitter have recently stepped into the video marketing game, but they still fall way short of having the kind of impact that YouTube has.

With over a billion unique YouTube visitors per month, there is a large potential audience for every uploaded video. Whether it’s a video of someone performing a prank or a video of a fashionista’s summer wear review, YouTube is the go-to platform for video consumption.

1. End the Video With Significant Points

The success of an online video depends on how you end the video.

Ending the video on a high note or a strong point is the key to boosting social share, views, and subscribers.

Add the call to action, ask your viewers to subscribe to the channel, like the video, press the bell icon for notifications, check your website, etc.

2. Clean Up Your YouTube Channel

Before we get into the good stuff, it is important to do some housekeeping. While you may think everything your business does is flawless, you are not Beyoncé, so your audience might not think so… I know, I know, it’s hard to swallow, but it’s important to step away from yourself and into the shoes of an outsider from time to time.

Taking a hard look at your YouTube channel and re-evaluating what is on there will likely lead to the realization that a chunk of old content should be deleted—whether it is outdated, poorly produced, or just a flop of a video that should have never made it up there in the first place. If you have something of this nature tied to your brand, it’s going to immediately turn that lead off, and cause them to lose trust in your brand. Delete it and never look back!

3. Create Quality Content

Quality content is the foundation of any successful YouTube channel. Create videos that are engaging, informative, and entertaining. Focus on your niche and provide value to your viewers. This will help you attract a loyal audience and increase your subscribers.

4. Use A YouTube Intro & Outro

Your YouTube intro and outro not only help in branding, but it will also make your video more entertaining.

Having an intro and outro will serve your brand and offer your video a sense of professionalism. It’s like the opening theme song of a TV show.

Moreover, an attractive intro will ensure that your viewers stay glued to the rest of the video.

5. Collaborate With YouTube Influencers

Influencer marketing is the easiest way to get heard or viewed.

Collaborate with top or amazing YouTube content creators.

Collaboration always helps everyone.

The best way to reach out to YouTube influencers is to offer them an opportunity to work together to create something interesting.

It will help you quickly grab more eyeballs and grow YouTube subscribers.

6. Use Eye-Catching Thumbnails

Thumbnails are the first thing viewers see when they browse YouTube. Use eye-catching thumbnails that accurately represent your content and capture viewers’ attention. This will help you attract more clicks and increase your views and subscribers.

7. Make Sure Your Videos Are Under 5 Minutes

So, your videos are all 30-60 minutes because your digital engineering software is complicated to explain? Or perhaps you’re in the law industry and believe the only way to instill trust is to include long video testimonials on your channel.

While testimonials are great, long videos and YouTube do not go well together! Regardless of how complicated the product you’re marketing is, your videos should never exceed 5 minutes.

8. Interact With Your Loyal Fan Base

Social media is built upon this intangible thread of connecting and interacting with fellow people.

It is all about how much you care.

When your fans know that you care about them, they will care about you.

Interact with your audience, and listen to their requests in the comments section of your videos. It is true that you may face certain backlashes and anger in your comments section, but brush it off with elegance and listen to your loyal fan base.

9. Social Media Promotion to get YouTube Subscribers

It is the need of the time to stay active on multiple social media networks.

Social media networks boost the discoverability of your brand. The more networks you cover, the more chance you have to grow.

In the beginning, it may not be possible for you to cover all the social networks.

You should at least be active on popular social networks such as Facebook, Google, Plus, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.

You can also add Pinterest, Snapchat, etc. to your list. You can quickly schedule social sharing on multiple networks using the buffer.

10. Use Call-to-Actions (CTAs)

Call-to-actions (CTAs) are powerful tools for getting more YouTube subscribers. Use CTAs at the end of your videos to encourage viewers to subscribe to your channel. You can also use CTAs in your video descriptions, comments, and on your website.

11. Keep The Video Short And Entertaining

There is no doubt that YouTube has millions of lengthy and highly detailed videos. But when it comes to creating highly converting video, videos with 3-7 minutes in length work the best.

A ComScore study of YouTube has disclosed that the average length of YouTube Videos was 4.4 minutes.

This can be the magical length for a newbie Youtuber.

You should keep your YouTube videos short, entertaining, engaging, and informative but fewer than 5 minutes until you reach a respectable number of followers.

12. Add Powerful CTAs To Your Videos

All good marketers know how to create powerful calls-to-action, or CTA’s. So why not use these skills of yours to give users a reason to return to your channel through a subscribe-able call-to-action?

How does this work exactly? If the idea of inserting a CTA into a video sounds complicated, and possibly above your technical capabilities, I’ve got good news: It’s not! YouTube has made this easy by allowing marketers to add end screens and cards to their videos.

13. Optimize your video descriptions

Coming back to the SEO aspect of YouTube videos, the video description is not to be neglected.

The description will not only let your videos be found in search engines, but they’ll also give potential viewers an idea of what your video is about.

But don’t overdo it. Having a very detailed description makes no sense because only the first few lines of your description show up when the video is initially loaded.

Again, like the title, you should use your keyword in the description, and again, don’t overdo it. Don’t think you’re outsmarting the search engine by adding in your keyword 17 times. Doing this will actually hurt your chances of showing up in searches.

14. Use Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a powerful way to reach a wider audience and attract more subscribers to your YouTube channel. Collaborate with influencers in your niche to promote your videos and reach their followers. This will help you build credibility and attract new subscribers to your channel.

15. Create Custom Human Thumbnails

Let’s face it, the reason we’re warned not to judge a book by its cover is that we do it all the time. Your video thumbnail is essentially the cover of your video, so you need it to be absolutely beyond engaging. In fact, I’d argue that the video thumbnail is the most critical item in determining whether or not a visitor is going to play or not play your video.

The greatest way to ensure people play your video is by using an image of a smiling human making direct eye contact as the thumbnail for your video. Why? People relate to other people. Another hot tip to take your thumbnail to the next level – throw a smile on it!

16. Use the Right Tools

There are a lot of great tools out there. From tools to help you make videos to tools to help you promote your videos, using the right tools will help you increase your organic viewership.

And the more organic views you have, the more potential subscribers you can get.

Me, I have been using TubeBuddy for a while & I highly recommend it to anyone who is serious about YouTube marketing.

TubeBuddy will help you find more viewers, make more money, and automate your entire YouTube process. Definitely check it out.

17. Invest in YouTube Advertising

The time has come to take your wallet out. You didn’t think all of these tips would be free of charge, did you?

Take a deep breath, I’m not asking you to shell out too much cash, but putting some budget behind promoting your YouTube channel is a pretty full-proof way of increasing your subscription base. The internet is a crowded space and money talks, so it’s important to invest some of your marketing budgets behind your channel.

YouTube makes advertising your channel very customizable with a variety of ad formats, including:

Display ads
Overlay ads
Skippable and non-skippable video ads
Bumper ads
Sponsored cards

18. Participate in YouTube Communities

YouTube Communities are groups of creators who share similar interests or niches. Participate in these communities to connect with other creators and promote your videos. This will help you attract new subscribers and build relationships with other creators.

19. Optimize Meta tags

Google keyword planner is the tool that you need to find the relevant keywords for YouTube videos.

Adding relevant keywords to YouTube videos makes them easily discoverable through YouTube searches and Google searches.

When adding keyword makes sure you do research.

Adding keywords improves the discoverability of your videos. It grabs more views and subscribers

15 Killer Ways to Get More YouTube Subscribers in 2023

20. Create An Engaging Channel Trailer

YouTube offers a great feature called channel trailers that lets you automatically play a video upon the opening of a YouTube channel.

Your channel trailer is something you must carefully work on and constantly improve to keep visitors engaged.

This is the moment where you need to catch your audience’s attention within a few seconds. The perfect channel trailer is somewhere between 30 seconds to 60 seconds.

Here you will need to provide a reason for your potential subscribers as to why they must stay on your channel, and what it is that you have to offer them.