We’d like to thank Clayton for writing this guest blog. Don’t forget to check out Clayton’s YouTube channel.

I recently took a course from YouTube on how to make your channel stand out and be as successful as possible. I enjoyed the information from the course and learned some great points.

Branding your channel.

Branding is powerful. Your channel description is your channels identity. It is important to develop this brand. Keep your logo and brand images clear and simple. Define your tagline. You want your key message to be in the first three lines. You should also include the key message in each video description. The first few words are most important of your description. The search engine only picks up the text from the first couple lines of text.

Ask your viewers to subscribe. State your mission of what your channel is about and give them a reason to subscribe. It is important to make a channel trailer that is under a minute long. Use key action words to get them to subscribe or watch a playlist. Subscribers watch more than casual visitors.

Periodically give your channel a self-evaluation. Consider the content, appearance, and searchability. How well do your videos match the viewer’s interests? How does you channel look? How easily people can find what they’re looking for?

Put effort into your channel artwork. Your channel Icon visually represents your channel so you want it to match your brand. You want a high res image 800×800. Limit the amount of text as it may not be readable. Use a URL shortener to keep your URLS short and sweet.

Making great videos.

The first 15 seconds of the video are the most critical.

Watch time is more important than the number of hits or views for a video. Watch time calculates how many minutes total your video has been viewed.

Keep your videos consistent so that people know why they are coming back to your channel. Subscribers love what you keep “in stock” and keep coming back for more.

If you change your style too drastically they may stop following you. Keep your viewers interests in mind and keep your brand consistent across your channel.

Posting your videos.

Publish your videos on a consistent schedule. The about section of your channel should say when your videos are released. At the end of description, you should have the upload schedule.

Your videos thumbnail should strive in telling the story of your video without viewers having to even read the video description.

Make sure your images are scalable.

With all of this in mind, the most important thing is to make great videos!