Recently, Veed's YouTube channel reached the milestone of 1000 subscribers. This was accomplished in only four months and we're going to show you exactly what we did.

Over the years it's become increasingly harder to grow on YouTube, but not impossible. I've heard people say that it's too late for YouTube but that's just an excuse.

In this short blog post, I'm going to show you exactly how our channel got 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time in just four months.

First of all, here's some proof.

Back in February 2020, we only had 100 subscribers and a total of 23,370 views. A few months later in June, we flew past 1000 subscribers with a total of over 175,000 views.

These numbers helped us reach the requirements for the YouTube partner program which are 1000 subscribers and 4000 public hours of watch time in the last 12 months. A milestone a lot of Youtubers struggle with.

When I first started running Veed's YouTube channel there was no posting schedule or specific strategy in place yet. We slowly worked our way towards our current schedule which is one video every day except weekends. So 5 videos a week.

In the past 127 days, 74 videos have been posted to Veed's YouTube channel. Those 74 videos helped amass 156,000 views and 1000 subscribers. And half of these views were gained in the last 28 days alone.

The videos we make are all about video editing, video marketing, and social media marketing. We aim to post one video every weekday at 2 pm UK time (GMT+1).

Our current strategy is to focus on evergreen content and target high intent keywords.

Evergreen content is content that doesn't go out of date, it's content that will still be good content in 5 years time. For example, the keyword "how to add text to video" will still be something people will search for in the future because there will always be people who are looking to add text to video online.

High intent keywords are keywords that people search with the intent of accomplishing something. For example, if someone searches "how to crop videos for social media" on YouTube, they'll be more likely to sign up to a tool that the video they click on recommends because they are trying to crop videos for social media.

And because Veed ranks first for this high intent keyword in google, people will watch the video and be more likely to sign up to veed.io to crop their social media videos.

Because our current strategy is based on evergreen content, over 50% of our traffic is coming from YouTube search.

This means that our current strategy is working.

Our second biggest traffic source is external, which means that 29.1% of our viewers have come from outside of YouTube. Most of our external traffic is actually from Google due to the fact that we manage to rank a lot of our videos thanks to techniques that will be covered later on in this post.

Currently, only 9.6% of our viewers come from YouTube's algorithm suggesting our content. Although this isn't that much, it's expected at the beginning of growth. When you're a brand new Youtuber, you don't get views from YouTube suggestions straight away. You first need to get views from search so YouTube can determine if your content is good or bad based on how users view and interact with your content.

In the future, we will slowly shift more and more towards optimizing our content for YouTube's Suggestions Algorithm.

Here's what to keep in mind for every single video.

When it comes to creating a video there are two different stages where you can really optimize your video for growth. The first phase is the filming and editing phase, and then the second one is the Marketing phase.

During the entire creation process, there are a few things I try to keep in mind for each video.

Here's 15 tips to get more subscribers on YouTube.

1. Short and sweet
This one is pretty straight forward, keep your video short and sweet. When editing, cut out everything unnecessary. It's better to have a short video that a viewer watches all the way through rather than a long video that a viewer only watched the first 25% of.

Audience retention is a very important factor when it comes to getting your video ranked. So make the video only what your viewers need to see. No fluff.

2. Intriguing intro
Once a viewer has clicked on your video, the most important thing is to keep them watching. Out of all the videos I have created, I've noticed that videos with more information displayed on screen have a higher audience retention rate.

For example, in the video format of this post I display a lot of Veed's YouTube analytics and Insights which the viewers will find interesting to see.

3. Video hook
To keep your viewers watching the video all the way through, you need to give them a reason to watch it all the way through. You can do this thanks to a video hook.

A video hook is just something interesting at the beginning of your video that will draw in your viewers and make them want to keep on watching.

For example, if someone searches "how to merge video online" and you start your video saying "If you're looking to merge video online in just a few clicks, keep on watching" then your viewer will most likely be hooked because you're promising them a way to merge video online.

4. Relevant title
Clickbait is something we avoid on Veed's YouTube. The reason for this is because when you clickbait, people land on your video and find out that your title was misleading and end up clicking off the video. And this hurts your audience retention time.

That's why we always make our title very relevant to the video, that way a viewer gets exactly what they clicked on and will be more likely to watch the video all the way through.

5. Provide value
Providing value to your watcher is the best way to keep them watching. If a viewer learns from your video, they will be more likely to like the video, subscribe to your channel and watch more of your content.

Value comes in many different shapes and sizes. When it comes to YouTube search, make your video the best and most informative video targeting that keyword.

6. Create thumbnails that get clicks
To get more views on your videos, you need to improve your Click-Through-Rate (CTR). And to improve your CTR, you need to create thumbnails that get clicks.

The first thing I like to do is look at the competitors' thumbnails that are ranking for the keyword I'm trying to rank for. The plan is to make ours stand out from the others in a good way.

Here's the recipe for our thumbnails:

Color - Our bright pink background stands out enormously compared to a lot of the other colors you can see in the image above.

Text - We always put some relevant text on the thumbnail. Make sure it's in big so it's readable because remember thumbnails are small. A way to look at is to try and make your thumbnail text compliment the title of your video.

Face - Thumbnails with a face conveying emotion get a lot more clicks than thumbnails with no faces. So I highly recommend putting a face on your thumbnails.

Icon - Adding just a little extra design so the thumbnail isn't too bland. Again make the icon or graphic that you add compliment the video as a whole. For example in the thumbnail above, I added a T for text and then put an edit box around it.

7. Keywords
When it comes to keywords, I make sure the main keyword appears in the title of the video, in the description at least once and no more than three times, and I also make sure to put it in the tags.

When it comes to the rest of the tags I add a few alternative versions of the main keyword and then some broader ones such as "video editing", "social media marketing", and "online video editor".

8. A/B testing
YouTube is all about trial and error. That's how Veed's channel is where it is today.

Try different thumbnail styles. Try different editing techniques. Try different kinds of titles. Try different video topics.

And when you find something that works, stick with it. But always make sure you keep on testing regardless because social media algorithms are always changing, and YouTube's algorithm is no exception.

9. Add Closed captions
When you upload your video, Google scrapes everything about your video for keywords. The title, the description, the tags, the comments, and even the closed captions.

Although we haven't added closed captions to every single video because it takes time. Some of the videos with closed captions have done significantly better.

So if you can, add closed captions to your video.

And if you can add closed captions to your videos in another language, your potential audience will increase dramatically. Just so you know, you can translate closed captions using Veed.

10. Say your keywords
Based on what we've just covered, you should understand why you should say your keywords out loud in your video.

Even if you don't add closed captions to your videos, YouTube still auto generates their own version of closed captions for your video. And if you say your keywords out loud they will be in your video transcript which YouTube and Google scrape and take into consideration when ranking your video.

11. Share your videos on social media
The most common but still effective is to share your video across your other social media platforms. However, don't overdo it. Don't post every single video on every platform for every new upload.

We post a new video on YouTube five times a week and probably only share one video to our email list, a different video to Facebook, and then another to Twitter.

12. Share your video on Reddit
Reddit is extremely underrated when it comes to free traffic. However, for the following Reddit strategy to work, you need to keep two words in mind; relevant and valuable.

To get a bunch of views for free from Reddit, here's what you need to do.

Once you've posted your video, find a relevant subreddit that you think your video will fit in well. Share your video in that subreddit only if you think that video will bring value to that subreddit.

We don't do this for every video because our videos don't always have a relevant subreddit.

To show you an example, we made a video about creating easy audio visualizers for podcasters to create content for their socials faster.

We felt like this video would be of value to the podcasting subreddit, and we were right.

Our post got over 40 upvotes leading to over an extra 1000 views on our video.

13. Quora strategy
The Quora strategy is very similar to Reddit. Find a question that you think your video answers. This time write out the answer in a text format and provide as much value as you can. Then place your video at the bottom of the Quora answer and say that they can watch your video to find out even more about the topic at hand.

14. Blog post
Create an entire blog post based on your video. Ranking this post for the same keyword as your video will help with SEO and help rank in Google search. This will lead to your blog getting organic search traffic and your video getting more views embedded in the blog post.

To see an example of this you can take a look at a blog post we did about how to make video memes.

15. Watch and like
With every video I finish, I'm the first person to watch the video all the way through and click the like button. I like to think that watching the video all the way through helps kick start the video with a high Audience Retention score. Clicking the like button will also encourage others to like the video too.

If you start applying these 15 tips, you'll be at 1000 subscribers in no time. The hardest part is just sticking to it. YouTube is a long term game but with an understanding of its algorithm you can speed up the growth process.

If you have any questions about any of the tips mentioned above, don't hesitate to reach out to us. You can ask your questions in the comment section of this YouTube growth video.

Thanks for reading and I wish you the best on your journey to 1000 subscribers.