How to Grow a Following on YouTube
Whether you’re dreaming of a YouTube following in the thousands or the millions, there are plenty of steps you can take to start seeing growth. From planning creative and engaging content to tracking video success in YouTube analytics and cross-promoting your channel on other platforms, there are many ways to grow your subscribers on YouTube.
No matter your niche or video style, growing your following requires a consistent and strategic approach. To streamline and speed up this process, many YouTubers rely on a creative subscription like Envato Elements, which offers an extensive selection of video templates and other customizable assets for a single monthly or annual subscription. Promoting your content and scaling your YouTube channel has never been easier!
No matter your niche or video style, growing your following requires a consistent and strategic approach. To streamline and speed up this process, many YouTubers rely on a creative subscription like Envato Elements, which offers an extensive selection of video templates and other customizable assets for a single monthly or annual subscription. Promoting your content and scaling your YouTube channel has never been easier!
What Does Success Look Like on YouTube?
Where to track
Understanding what your audience is watching and what they’re skipping over is essential to a successful channel. Use YouTube Analytics to track views, watch time, subscribes, and more.
Key metrics
The most important metrics on YouTube are watch time, views and subscribers. Familiarize yourself with these key metrics and focus on creating content that grows these numbers.
It’s more than just followers
Millions of followers doesn’t always equal success. Success can be defined by engagement rates, actions taken beyond watching videos, your community and so on.
Trending Templates for YouTube Promotion
Explore trending templates from Envato Elements, designed to promote your YouTube channel.
Get eyes on your channel with this geometric promo template. Featuring animated typography, quirky transitions, and promotional call outs for eye-catching impact.
Cross-promote your channel with this flyer template. With square and story-sized designs included, it’s the perfect way to showcase your channel on alternative platforms.
Create a clean, urban-style promo with this Premiere Pro video template. This all-inclusive pack also includes a logo reveal, lower thirds, subscribe-like buttons, and transitions.
Streamline your marketing with this stylish promo template. Perfect for creatives looking to run professional promotions on YouTube, or to create an eye-catching banner.
Showcase your channel in style. This template features contrasting colors, flashes of lightning, emojis, confetti, and typographic backgrounds for a captivating promo.
Showcase a selection of videos with this colorful intro template. Complete with lower thirds, animated backgrounds, and motion graphics, it’s perfect for vloggers and musicians.
How to Promote Your YouTube Channel
There are plenty of ways to promote your YouTube channel. Many YouTubers will create promo videos, trailers or channel intros, which provide an overview of their channel and encourage viewers to watch a few videos and ultimately subscribe. These packages can be shared across other social media platforms and websites to build brand awareness and target new audiences.
Successfully promoting your channel is much easier when you have a strong brand to build off. On YouTube, you can build and reinforce your brand through banners, profile picture, logo reveals, thumbnails, and intros. To streamline and speed up this process, many YouTubers rely on a library of professional templates and customizable assets like Envato Elements. With a single monthly or annual subscription, you’ll have unlimited access to banner and thumbnail designs, royalty-free logos & idents, video templates, and much more.
Create a YouTube Marketing Strategy
With more than two billion active users on YouTube (and growing!), a sound YouTube marketing strategy is essential to standing out. While it might sound overwhelming, if you’ve got a good understanding of your brand and audience, creating a YouTube strategy can be done in a few simple steps.
1. Understand the benefits of YouTube
YouTube provides a great opportunity to reach new audiences, showcase your brand’s personality and monetize your content. Once you understand the benefits of the platform, you can determine your goals and create content that will help you achieve them.
2. Set your YouTube marketing strategy
A successful strategy begins with clear goals. It’s also important to identify your target audience and create a content calendar that will engage them. Once live, you’ll need to regularly track your content and optimize where necessary to ensure your goals are being met.
3. Understand your competitive landscape
It’s important to understand what your competitors are doing for a number of reasons. Competitor research can provide inspiration on trending topics and help determine what your target demographic are already consuming—and where there are gaps in the market.
4. Create engaging YouTube content
Most YouTubers follow a clear process when making videos. They’ll write and record with their audience in mind and develop a consistent voice across videos. To keep subscribers interested, we recommend a mix of content—from long-form videos to shorts, stories, and posts.
10 Tips to Grow Your YouTube Channel
Discover our top expert tips for establishing and growing your YouTube channel.
1. Develop A Video Marketing Strategy
Successful video marketing begins with a sound strategy. This involves setting clear objectives, developing a message that resonates with your target audience, considering different types of video, and measuring the success of your approach. Learn more in our Video Marketing Guide.
2. Choose the Right Video Editing Software
Every producer has their pick for post-production, but the frontrunners amongst YouTubers are Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve. Learn the differences between each software and determine which is the best option for you and your channel in our Editing Software Guide.
3. Create a Trailer for Your YouTube Channel
A trailer video has many benefits. Not only can you communicate your niche quickly to potential subscribers, you can introduce yourself and provide a summary of your channel’s top content. Many YouTubers rely on video templates from Envato Elements to create high-quality trailers.
4. Optimize Your Videos for Search
YouTube is first and foremost a search engine. Optimize your videos for search by using keywords in titles, adding descriptions, using tags, and creating custom thumbnails. You might also consider investing in a tool like VidIQ to monitor and optimize your channel for YouTube search.
5. Embrace YouTube Analytics
YouTube analytics is a YouTubers best friend! Using this free tool you can explore key metrics like video views, watch time, subscribers, and impressions. With the option to review by channel or video, you’ll be able to see at a glance what kind of content is performing (and which isn’t).
6. Utilize Professional Assets
Whether it’s a graphic template for your channel art, a royalty-free music track for your trailer video, or a complete video template, professional assets like those form Envato Elements will save you time and money, while giving your channel a professional edge.
7. Explore a Variety of Content Types
They say variety is the spice of life, and the same applies to YouTube. Experiment with a range of different content types and use YouTube analytics to work out what type of videos your audiences engages with the most. You may find a combination of content works best.
8. Post Regularly
Keep your audience engaged with a regular content schedule. This doesn’t mean you have to record, edit, and upload new videos every single day—instead find a schedule that works and stick to it. A content calendar is a useful tool to keep track of new and upcoming videos.
9. Engage Your Audience
There are many ways to engage your YouTube audience. Start by creating a mixture of content—from stories and shorts to community posts and long-form videos. Use end screens in all videos to encourage more views and always respond to comments from subscribers.
10. Cross-Promote Your Channel
Sharing your YouTube videos and channel trailers to other social media platforms is a great way to reach new audiences. From Facebook to LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok, cross-promotion–particularly with paid ads–can boost your subscriber list and drive video views.
How to Get Started on YouTube
Ready to start your own channel? Explore our other YouTube guides below and set yourself up for success.
Creating a successful channel is simple once you know where to begin. Discover everything you need to get started—from tips to templates and royalty-free assets.
Whether you’re playing to your strengths, following your passion, or starting a trend, this guide will help you find the right niche for your YouTube channel.
Planning is the only way to create consistently high-quality content. We’ve put together our top tips for planning, scheduling, and tracking your content on YouTube.
The right equipment can make or break your channel. Discover what other YouTubers are using and determine the best equipment for your style and genre.
YouTube FAQs
How do I get more followers on YouTube?
There are many ways you can get more followers on YouTube. Perhaps the easiest way is to simply ask viewers to subscribe to your channel at the end of a video. You should also add end screens to every video to promote related content from your channel. It’s also important to optimize your channel with a customized banner, profile picture and compelling description to create a professional and engaging look, and encourage visitors to subscribe.
How to get 1000 subscribers on YouTube
Aiming for 1000 subscribers can be an overwhelming goal. We recommend breaking it down into smaller stages—start by aiming for 10 subscribers, then 50, then 100, and so on. Be sure to post regularly and cross-promote your channel on other social media platforms to boost your subscriber list quickly.
How do you get branding options on YouTube?
To add branding to your YouTube channel, sign in to YouTube Studio and select Branding from the left hand menu. This is where you can add a profile picture, banner image and video watermark.
What is the size of YouTube channel branding?
Your banner image that appears across the top of your channel should be at least 2048 x 1152 pixels and 6MB or less. Your profile picture should be 98×98 pixels and 4MB or less, and can be a PNG or GIF. Lastly, for your video watermark, aim for an image that’s 150×150 pixels and 1MB or less.
Further Reading
Want to learn more? Explore our top articles on growing your YouTube channel.
Discover the art of promoting your YouTube channel—from creating an engaging trailer to using eye-catching and consistent thumbanils, and cross-promoting on other social platforms.
Growing your YouTube channel starts with a sound strategy. Discover how to captivate your audience, drive action, and grow your following through your video content.
A talented digital artist and YouTube pro, Seventh Voyage uses Envato Elements to create inspiring artwork and connect with his global online community.
Your YouTube Toolkit
A monthly or annual subscription to Envato Elements provides everything you need to promote your channel and grow your following.
Cross-promote your YouTube channel on other social media platforms. Our professionally-designed social media templates will help you reach new audiences with ease.
Not only do lower thirds add context, they can be used to reinforce your branding, call out other social accounts and encourage viewers to become subscribers.
Your banner is the first thing most people will see when they visit your channel. Create a professional and aesethic design with a fully customizable template.
Subscribe buttons should be bold enough to stand out in your video without taking away from your footage. Templates make striking this balance easy!
Cut between scenes in style with high-quality transition templates. From subtle shifts to eye-catching glitch jumps, Envato Elements has transition templates for every kind of video.
Create long-form videos with ease using customizable video templates for every kind of video editing software and every type of YouTube channel. Learn about using Video Templates.
Meet the Experts
YouTuber Benny Productions
YouTuber and Photoshop master Benny Productions has turned a creative hobby into a fully fledged career. Explore how he uses Envato Elements to find inspiration and speed up the production process:
“I don’t remember ever looking for something that Envato Elements ended up not having. I myself really enjoy the 3D section. Being able to choose your own angle is a huge gamechanger. Besides, the amount of 3D assets available is simply insane. I also think the video templates are great for YouTubers. I often use templates as a base and work from there. There’s endless cool stuff! Finally, the stock photos. On Envato Elements, I often find photos I can’t find on free stock websites. It’s definitely valuable.”
“I don’t remember ever looking for something that Envato Elements ended up not having. I myself really enjoy the 3D section. Being able to choose your own angle is a huge gamechanger. Besides, the amount of 3D assets available is simply insane. I also think the video templates are great for YouTubers. I often use templates as a base and work from there. There’s endless cool stuff! Finally, the stock photos. On Envato Elements, I often find photos I can’t find on free stock websites. It’s definitely valuable.”
Why YouTubers Love Envato Elements
Unlimited downloads
When we say unlimited we mean it. Enjoy access to our complete library with a monthly Envato Elements subscription.
Simple licensing for YouTube
All assets are royalty-free and covered by one simple license so you can create content with confidence.
New assets added daily
Deliver on-trend projects with access to our library. With new items added daily, there’s always something to inspire.
Cancel anytime
Canceling your subscription is quick and simple—no strings attached. If it’s not right for you, we won’t waste your time.
