CEO of Popshack and former President of Warner Music Conrad Withey recently sat down to give his five tips for creating a YouTube channel growth strategy.

Conrad is a world leader in YouTube revenue creation and ideally placed to give invaluable advice to the enroled students on our marketing qualification, Dot Native. The video below is taken directly from the course’s regular industry insight section, so head over to our Dot Native homepage if you want to find out more.

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YouTube growth tip 1: Commitment

I think the first thing is to make sure that you commit to the channel and that it is refreshed with new content on a regular basis.

It’s a little bit like thinking of a TV show such as East Enders.

Build the fan base. If East Enders didn’t do anything for three months, those people would be bemused about what is going on.

Thinking about a YouTube channel is a similar commitment: you need to make sure something’s happening on a regular basis or the fans will come and then disappear again.

My recommendation is to do something at least every week if at all possible.

That doesn’t need to necessarily be a piece of new film content. It could be updating a playlist, or it could be liking someone else’s video. But a piece of activity happening on the channel on a regular basis.

YouTube growth tip 2: Clear branding

My second tip would be to make sure that the channel is clearly branded.

People [need to] know what you’re about, what your reason to be is.

So whether it’s a sports channel or a comedy channel, or a straight vlogging video diary channel make sure people know what you’re about when they land there.

Effective communication of who you are what the channel is there to do is really important.

YouTube growth tip 3: Timing

My third tip for YouTube channel development would be doing something at about the same time every week.

We talked about regular content, but actually it’s also important that people know that you’re going to do something at a similar point every week, because they’ll tune in for it in an old TV style way.

They may come back and see it later, but they’ll know that each Friday night at five o’clock you’re going to do something new and that’s a bit of an appointment to check out your channel.

YouTube growth tip 4: Use social networks

For my fourth tip in terms of building a YouTube channel, I would recommend making sure you’re plugging in all your other social networks.

We talked earlier about how important they are for communicating new stuff and making sure your Twitter or your Instagram and all of those are linked into your YouTube channel. On your YouTube channel page, [ensure] you’ve got links back to them as well so once people find you they know they can log into those accounts, following you on other platforms and keep discovering what you’re up to.

YouTube growth tip 5: Collaboration

My final tip for growing a YouTube channel and using it for marketing would be collaboration.

We mentioned it earlier but it’s incredibly effective, and actually most businesses out there people are competitive and don’t consider collaboration as an opportunity to share consumers or customers or fans.

Actually, collaboration can be incredibly effective, so think about other people who do what you do in a complimentary way and try to reach out to them so you can cross-fertilise fan bases.