10 Tips to Grow Your Local YouTube Channel

Written by manoprakash6 | Published 2020/05/01
Tech Story Tags: technology | education | online-learning | strategy | productivity | learning | youtube | self-learning

TLDR An ordinary person, who loves to learn new things, takes up different platforms to deliver their content. To make your videos reach out, to a wider audience, here are the 10 things which I feel will help you a lot. Stick to the Basic Language which I believe, on what makes people listen to us, is 'All words from us should be very basic and be easily understood even by the beginners' Staying local as much as possible, it will be fine to cover up within an hour maximum. Restricting within the range of 40 min - 1 hr will be really great for the audience.via the TL;DR App

Check Out What Can Make Your Content to Have a Wider Reach..
Let us start with a tiny preface part of this, before getting into the business..
Why Regional Languages ?
Everyone in this world love to learn, but what stops them to do so is the 'language' factor. There are countries which are so diverse in culture and heritage such as India, which has around 22 official languages and there are more than 100 other languages, spoken here as well.
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To help the people in learning something new, Here comes the heroes who wish to teach in their regional languages.
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It's really great to see people coming forward with such great initiatives. Really appreciate you, guys !!
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Such people, who love to teach, takes up different platforms to deliver their content. One such platform is "YouTube Channel".
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Time to introduce myself, and I'm one of those guys who would straight ahead look into YouTube to learn new things.
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Some YouTubers making video out there, would feel disappointed that your days of efforts for making a video, is not getting you more than a few thousands of views (I know getting a few thousands itself will be a goal for many). To make your videos reach out, to a wider audience, here are the 10 things which I feel will help you a lot...

1. Stick to the Basic Language
The true psychology which I believe, on what makes people listen to us, is 'All words from us should be very basic and be easily understood even by the beginners'. Because the intended audience might range from beginners to professionals .
"More I understand, the more I will like you, then the more I listen to you further" is the key.
So, assuming I'm one of those audience, then if I could understand all those what you're saying, then there are so much pros,
  • I would be definitely liking your content.
  • I would be satisfied with what I learned.
  • I will be happy that I spent time on something useful to learn.
  • I would look out for continuation of this content as well.
  • Also, if it goes on, I would suggest my friends as well.
That's how the crowd builds up. By this, the video would benefit a huge mass of people.
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2. Good to have a bit of Fun
Disclaimers, and usage of dialogues featuring in your regional language movies, really helps the listener to relax a bit with a small smile, and mentally come back in a few seconds with full attention.
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(Just to show that I don't have any appropriate GIF to fit in this place !)

3. Video Length
While planning to deliver a content, it will be fine to cover up within an hour maximum. Restricting within the range of 40 min - 1 hr will be really great for the audience to put in full attention. If it goes beyond 1 hr, it would be a bit tough to put in concentration for a long time.
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4. Be local as much as possible
Since we make the video in a regional language, let us come with quoting as much local places/things/ incidents as examples (instead of global examples) like "Big Bazaar" (in India) for a shop, rather than "Walmart" as an example. That would attract people and help us connect with them a lot mentally feeling like a distant friend.
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5. Continue your individual videos as a series
Let's take an example, that a person in Karnataka (A South Indian state) wants to "Learn R in Kannada (A regional language spoken in South India)". It's really rare to find such playlist in YouTube.
If, we (as a YouTuber) know Kannada, and start to continue that series in Kannada, then it will definitely benefit a lot of people in Karnataka looking to start in data science. Keep in mind, giving out a series of videos, makes your channel a one-stop shop, and makes it easy for any-time reference.
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6. Add some Magic
Explaining out in simple language with real time examples, would be very useful. Let us take a scenario that "A Civil (or) Mechanical Engineer (or) a B.A graduate who wants to start data science". The magic in our video should keep him watch our video till the end, That's it.
If it happens, then our magic has really worked out. If not, then there's something we've missed". Let us make sure the examples we show would satisfy all people from beginner to pro.

7. Keep things simple
Come out with the one-liner on current trends and unfamiliar technologies, which wouldn't have reached out to a lot of people who want to begin a career in that domain. Telling a lot on unknowns would make the listener feel like he/she doesn't know anything and might give a bad feeling.
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Let us stop with that one-liner, and let the audience go ahead and dig on that, if they are curious. Unless or until a question comes out to explain advanced technologies, let us give them answers in much simple words as possible so that beginners can understand a bit too.

8. Eagle-Eye on Comments section
Keen watch on comments section, and in case if it is a live webinar, we need to have a double check on "whether we have addressed all questions in the live chat?".
Let us not leave any questions unanswered. If we don't have an answer at that time, let us reach out to them via comment section later.
The reason is, When a person wants to know about data science, he (or) she does a Google search, and lands up in YouTube to find content in some regional languages say Tamil(One of the Indian languages) . Let's say, the person finds three videos for his question. Which one would the person choose to watch ?
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Then the factors, that would influence the decision are,
  1. Title of the video
  2. Video Views
  3. Channel subscribers
  4. The order in which the YouTube puts the result. Thus it makes the person feel that the video shown as first result is the most appropriate one (People believe YouTube on the order it brings out !).
Almost all of these can't be directly changed by us. Let us leave those and assume the results bring out video search results R1, R2 and R3. If all these three, are almost same in the above metrics, then we can't expect that the user will watch all three. Might be, the user has no time to see all.
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Then what comes as a tie-break is the "COMMENTS" section. That is where the people who have already experienced the video, would have put out their experiences. And this is where our strategy comes into play. Now, when a third person looks into the comments section of our video, he would get a thought in mind as,
"OK..this channel answers all questions by the audience, and they ensure that even unanswered questions at live session get answered later, after the session. So, this is one good channel we can believe on, and listen to it in future as well".
If this trust comes into his/her mind, then all those factors ((2) to (4)) would favor us a lot (Of course (1) can be controlled by us, in keeping a good title !!).
Also, In a Psychological note, know that people will be so happy, if you (the channel owner) is posting something, especially to address their questions.
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9. Think of yourself as one among the beginners in the audience
While doing a session, think of our self as telling things to dumb audience who knows nothing related to the topic. Then we would know what are the questions we could expect from all those beginners, for the content we deliver. Our ultimate goal should be to keep them comfortable, and let him/her understand almost all those we say. This is the one of the magic which helps us for the broad reach of our content.

10. Be open and connect the dots using local objects
While explaining with examples, let's assume that we are dealing with making a video on "Working on data sets" for people in some part of India. Then it is good to rename the places to Indian places/cities (Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi, Madras etc.,) (or) let us work with any Indian data set, rather than using other countries' data sets (which would mention states like Pennsylvania, California, Tennessee) for keeping the Indian audience alive.
Dealing with the appropriate set for the appropriate audience, really matters. I'm not saying to use false names, in data sets and make the data seem inappropriate. Just, use them as dummy samples, and tell your audience that it is not a real data set as well.
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Jokes apart, If we continue working on this, then definitely we will end up in a very good position, in YouTube. Also, these strategies might be applicable for any other platform as well. One day, our content will be known to people, as "The perfect content to learn R in Kannada", like Andrew Ng's "Machine Learning" for all ML beginners.
But, all it requires is Good work and Patience. Once people start finding our content useful, then sit back and relax. The rest of world will take care of it. Now, Get back on doing videos on other related topics and keep up the good work !!
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(FACT : Andrew Ng's "Machine Learning" started way back around 2011 or before, Believe it or not, it is still the perfect course for the ML beginners!. After that, he didn't stop, and he continued doing videos on much more topics and is still doing the good work!!)
P.S Really want to thank Abdul Majed Raja for motivating me to write my ideas, as an article. Thanks brother !!

Written by manoprakash6 | An ordinary person, who loves to learn new things.
Published by HackerNoon on 2020/05/01