If you’re here on our Raffiti Media blog, you’re probably running a YouTube channel and looking for different solutions to grow it, probably with the intent to monetize it in the near future.
It doesn’t matter if you’re here with years of experience or are a complete newbie; what matters is that you’ve discovered that you have a problem.
For some reason, it doesn’t matter what type of content you’ve created and posted; your channel is just not gaining the traction you’d hoped for and is not growing as quickly as you want.
So, again, if you’re here at Raffiti Media, you’re looking for answers to why your YouTube channel is not growing and solutions to help it change course.
Look, we know it can be extremely frustrating when you spend time and treasure building a channel with expectations only to see it fall short. With that in mind, here are reasons your YouTube channel isn’t growing and some tips to help you change that.
1. Your Content Doesn’t Get To The Point
YouTube has an incredible reach, with over 2 billion users on the platform, but that size also makes it highly competitive to stand out among the competition.
And in our busy, hustle-and-bustle lives, there is little time to waste, so viewers are looking for a quick. Immediate response to their search queries and aren’t too happy if they get misleading or incorrect results.
So, when creating content, consider that your viewers don’t have much free time. Ensure that your content delivers on its promises, doesn’t deviate too much from your intended topic or brand, and is concise but entertaining.
2. Is Your Content Identifiable For Your Audience?
People love to identify with a brand. Look at professional sports. People worldwide identify with their favorite soccer team in the Premier League, and many of those fans don’t live near those cities.
Or take the NFL in the United States. People cheer for their favorite team, like the Dallas Cowboys, and have never even set foot in the city, much less the state of Texas.
However, these teams’ immense popularity is because they have something that people, their fans, want to identify with as a brand. It could be players, team history, or location, but in general, the idea is that these fans identify with the brand and want to be “seen” socially as part of the fanbase.
So, your channel may not be growing because your brand has nothing for people to want to attach themselves to, and there’s nothing to identify with. So change that, ok?
3. Don’t Go Broad–Narrow Your Niche
This strategy will be much more straightforward once you decide on a niche and deeply dive into it. Don’t be a jack of all trades; have your channel be seen as the expert in just one area.
Think about a neurosurgeon. Sure, they’re intelligent and educated, but they’re also highly skilled in one area: the brain. Of course, they’d have a general knowledge of medicine, but they are specialists in the brain and the only ones trusted in those situations.
So, you may be in the marketing niche but don’t go too broad with your material. Focus on one aspect, like social media marketing tips for realtors, and be extremely helpful.
4. You Aren’t SEO Savvy
Another reason your YouTube channel is not growing is that you aren’t doing SEO correctly.
Look, YouTube has videos that cover every topic known to man. To stand out and have your content found, you must up your SEO game because, at the end of the day, YouTube is a search engine.
You need to treat the platform as a search engine. Instead of results that lead to a blog post or website, when people search for a topic, they’re driven to a video or channel.
Also, when people type in a query on external search engines like Google, the parent company of YouTube, Bing, or others, the results pages will include a variety of results, including videos that closely resemble the best results.
So, improve your SEO skills both on the platform and for external search engines.
5. Your Content Isn’t Good Enough
The quality of your content is another factor that prevents your YouTube channel from growing.
The type of content you create should be specific and identifiable for the viewer, but it must be of high quality in style and substance.
Investing in better equipment and learning how to edit your videos to get the best production values is crucial to increasing your brand recognition and the perception of your expertise.
6. You Aren’t Engaging With Your Audience
Also, creating content that speaks to your audience and is relevant to what they’re seeking is crucial. Find what terms and phrases they are using to look for solutions and how they describe their problems.
Once you understand the types of terms and words people use to search for content, craft your content to identify and speak directly to those search terms.
You can look at similar channels and videos, as well as external ones. Go to forums like Reddit and Quora, and engage with your potential audience on social media to find the topics and interests that will help guide your content creation.
In other words, give the people what they want, not what you think they want.
When you align your content to what your audience is searching for, you’ll increase the chances of ranking on the platform as a relevant solution for their search requests.
This will do two things: first, it will establish you as a trusted expert and a source of reliable information about the types of things that your audience is looking for, and second, it will help increase your channel’s visibility.
Remember, you’re not just trying to create content and upload it to the platform; it’s about crafting your content to answer your audience’s needs and questions.
7. You Aren’t Promoting It Well
Yet another factor in why your channel isn’t growing is that you’re missing the mark when it comes to promoting and marketing your channel.
You’ll be waiting a long time if you rely solely on the YouTube algorithm to decipher and rank your content.
This isn’t the movie. “The Field of Dreams” starring Kevin Costner. You can’t just build it, and people will come, which is the concept behind the movie.
Getting traffic and growth will take a lot of effort, but also being strategic in building your channel.
You need to engage with your potential audience on YouTube and elsewhere. You’ll also want to engage with your audience on social media. You can respond to comments, likes, and shares, but you should also take a more interactive, creative approach.
For example, instead of uploading a video and then directing people to it, consider creating a contest or hosting a live Q&A where you answer people’s questions and direct them to videos that dive into those solutions deeper.
Also, incorporating SEO techniques in your video titles, descriptions, and tags and utilizing the tools that YouTube provides content creators, like end cards and thumbnails, will improve your visibility and increase potential views.
There could be various reasons why your YouTube channel is not growing, but with a little strategy and effort, you can quickly change that.
Being very clear and concise in your content production, utilizing intelligent SEO tactics, creating content that your audience is looking for, engaging with your potential audience where they like to hang out, and using the tools that YouTube provides you are expert-level tips that we’ve used time and again to help our partners grow their channels and social media following.
Building your channel will take effort, but you can partner with experts with the resources and know-how to jump-start its growth.
If you’re ready to grow your channel and need a helping hand, at Raffiti Media, we are a full-service, all-inclusive YouTube management service.
What that means is that we help our partners grow their channels, even creating their content, so that our partners can focus on other aspects of their business.
Ready to get started? Contact us for a FREE consultation where we can diagnose why your YouTube channel is not growing and how we can help you change that quickly.
