You might think they’ll help you grow, but these YouTube mistakes will cause the opposite

Growing a YouTube Channel takes a lot of work. Scripting a video, getting the setup to record it, editing the video and sound, publishing it, and then promoting it — it’s a small-scale studio operation. After that, to get monetization, you need 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time. All of these can be overwhelming and frustrating.

All of these efforts can be squandered if you do any of the following YouTube mistakes—

YouTube Mistake 01: You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours

YouTube has a pretty powerful algorithm. It has learned how to serve up relevant content to users. It has also gotten better at catching fake engagements. Any fake engagements like subscribe for subscribing, fake likes, fake views, etc. can get you into trouble. As per its fake engagement policy —

If your content violates this policy, we’ll remove the content and send you an email to let you know. If this is your first time violating our Community Guidelines, you’ll likely get a warning with no penalty to your channel. If it’s not, we may issue a strike against your channel. If you get 3 strikes within 90 days, your channel will be terminated.

Sub for a sub is definitely not worth it. You’ll work for months on content and then one fine morning, you might get banned.

Case in point — The curious case of Fazle who bought fake subscribers

Fazle had a good library of content but his subscribers were not increasing. He ultimately decided to spend some money on it. Instead of spending on allowed channels like ads, he bought 500 fake subscribers.

Mr. YouTube algorithm sees that Fazle suddenly has an increase in subscribers. If it understands some of it is fake, the algorithm will remove some subs. Fazle’s spending will go in vain

Let’s assume Mr. Algorithm didn’t realize those were fake. But it saw that Fazle acquired 500 new subscriptions but his views haven’t increased. Meaning, even his subs don’t come back for his videos. That probably means that Fazle’s video quality is poor. Mr. Algorithm will then stop showing Fazle’s videos to too many people as it doesn’t want users to leave the platform.

Either way, the YouTuber loses. It’s better to do the grind than to follow these methods.

YouTube Mistake 02: Let’s share videos on Social Media

Wait, what?

When we make a channel, we want to get views, likes, and subscribers. We may want to share our videos on social media and ask our friends & family to do just that. Some of them come to the channel out of love and interact with the content. So, how is sharing on Social Media a mistake?

This is how.

Your friends and family come to your channel to support you. However, two things can happen then.

1. They open the video but don’t watch the full video. They watch a little bit, subscribe, like the content, put in a comment, and leave. YouTube doesn’t like this behavior. It either thinks the video is not good or decides the subscriptions are fake.
2. They open and watch the full video. But, your video is in a niche that they usually don’t use. For example, you have created a gaming video. Your brother, who only watches cooking channels, watched a video in full. Youtube will try to show your videos to more people who watch cooking channels. Your videos won’t get clicks among those people and YouTube will decide the videos are not good.

As per Vidiq, watch time is one of the secret sauces to more growth. Mr. YouTube Algorithm looks for a few things to see if people are liking a video. One of those is the watch time. Mr. Algorithm uses a metric called Audience Retention — What percentage of the video has been watched by a user. If audience retention is low, that’s a red alert for Mr. Algorithm. It doesn’t want users to leave YouTube. But your content is not good enough to keep them on the platform. So, it will start showing your video to fewer people on YouTube.

Case in point — The extremely popular Hugo and his Social Media exploits

Hugo has a huge following on Facebook. When he starts a YouTube channel on Cryptocurrency, he obviously wanted to share it with his followers.

His followers congratulated him on the channel, subscribed, and interacted with the video. Hugo is happy, but he shouldn’t be.

Most of those followers have no interest in Crypto. They only interacted because they like Hugo. But obviously, they didn’t watch the full video. They brought the audience retention score down!

Hugo now wonders why YouTube is not promoting his content to more users.

Where should you promote then?

Firstly, find relevant groups on Facebook, relevant hashtags on Instagram and Twitter, and subreddits on Reddit. Your video should go to those channels only.

Secondly, you may consider creating a support group. A group of 10 people who’d find your video from their devices and watch it in full. Don’t share links but ask them to search by the title and watch. These views will boost the ranking of the video.

YouTube has no problem if you bring in people from Social Media. It loves it actually. It just doesn’t like it when they don’t watch more of the video and leave the platform.

YouTube Mistake 03: Your video is ready — Let’s just quickly upload and run

How your video performs depends on how you upload it.

As per Statista, 500 hours of videos are being uploaded to YouTube every minute! How’d Mr. YouTube algorithm know what your video is all about? How would it know yours is any good?

Even before you start the channel, you should have some knowledge of what you are getting into.

While uploading a video, there are 9 things you must address

1. A well-researched title
2. YouTube video tags
3. Video descriptions
4. Video Thumbnail
5. Metadata for Video
6. Metadata for Thumbnail
7. Category
8. Upload time
9. Upload frequency

Read more here: How To Upload YouTube Videos The Right Way

If you do all of these properly, your chances of success will go up.

Case in point — Two contrasting YouTubers

YouTuber Saad has excellent content on Food reviews. He just reviewed a burger joint in Singapore. He is happy with the video and uploaded it. Unfortunately, he didn’t consider any of the 9 we mentioned above. He uploaded at 3 AM in the morning, when his viewers are sleeping. Then Saad chose his category as music. He didn’t create a thumbnail or hadn’t done tag & title research.

YouTube Moin also has a similar video. But he gives the title “Best Burger Under $10 in Singapore East – Naga Burger”. He researched this earlier and found this title ranked high and had optimal competition. In his tags, he added the brand name, different variants of search options, etc. He created an enticing thumbnail. He followed all the steps and then uploaded them.

Mr. Algorithm sees both videos. It can’t see videos but it can read all those data. But the algorithm understands what Moin’s video is about and shows it to Burger lovers. On the other hand, it doesn’t understand Saad’s video and leaves it.

Final Thoughts on YouTube Mistakes

YouTube takes a lot of effort to get going. Your mistakes can completely derail you. It’s important to never go for fake engagements, share selectively on social media, and upload using the right method.