Youtube needs no introduction and if you are here looking for some tips to improve your channel, you already know the significance of YouTube .

Over 1 billion hours of video are watched on YouTube daily — that’s more than what is consumed in Netflix and Facebook combined. And this would only increase further but do remember, the number of influencers would also increase substantially which would give more options to the viewers, thus grabbing their eyeballs and keeping them glued will be not be an ordinary task. Every YouTuber would love to generate more views as it would increase their followers and in turn generate more revenue for them. But what beginners fail to fully appreciate is how few simple smart techniques can broaden their audience base in a significant manner.

What counts as a view on YouTube ?

Whenever a viewer watches a video in their device for at least 30 seconds, that counts as a view. If a viewer watches your video more than once, each screening will be counted as a new view. That being said, refreshing over and over again trying to game the system will be detected by Youtube and thus won't increase the view count.

So if you are wondering, why doesnt my content create enough views, then these tips should help you.

Ensure your YouTube basics are up to snuff

Identify your target audience and understand what they need. There are a number of ways you can create engaging content, for ease of reference I’ll split them up in two ways:

1. Technical: the way you set up your camera.

2. Verbal: the way you perform on camera.

If you’re currently trying to create videos for everybody, they’re going to end up reaching nobody. Audiences don’t want a generalist, they want a specialist!

Do Some Keyword Research Before Filming

Making popular videos is tough if you don't know what people are searching for on YouTube. The best way to overcome this hurdle is with quality keyword research. This task puts you into the minds of viewers so you know what they intend to watch and which target keywords to use. Then, YouTube's search engine will recognize those terms and share your video with people searching for those topics.

Optimise Your Video Titles / Description / Tags

Now that you know who your target audience are and what they would search for, use the techniques and befriend YouTube. YouTube is a search engine which means search engine optimization (SEO) matters. The key is to craft killer titles to grab your audience’s attention without resorting to clickbait headlines. People crave content that’s entertaining, and they likewise want to know what your video is about.

The second attribute you need to optimize is your video description.Though not as essential as your title, your description is taken into consideration when the search results are being organized.

The third attribute is tagging. It’s advisable that you use your video tags to target your primary keyword as well as close variations of it. This will help you rank your video for search queries that don’t literally contain your target keyword, but yet close enough to what they are after.

Note: YouTube Video tags are different from YouTube hashtags—which are also important in your video strategy

Create Compelling Thumbnail Images

Cannot stress enought on this, now that your video is there available in the search result, the major factor that would help the viewer take the next step of clicking the video is the image.

Publish Your Videos at The Best Time

Unfortunately, YouTube doesn’t tell you when most of your subscribers are online.

So I recommend testing a few different days and time to see what works best for your channel.

You should publish your video an hour before the peak rather than on the peak itself which gives viewers enough time to discover more videos on your channel.

Enable embedding

Yet another option to increase YouTube’s view is to permit viewers to embed your YouTube video on to their blogs and websites.

This is an effective method for your brand to reach many new audiences and attract them towards your channel and videos on YouTube.

Build relationships with your viewers

The more interactions you make, the more feedback you get thus providing a constant flow of views for your future content.

Creating a two-way conversation might include:

• Reply to comments (it’s polite!)

• Run a YouTube contest

• Make reaction videos

• Include other people’s content in your videos (with their permission)

I know its quite a lot to grasp, so I'll leave it here for now. There is more to come - so please keep watching this space for Part 2.