YouTube averages 20 million daily uploads. That’s a lot of competition for any creator. Getting more views is about cutting through that noise and being noticed. Those additional views encourage the algorithm to further recommend your videos, which brings even more views – and suddenly you have a cycle for successful channel growth. Without increasing your views, even the finest content won’t find an audience.
Using strategies employed by those who went before can help bring more people to your own content. Here are eight common tricks to achieve it.
1. Focus on thumbnails.
“The best YouTubers in the world view thumbnails as a priority, not as an afterthought,” says content creator Aprilynne Alter. That’s because thumbnails massively impact click-through rate (CTR), the metric that shows how often videos that appear in searches or recommendations are actually clicked on.
Custom thumbnails, rather than a still frame from the video, are used by 90% of top-performing videos to optimise their impact. Thumbnail-design pointers from social media strategist Enrico Incarnati include using bright, contrasting colours; crisp HD images; facial closeups that show strong emotion; minimal but impactful text; and consistent styling across thumbnails. Check out popular UK YouTuber DanTDM to see the tips in action.
Design cues attract the eye, but thumbnails must ultimately spark curiosity to attract views. Alter recommends capturing moments before a powerful reaction (like Max Fosh caught hiking naked), asking questions that set up a story (like, What’s in the deep ocean?), showing positive results or transformation (like this house renovation), and portraying something people haven’t seen before (like Mark Rober playing chess with a crow).
2. Optimise your titles.
Title specialist Jake Thomas (whose channels have earned over 100 million views) points out that effective titles continue thought processes set up by thumbnails, giving users the extra info they need to click.
The thumbnail of Max Fosh caught hiking naked, for example, sparks curiosity, and the title (I Broke Silly European Laws In Front of Police) builds on it with added context. It’s far more effective than a title that simply says, “I was caught hiking naked.”
Titles should also be “simple and clear and very, very easy to understand,” Thomas says. Some good practices include using no more than 60 characters, front-loading important keywords, and using numbers and lists. (Research shows titles with numbers increase CTR by up to 36%.)
3. Improve your SEO.
“Ranking in search results is the best way to get brand-new eyes – not just subscribers and people who are already interested in your channel,” Sam Lauron writes for Hootsuite, a social media marketing company.
SEO, which stands for “search-engine optimisation,” essentially gives YouTube the data necessary to understand what your video is about and recommend it to the right viewers.
To feed it, you should integrate relevant keywords into your titles and descriptions, mention keywords in your video, group similar videos in playlists, and apply relevant tags to each video.
4. Deliver the promised content.
High CTRs count for nothing if users feel misled by a title or thumbnail and quickly click away. For one thing, experts estimate that videos must play for at least 30 seconds to count as a view. For another, YouTube penalises content violations for “misleading metadata or thumbnails.”
So no clickbait. Don’t promise advice on becoming a user-generated content creator and then talk about something else.
In contrast, viewers who watch all or most of the video and like, comment on, or share it will prompt the algorithm to show your content to more people. YouTube collects millions of responses to recognise when creators deliver on value.
“Make every second count,” Hootsuite contributors Hannah Macready and Liz Stanton recommend. “Prioritize your hook, avoid unnecessary intros, and get straight to the value.”
5. Be consistent.
There’s more to being consistent than posting at regular intervals. Content itself should stick with a consistent tone and niche. Again, it’s all about the algorithm.
“If your first video was about gaming and the next one [the algorithm] tests is about cooking, it gets confused,” says content creation YouTuber Dave Jeltema. “You need to be building on what it learned from the last video. If you don’t, then it’s starting over each time. You’ll never build momentum.”
By staying consistent, you train the algorithm to show your content to an increasingly large audience who may want to watch it.
6. Turn one view into many.
Every view should convert to more views by encouraging users to subscribe, click another of your videos, or, preferably, both.
Ways to keep people around include grouping related videos into playlists, creating a series of videos on specific topics, adding clickable cards in video end screens that link to popular videos and your channel, and adding CTAs (calls to action) that encourage people to subscribe or watch another video.
Check out Tom Scott’s end screen for his video The Never-Used Road Where the BBC Crash Cars. He includes a channel link with a subscription button, social media handles, and clickable cards to some of his other videos.
7. Start using YouTube Shorts.
Anyone wondering how to increase their YouTube views should start embracing YouTube Shorts. The quick vertical videos are great for finding new viewers as people scroll through an endless stream of content. “Shorts appear in a dedicated Shorts feed and can reach viewers who might never have come across your regular content,” Andy Davidson writes for TubeBuddy. “Since YouTube pushes Shorts to a wider audience, you have a greater chance of getting discovered.”
And they’re hugely popular, with around 200 billion daily views, showing a 186% increase from 2024.
Here’s how to take advantage:
- Already making short-form content for TikTok or Instagram Reels? Repurpose it into YouTube Shorts, as Dan Rhodes did with his TikTok content.
- Got plenty of long-form videos? Edit quick snippets into Shorts and link the original, as Binging with Babish does.
- Yet to take off? Consider shifting your focus to Shorts instead of long-form videos, as VT Physics did on her journey to 1 million subscribers.
8. Collaborate with other creators.
Collaborations are a win-win. You get exposed to their audience, and they get exposed to yours.
YouTube clearly understands that, since it launched a collaboration feature to “encourage audience growth and discovery.” Creators can now add up to five other channels to a video, with content appearing on each one’s homepage and audience feeds.
Improve results by choosing compatible creators. YouTube recommends asking:
- Would someone watch your videos after watching theirs?
- Do you have mutual values?
- Do you enjoy their videos?
Tech creator Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) followed through on his recommendation to have a “slight overlap” between audiences by collaborating with Doctor Mike on the video MKBHD Reviews My Cars | Garage Reveal.
Brownlee breaks down tech topics for laymen, while Doctor Mike does the same with medical topics. Having a tech guy review a medical creator’s cars makes the video relevant to both. It earned over 1 million views in three months.