People have been using YouTube for years to showcase their art to the world. It’s a great way to share your art with like-minded people who appreciate various mediums and styles.
If you’ve already started an art channel on YouTube, you might be at a loss as to what to do next. If so, here’s a quick guide that features 8 ways to grow your art channel on YouTube.
Get Started For The Right Reasons
Starting a YouTube channel is not for the faint of heart, so make sure you’re getting started for the right reasons. If you’re expecting to get into YouTube and make hundreds of dollars within one month, then perhaps this isn’t the endeavor for you.
Building a following on YouTube takes time, and it takes hard work. If you are starting a channel for shallow reasons, you’ll quickly lose your joy.
Stay Motivated
Once you have your reasons for starting your channel, you need to stay motivated. To do this, set small reachable goals for yourself. Have a goal of getting one new comment on each video, or a goal of 5 subscribers a week. When you’re able to meet these goals, you’ll feel encouraged to move forward.
Don’t worry about being perfect at first. Just get out there and start creating. Everyone loves to see people progress, and they love seeing channels when they first start. When you stay motivated and keep creating, the views and subscribers will come.
Produce Useful Content
This is one of the most important things you can do when growing your art channel on YouTube. People want to see content that can help them. Remember, people get on YouTube to learn. So teach them! Something that may be a simple drawing for you could be extremely difficult for someone else.
When creating content, ask yourself:
- Who can this help?
- Who is my audience?
- Is this easy to follow for an art newbie?
- Will this qualify as a tutorial?
Of course, not all of your videos have to be educational. However, you want people to look to you as an expert on your art medium. So try to create educational art videos that will draw people to your channel. But don’t stop there! Have videos that feature you, your story, why you started making art, or just talk to your subscribers. They’ll come for the lessons and stick around for you.
Don’t Mind The Competition
While you can check out the competition, don’t give them too much thought. People come to your channel for you, so you want to hone in on what makes you stand out. It’s okay to see what other art channels on YouTube are doing at the beginning.
You can get ideas for your first couple of videos. However, you’ll want to try to stick to original content that will have subscribers coming back to your page for the information (or jokes) they can only get from you.
Format Your Art Videos for SEO
Your art videos could be some of the best on YouTube, but it won’t matter if no one ever gets to see them. Make sure that you’re formatting your art videos for SEO.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which stands for actions that make your content rank higher on search engines like Google and YouTube.
Two ways you can do this is to have bold titles and a killer description. Think about a keyword you want to rank for on YouTube. Let’s say you have a YouTube page geared toward Gouache.
You can title your video “How to Paint with Gouache” By bolding and capitalizing Gouache, this shows YouTube precisely what this video will include. You’ll be pushed up higher in the rankings as a result.
You’ll want to include your primary keywords and any other keywords in the description. Following these guidelines will make it easier for new people to find your channel.
Have A Consistent Posting Schedule
Implement and maintain a consistent posting schedule as soon as you can. The earlier you do this, the better. Posting regularly will show YouTube and your subscribers that you mean business.
If you only upload once every few weeks or months, people will start to forget that your channel exists. They might even unsubscribe due to no new content.
Uploading often builds up your video bank. Each new video builds on the last, giving your viewers more content to sift through and watch.
Having more content means they’re more likely to spend time on your channel. Posting consistently will lead to more subscribers because people will feel that it’s worth subscribing to your channel.
Video Quality Is Important
For people to love your art, they need to be able to see it. You don’t have to go out and drop thousands on top of the line video equipment, but you do need a decent camera.
Make sure you’re shooting in a location with good lighting.
If your lighting is good, you might even be able to get away with shooting on a phone camera. As your channel gains traction and you start to make a little money, you can always upgrade your equipment.
Video quality isn’t limited to your equipment. It has to do with your speed and voice over quality too. When filming “how-to” videos, make sure to speak slowly and clearly. This will make it easy for others to follow along.
Have Binge-Worthy Content
Earlier, we talked about producing useful content. You’ll also want to have binge-worthy content. What does this mean? It means that when people come to your channel, they end up watching one video after the other.
You can do this by creating mini-series on your art channel or linking videos related to each other. Refer back to older videos for them to see tips and tricks or art methods. Before people know it, they’ll have spent hours on your channel, and your views will skyrocket.
