Bolstering Your Numbers: Building a Professional YouTube Following
YouTube is a powerful tool for marketers, businesses, governments, and individuals around the world. Influencers use YouTube to attract, entertain, and educate. For entrepreneur George Papazov, the founder of TRADEPRO Academy, the site is not only a tool for getting his tips and training materials for day traders to current students, it’s a way to grow his business by attracting new students as well.
Like most social channels, building a following on YouTube can be done organically, by producing quality content and sharing it widely. It can also be generated with paid marketing and advertising dollars, which can be a huge investment in the long run. For small business owners like George Papazov, building a following organically is the only solution available.
Papazov founded TRADEPRO Academy in 2012 to inspire, educate and empower at-home traders and investors. Today, he has 39,000 YouTube subscribers who follow him for daily for stock updates, breaking market news, tips, and more. He broadcasts live content daily and his most popular video training tutorials include TradingView Tutorial and How to Use Fibonacci Retracements.
For businesses seeking a younger demographic, YouTube is a huge global platform. Papazov explains, “From 2010 onward, audiences 18-24 have spent 60% less time in front of their TVs, but exponentially more time in front of their computer and mobile screens.”
YouTube viewers are savvy content consumers and they have a million channels to chose from. That makes growing a YouTube following organically as successfully as Papazov has done, without paid marketing dollars, a difficult task. To start, Papazov set a goal of 1,000 YouTube subscribers as a solid foundation to build from. To get there, he created a detailed content plan and followed it, creating a consistent amount of regular, high-quality content that his followers now depend on. As an educator, his message fits perfectly with the quick, bite-sided portions YouTube requires for generating a high number of views.
Papazov also depended on viewer feedback to introduce new topics, content models, and timelines as his audience grew. Listening to his subscribers, making ongoing changes to improve his content and give his viewers what they’re looking for, has helped him keep a consistent growth trajectory. For new YouTube content creators, he offers these tips:
- Title your videos for search optimization by thinking of what terms you’d use to search for similar content. For example, instead of the date produced, add a catchy title like “How do I start investing in stocks?”
- Improve your search results with a SEO optimization tool specifically for videos, like TubeBuddy or VIDIQ
- Do your own keyword research to find high volume, low competition keywords for your content area
- Collaborate with other influencers, across YouTube channels, and cross-posting on other channels to reach new audiences
- NEVER buy followers, views, or clicks – YouTube seeks and deletes fake subs, which will hurt your overall channel in the long run more than it will help you
Papazov’s most important lesson may be this, “Remember, followers don’t equate to customers. You can have 200K followers and be broke if none of them want to spend money on your product offering. That’s why it’s essential to have a plan on how you’ll monetize the channel before you begin putting time and effort in it.”
