Feeling entitled to views and subscribers. Ultimately, for a lot of creators, it's that mindset that causes them to fail when they first start their YouTube channels.

After six, nine, twelve months, they realized that it's harder than they think to get 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time, and to monetize their YouTube channels because I think those people would assume they deserved to be seen by YouTube audience. They also assume that they deserved to be paid for their work.

13 Massive Mistakes You Are Making as a YouTube Creator

In case you're wondering why we creating this post and video, it’s because we asked on Twitter what were your biggest YouTube mistakes and you responded en masse, so we thought we would discuss some of those. Which brings me on to the first of the mistakes you are probably making, even if they think you aren’t:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">❓🤔▶️What is one <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/YouTube?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#YouTube</a> mistake you will never do again?</p>&mdash; vidIQ 📈🚀🎉 (@vidIQ) <a href="https://twitter.com/vidIQ/status/1221920272577527809?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 27, 2020</a></blockquote>

Mistake #1 Thinking You Deserve Immediate Success on YouTube

Until you prove your value first to your audience, and then to YouTube, I'm sorry to say it but you are entitled to absolutely nothing. Remember, this is a free platform. You get to speak to a global audience and impact their lives, but you've got to do that first before you deserve any reward.

Of course, it would be fantastic if YouTube was a completely level playing field, and everybody would enjoy the success that they deserve, depending on the content that they create.

But there will be some creators who have a viral moment with appalling content, while others slave away creating magnificent pieces of work that never get seen by the audience that deserves to see it.

Unfortunately, that is YouTube, but the moment you assume that you should get this or that or this creator shouldn't get this because your content is better is the moment where you've lost the mindset of YouTube and who should be rewarded for the content - it's your audience first and then you.

Mistake #2 Deleting Content from Your Channel

I've never been a fan of this and there are two principle reasons why:

First of all, you're damaging the metrics on your channel. If you delete a video it removes all of the views and all of the watch time. Which is especially important for people working towards monetization. Secondly, don't be embarrassed about the content that you've already got on your channel.

If you look at channels such as MrBeast, you can see the hundreds of terrible videos he put out on his channel before he was a success. So it's wonderful and fascinating to see the progress of a creator who went from nothing, and is now a YouTube megastar.

I've said this before and I've stressed it heavily in the 

 which of course you can check out, the first tech upgrade should be audio. You can get away with slightly dodgy visuals, or lighting that's not quite right, but when the audio is off, it is just so grating and annoying to the audience that it will make them switch off more than anything else.

I use a Rode Video Micro which cost me $60, and I still use it today and it significantly improves my video audio. You can read more about 

getting the best audio quality for your videos here

This is an interesting one because it's often a symptom of a channel that either lacks focus or has too much self-indulgence. You’re creating a series of videos towards a particular audience, and then you decide to do something a little bit different. And that little bit different video takes off on your channel. And you're left with a decision whether or not to try and capitalize on that successful video, or continue to target your audience that you were trying to engage with in the first place.

Suddenly you go from becoming a travel channel to a beauty channel, or a financial channel to a laptop review channel. We came across an example where a channel was doing all of this business and financial advice and they randomly did a review on a cheap laptop from Costco. And this video got far more views than anything else on the channel. 7,000 views versus the average which might be a few hundred. What do you do in that situation?

Ultimately this is all to do with focus. Finding your niche, going two inches wide a mile deep, on a particular topic, and building an audience through consistency. Which naturally leads us to the topic of inconsistency.

This can come in many different shapes and sizes. I think we've already talked about topic inconsistencies. But for a lot of creators, it's the inconsistency of video output. This is why it's good to have some sort of schedule in the back of your mind. Whether you stick to it religiously, by posting on the same day of the week, at the same time, or by telling your audience that you will publish a couple of several videos a week. But maybe not sticking to a strict schedule.

The truth is for a lot of creators, YouTube should take up a certain portion of your time, versus the rest of your life, but the lines often become blurred. Whether you're on a roll, or because you're super passionate about the videos that you're creating, you spend more and more time on YouTube, but there's only a certain amount of YouTube adrenaline that you can run off, before you get burnt out. Or life gets in the way and you need to take a break. So that's why I never recommend running at 100% YouTube capacity all the time.

If you do create five videos in a week, that's great. Maybe publish four of those and save one for later on when you do need to take a break.

Mistake #6 - Leaving YouTube for an Extended Break

We've seen this phenomenon occur several times with channels, when we've been auditing them on the 

, every Tuesdays at 11 o'clock, Pacific Standard Time (sorry for the plug there.)

There are channels that have tens of thousands of subscribers. And the most recent videos are getting barely a couple of hundred views. And when we scroll through their list of videos, six, seven years ago the videos they were making were getting tens of thousands of views but unfortunately the channel took a significant break, and in that time the landscape of YouTube has changed radically.

This often happens with tutorial channels that were some of the first on the platform, providing answers to questions that hadn't been yet asked on YouTube. And there weren't enough channels providing answers. So even with questionable thumbnails, and content that wasn't brilliant, because the competition was so few and far between at that time, these channels were able to clean up. Now with far more sophisticated creators, who are really savvy with their production values, and enticing thumbnails, they're finding that they just can't compete anymore.

There is a really fine balancing act here for video creators and their channels. Absolutely if you need to take a break from the platform and do life stuff, I'm never going to tell a creator not to do that. But at the same time, YouTube, from a purely algorithmic point of view, hates procrastinators or channels that are not providing the content that they want to serve to an audience. And YouTube will go and find that content from another creator.

Granted we're talking about channels that haven't created anything for two, three, four years at this point. If you're going to have a break for a month or a week you're probably going to be okay. But, doing a hard stop on your channel, and then coming back in a few years time and expecting the same traction, I'm afraid that's just not going to be the case.

Mistake #7- Starting to Create Content too Late

And then there are those on the flip side of this YouTube mistake that are cursing about not starting early on YouTube. First of all, if you're beating yourself up because you think you've missed the boat because you want to start now but you had no intention of doing so years ago, don't beat yourself up. This is the same as blaming yourself for not buying Bitcoin when it was uber cheap, or right now not starting on the byte social media platform. Because who knows how that's going to turn out in the future.

It is how decisively you act on whether or not you want to start a YouTube channel, as opposed to when you first think about when you should've started a channel. I guess I will say this, if you've been watching YouTube videos for a year or two, and you've been thinking about starting a channel over that course of time, yes that is a mistake. If you want to start a travel channel, and you've been thinking about it for a couple of weeks, there's probably been 500 video creators or more who have started their travel vlog, and they're stealing your potential audience.

I would always encourage this, whether or not you think you're ready, start YouTube. Because you will learn a hell of a lot through experience. Right now, somebody is going to start their YouTube channel today, and by the end of the year, they're going to have a million subscribers. I can guarantee that.

Yeah you're right, this is probably the oldest YouTube mistake in the book. And I'm glad a couple of people recognized this, as an error in their ways. Watch this video for why:

Mistake #9 - Trying to Imitate Other Creators

When a viewer watches content on YouTube, and subscribes to a channel they usually do it because they have some sort of connection with the creator and it is content that they can't get anywhere else. So if your plan is to try and mimic an already well-established channel, the viewer is going to simply ask the question, why should I follow you? Why should I be interested in your content, if I can get it from somewhere else, with a more well-established channel, who probably does better content than you, if you're trying to imitate them?

Now I'm not going to sit here and point to you and just say be yourself, because as soon as you press a record button, for me at least, there's a different kind of pressure as if you're on stage. You can't help but change your identity in a certain way, because you feel as if you need to please an audience that's behind that camera.

It is so difficult for some people, and I count myself in this set, who can be natural in front of the camera. I don't know what it is, it's like putting on a different hat. Talking to an inanimate object feels so alien even now after all the videos that I've done. And I think that probably more comes through, in the editing that I do, I still feel a bit stiff on camera, but when I get into the editing suite, and I'm able to put that story together, that's where I feel my best creative personal real me qualities come through.

I think some of you will be able to pick up the internal struggle that I have in my head, whenever I talk in front of the camera. But I am so glad that I continue to do it every single day and challenge myself to be me on camera.

Mistake #10 - Trusting Just One Social Video Platform

Yeah yeah, all right. Nice little dig at Google and YouTube there, but I guess behind this mistake, there is a certain element of truth. Because if you put all of your eggs on one social media basket, all it takes is for YouTube to flick a switch, like they have done with the Adpocalypse, and 

, to see your channel, your audience, your potential business fall through the floor.

That is why in the long run it is important to diversify your skills, your reach, your brand so to speak. I know people hate this word, your presence on the internet can't just be restricted to one platform which has in effect total control over the destiny of your success.

I've chosen this one as an example of a mistake a lot of creators make when they simply don't listen to specific advice. Instead, they keep asking the same general questions to whoever is listening: How do I grow my channel? How do I get more subscribers? How do I get more views? Who on Earth can answer that question?

My guess is even if I wrote a 5000-word essay answer to those general questions, those people would ignore all of the advice and then two or three months down the line they would ask exactly the same question. How do I grow my channel?

Creators - do the research, do a bit of learning. Understand the analytics. Drill down into click-through rates, watch time, why some thumbnails work better than others, and then start to ask those specific questions of educators like us.

Because we love specific questions that we can really drill down into, and have discussions about. These broad questions are just an example of somebody, who I think again wants to get 1000 subscribers 4000 hours of watch time, and monetize their content without truly understanding the fundamentals of what being a content creator is.

And yes I know the irony is not lost on me that half the videos that we and other YouTube growth experts put out on YouTube are titled How To Get More Views and How To Get More Subscribers and How To Grow Your Channel. Those are the things that creators are searching for on YouTube, and we've got to get ourselves in front of those creators to try and educate them in a much more focused way.

Mistake #12 - Listening to the Wrong People

There are lots of people who come up with crazy zany ideas, some that are treading precariously along the terms of service of YouTube. My advice generally would be is if the strategy is going to get you quick views and subscribers, or hack your way to success, then it's probably advice you want to treat with caution.

If people are promoting organic ways to grow an audience over a period of time which never guarantee short term success, because you got to work hard as a video creator, then I think those are the type of people you want to listen to. Because they've gone through the journey themselves.

I always try to position myself, not as a YouTube growth expert who must be heard and followed to have success on their channel. There are huge gaps in my knowledge on YouTube. I find it difficult to advise on music channels. I don't know how vloggers can get in front of the camera, and be so personable and tell stories in the way that they do. But those channels fascinate me along with the entire YouTube platform.

And I am passionate about having the opportunity to spread my message and impact others on the YouTube platform which we see in the comments often. I and the rest of the vidIQ team, can share our experiences openly and honestly and you take value from it, then that's enough for me. And there's nothing wrong with listening to everybody's advice, testing it and seeing if it works because for different YouTube channels, and for different audiences, not everything works.

There are many routes on YouTube to that destination called success. And I like to think that here at vidIQ, what we do is put down road signs that help point you in the right direction. How you get there is entirely up to you and we will take a fraction of a percent of the success when you get there.

Mistake #13 - Not Allowing Yourself to Make Mistakes

Who said there's anything wrong with making mistakes? I almost feel as if a lot of people who want to start a YouTube channel, have to be of the mindset that their content has to be perfect to begin with. And they'll never start a channel because of that.

Evan Carmichael probably puts this best. I asked him what is the best tip for a person starting out on YouTube, and his simple advice was, "Expect to suck". But there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Because if you don't start somewhere, then you're never going to start, and everybody has to go through a YouTube journey.

As we've already said, some creators just have it, the X-Factor. Jennelle Eliana is a perfect example of a creator who was able to jump onto YouTube and just start making amazing content and that connected with a wide audience instantly.

But I certainly didn't enjoy that success when I first started. A couple a dozen people watched my first few videos, and it's taken me almost a decade to get to where I am today and that's taken 1500 videos plus. I make mistakes all of the time. It's taken me a good six hours to film this in front of camera, because I still continue to fluff up my lines. And no doubt in the future I will continue to make mistakes. I will make videos that I think are going to perform really well, and they'd never get off the ground. And you just have to experience those things as well on the YouTube platform.

I say this all the time and I'm going to say it again. The one thing that trumps all of the advice that you can get all of the technology you can purchase and anything else that comes from an external source is your experience. The more videos you create, the more videos you upload to YouTube, and the more you analyze the analytics and engage with your community, the better you will become as a video creator. And you will do it far faster if you are the one exposing yourself to all of the things that YouTube can bring into your creative landscape.

Start somewhere, look back on the content that you've made, and see where there are pain points, blockers, bottlenecks things you need to address. And aim to improve them by a couple of percent with every new video that you make. In the short term from video to video, you may not see the progress. But then when you look back on your videos from six months ago, you will see the radical changes and improvements that you've experienced and your audience will definitely connect with that. And those were some of your YouTube mistakes. Keep making them, embrace them, aim to do better next time.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

And if you’re really serious about growing your YouTube views and subscribers, sign up for exclusive access to the 

 and learn how to launch a successful YouTube Channel in just 30 days.

YouTube play button icon above bold text "I DESERVE MORE!" on blue textured background

As video creators, we all make mistakes on our YouTube journeys, and here are some of yours.

13 MISTAKES New YouTubers Like YOU Make - and How To Avoid Them

If you want the largest YouTube creators to see your content, then officially mention them. It could result in millions of views for your videos. So how do you do that?

As always, we will start on the YouTube Homepage. Click on your profile logo in the top right-hand corner and go to the YouTube studio.

From the Dashboard, click on the Videos tab to the left and then click the Edit icon for a video you have uploaded to your channel.

For example, we interviewed a video creator for 

, and instead of just mentioning the creator by name, we mentioned her by a YouTube channel.

Start with the @ character and once that starts to type out a name, YouTube will attempt to autocomplete.

You can include spaces too if the channel has them and eventually you should find the creator you are looking for.

When you click the channel that will convert the text into an official channel mention, and you can do this both in your video title, video description and community posts as well.

This is how that mention will look on a desktop screen. The creator's name is highlighted in blue, and when you click on the Mention, it jumps you straight to their channel, whoever it's in the title of a description.

And it's a similar setup through the YouTube app, a blue clickable link that takes you directly to the creator's channel. However, it must be noted that the Creator Studio app is not set up to insert mentions just yet as it advises you to type them out on a computer.

So YouTube mentions are very easy to implement into your videos, and we've had monumental success with them. But there are a lot of things just under the surface that you need to consider.

First of all, and this is guaranteed to annoy at least half of our audience, __you can only give or receive a YouTube mention if you have over 1,000 subscribers. __

Second of all, you have to consider that nobody is actually searching for a channel's name in this way, even if it is 

. Having said that, YouTube mentions can be a fantastic way of capturing a creator's attention because they receive a notification whenever they get mentioned through a video title description or community post.

And that's the nuts and bolts of how to use YouTube mentions. How might you use them inventively in your content? I will say this, if you do want to capture the creator's attention in the right way, provide value in your video or your content.

Don't do it as a way to try and get a shout out from the creator because that's very unlikely to happen. Sorry.

YouTube video titled "The Moment @MrBeast, @Mark Rober" with 1.8M views by vidIQ

Have you heard of YouTube Mentions? They allow you to tag other channels on the platform and we show you how.

How to Get More YouTube Views With Shoutouts to MrBeast, PewDiePie or vidIQ!

We are always talking about how you can get more views on your YouTube channel if you have a better understanding of your 

. But access to that data hasn’t been possible to do away from a desktop - until now.

Understanding YouTube Analytics - Mobile Version!

The first thing you will need to do is to make sure your iOS or Android version of the Creator Studio app is fully up-to-date. To do this, go to either the Android Play Store or Apple App Store, search for ‘YouTube Studio’, and if it isn't up-to-date right now, you should get an option to update it from this screen.

Now open up the Creator Studio app from the Dashboard screen

Tap on ‘View More’ for channel analytics

Then tap on the ‘Discovery’ tab to show you the screen Impressions and click-through rate for your entire channel over the last 28 days.

Even the full desktop Creator Studio doesn't show you this side-by-side comparison, which can be useful to review as a snapshot of how impressions affect your click-through rate.

You can tap on each of the graphs to go into detail and the impressions will show you growth or decline over the last 28 days.

The dropdown filter allows you to refine your results to the last seven days but unfortunately not to the last 48 hours or 60 minutes so it isn't quite realtime, an advantage you do get through the desktop version.

As well as channel impressions and click-through rates, you can view the same analytics on a video-by-video basis.

Go to the ‘Video’ section of the Creator Studio app and select the video you want to view

You'll see the same Discovery tab at the top of the screen which will show you impressions and click-through rates for that one video.

Now for a quick explanation of these two analytics:

 are the number of times your thumbnail is seen on YouTube. You want as many impressions as possible because that's basically free advertising for your content.

 is the number of times a person clicks on a thumbnail when it's seen. For example, if you get a hundred impressions and 10 people click on those thumbnails, that is a click-through rate of 10% and that would be considered very high and very good.

The quality of your thumbnails is what usually drives your click-through rate, so from our tutorials on how to make better thumbnails, we've got a playlist over here.

A lot of people have been getting very excited about these analytics finally coming to the mobile app, and you may be wondering why it's taken so long for that to happen when they've been available on desktop for over a year.

Well, to be honest, it's our fault. Well, I don't mean vidIQ's fault but the creator community at large. YouTube is currently having to maintain both the new Creator Studio and the Classic Creator Studio and until they can pull resources off of that Classic Studio, they can't put them into resources that will help them create all of these analytics for the mobile application.

So the quicker we can all get off Classic, which is happening very, very soon, the quicker YouTube can create more awesome tools for us on the desktop and mobile analytics for YouTube.

Mobile screen showing YouTube impressions data and growth with green arrow and logo.

YouTube has finally made some vital analytics data available on its mobile app. We show you how to find these insights and how understanding them will help your channel grow.

How to Get More YouTube Views by Understanding These New CRUCIAL Analytics

Did you know that you can confirm the number of YouTube subscribers that actually click on your notifications? To find out how just do the following:

We will begin where we always do, on the YouTube front page.

Click on your profile image and then go to the new YouTube studio.

Next, click on the Video tab on the left-hand side

When you mouse over a video, you will see some icons.

Click on the graph icon to go to the analytics for that particular video.

On this screen, click the ‘Reach’ tab at the top, and then halfway down the screen, you should see an analytics panel labeled ‘Bell notifications’ sent.

Bell notifications are the number of subscribers on your channel that have switched on all notifications.

The notification click-through rate is the crucial analytic we're interested in here. It represents the number of subscribers who actually clicked on the notification to watch the actual video. As YouTube states, typical CTR on notifications is between 0.5% and 2.5% percent.

Here's what I'd like you to do now. Go and find one of the most popular videos on your channel, and take a look at the notification click-through rate analytics.

YouTube CTR Analytics: Why That Metric Matters

 metric is an extension of data that YouTube rolled out to creators last year. You can access the data by going to Channel analytics, and then clicking on the Audience tab at the top of the screen, and scrolling down to Subscriber bell notifications.

As you might expect, we did a full tutorial on that data at the time, so you can check it out here:

As a suggestion to YouTube, what I'd love to see here is the notification click-through rate for your entire channel over the last 28 days. Oh, and I'd also like to add it as a metric in the advance analytics for individual videos too, thank you very much.

Now, for me, these analytics have been somewhat of an eye-opener. We currently have 475,000 subscribers, and over 35,000 of those clicked on the notification bell, and yet that only generates 500 views. Doesn't really seem worth it, does it?

However, as with all analytics, you have to put it into the context of your channel as a whole.

Those first 500 views are valuable for the first couple of hours of a video's launch, to get that velocity on your content. However, through our experience with the vidIQ channel, an educational channel, we know that we're going to get the majority of our views, over the long term, from browse and search.

For other channels where the storytelling and the personality is far more important to the channel itself, then you would expect a higher click-through rate on notifications. But remember, it's still, at a benchmark level, relatively low at 2.5%.

So, ake these analytics from a few videos, and benchmark them. Let's say your average notification click-through rate is 1%, then aim to improve that to 1.2%, or 1.4% over the next three to six months.

YouTube notification click-through rate (CTR) at 2.2% with upward green arrow indicator

Did you know that YouTube confirms just how many of your subscribers actually click on your notifications? Find out how to access this crucial metric.

How to Get More Views On YouTube From Your Channel Subscribers

YouTube descriptions, what have they ever done for your video? Well, they could be doing a lot more, if you actually wrote something worthwhile in them, but the truth is most YouTubers don’t, so here are a couple of tips and tricks to help you write better YouTube video descriptions. First, let's go through the hierarchy of importance:

The most important hook you have to pull in the viewer, is the 

. That's going to stop them from swiping or scrolling through the videos that are suggested to them.

, which provides some clarity for the video,

 to find out just how important tags are)

So when it comes to marketing your video, make sure you put most of your time, energy and resources into the thumbnail and the title. But the description does have its uses, and we'll start with the beginning of your description.

7 Ways to Optimise Your YouTube Description Right Now

There’s something that I want to stress at this point. If you see huge channels not paying any attention to video descriptions and not writing anything in them, that doesn't mean that you should do exactly the same thing. Those super-channels have already made it on YouTube, and they can do whatever they like. But when you're a smaller channel, trying to grow, making a good description is one of those marginal gains that gives you one or two percent more reasons to click on your video, as opposed to another, similar video of a channel of a similar size.

1. Use the Right Keywords to be Found in Search

There are two reasons why the beginning of your description is important. First of all, YouTube scrapes those descriptions for keywords, and it may help your video appear in Search. The higher those keywords are in the description, the more likely they are to be found by YouTube.

Second of all, when people are searching through video content, they will see a snippet of your description, roughly the first 140 characters, so think of your description as a Tweet when you first start to write it. If you're not sure how to start your description, a good idea is to more or less repeat your title.

You've no doubt put in a lot of effort into your title, and included as many keywords in there as possible, so if you put that in your description, and then maybe riff on the title a little bit, add a question in there, or a few more keywords, that's a good starting point for your video description.

The next thing you want to do is to include a subscribe link to your channel somewhere near the top of the description. Think of it as a point of sale. Your viewer could be on the edge of subscribing to your channel, and they just need a little bit of encouragement, and seeing a subscribe link in your video description may persuade them to do just that.

And you can make it even easier for them with this little subscriber hack. Simply copy and paste your channel home page, and then add this bit of code to the end of it - ?sub_confirmation=1. When people click on it, it will give them an automatic pop-up to subscribe to your channel. This does only work on desktop computers, but on a mobile it will still tune in to your channel page, where your viewer may subscribe to you.

Next comes a paragraph where you can go into more detail about your video content. Again, this is where you want to be using as many keywords as possible, so that YouTube can identify your content with as many associated terms as possible, which helps you in Search.

This doesn't mean keyword stuffing, where you're simply adding tags to your video description, that's against Terms of Service. But it may mean you're writing natural sentences, with a bit of repetition of those keywords. If you want a good example of this, check out the video description of the video at the top of the post.

The next thing you can do which can be really helpful to viewers, especially on longer videos, is to use time stamps. Time stamps are very easy to create and work on both YouTube descriptions and YouTube comments. All you need to do is create a time with a colon, for example, if you put in 1:53, that creates a link that when you click or tap on it, it takes you to one minute 53 in the video.

Now, as I say, if you've got longer videos, then this can be a great way to break up the video, and it gives you another opportunity to include keywords in your video description. And, once again, if you look in the above video description, you'll see some examples of this.

Next, there's nothing wrong with earning a little bit of extra cash from your YouTube videos, from non-YouTube tools, and that includes affiliate links in your video description. As long as you follow the rules. To quickly explain affiliate links, these are links to products and services that you create, that if the viewer clicks on them and buys something from those sites, you will earn a little bit of commission.

A simple example of this might be including an affiliate's gear guide so you're telling all of your viewers the type of camera, lighting, and other things that you use in your videos, and it gives them the opportunity to buy exactly what you use, and you earn a little bit from that. But as a disclaimer, let me stress this. Make sure you check out all of the YouTube Community Guidelines on how to use affiliate links and sell products and services on your videos, because you don't want to get in trouble, and have a strike put against your channel.

Now it is likely that you'll want to include these affiliate links among many other things in all of your videos, and so that's where you can start to use upload defaults. You'll find this under Settings in the new Creator Studio, and there is a section called Upload defaults.

Essentially, Upload defaults is all of the stuff that you want to include in every single video, so it will appear below everything else that we've already talked about. As a good example, if you go to the bottom of our video description and work your way up, you will see lots of things that come from our upload defaults.

For us, it's a case of answering commonly-asked questions, such as who vidIQ are, whether we support multiple languages, how can we download vidIQ, and videos that may help you understand how to use our tools. We also include social media links in there, so that we can communicate with our audience, whether they're on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and tell them when we have new content on any of those platforms. Head on over to Upload defaults and start to amend yours.

If you want to include hashtags in your video above your title, you need to add those hashtags to your video description. You can use a maximum of three, and they will appear as blue words above your videos. Find out more about YouTube hashtags here:.

Something else to remember about video descriptions. If you change one of your video descriptions, it's not going to transform your channel overnight. This is a long-term game plan, you're trying to stack the deck in your favor. Constantly reinforcing the keywords that you use, including links to other videos in your description, and other playlists that send your viewers on a feedback loop throughout all of your content. You want to make it as easy as possible for your viewers to find your content, and then stay in your own little corner of YouTube, and that's helped through not only video descriptions, but cards and also endscreens.

Man thinking about YouTube video text with vidIQ branding and green arrow pointing up

Attention YouTubers - how much value are you getting out of your descriptions? It could be a whole lot more if you follow our tips, tricks and hacks!

YouTube Descriptions: 7 Essential Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

For a brief few minutes on Friday 22nd of February, the King of YouTube, 

, his nearest rival contender. In a race which has gripped the YouTube community and seen PewDiePie fans initiate a number of stunts to keep the gaming creator’s numbers higher than any other YouTube channel, it was a routine audit from the platform that finally give T Series their spot at the top for a whole 20 minutes before PewDiePie regained the lead.

At time of writing, the influencer now has more than a 120K subscriber jump on the Bollywood media distributor, and due to the 

, and other golden promotional opportunities, PewDiePie could possibly be the first YouTuber ever to crash through the 100M subscriber barrier.

A few days ago, VidIQ ran a poll where we asked our followers whether PewDiePie would reach the 100M subscriber mark before T Series. An overwhelming 62% confirmed they did see the influencer smashing this goal but one user brought up the very valid fact that PewDiePie’s numbers may be inflated due to random accounts being created specifically to subscribe to his channel:

There’s no denying that the rallying call to, and between, the Bro Army has kept PewDiePie afloat in the face of sheer content uploads and viewing figures from T Series. But there’s also no denying that PewDiePie’s recent subscriber push may not be totally organic, and that may be a problem.

When YouTube does a purge of a YouTube channel the aim is to eliminate all non-legitimate subscribers and keep only the genuine ones. YouTube has pre-warned creators in the past that channel audits are imminent, but the platform has also carried out these sweeps without warning, which seems to have been the case last week. Socialblade confirmed that PewDiePie’s channel had been one of those affected, and consequently lost around 8K subscribers. It appears that T Series didn’t suffer the same fate, hence the blink-and-you’ll-miss it toppling of the crown.

With subscriber rates being so close between the two channels, it’s surprising that this kind of thing hasn’t happened before and to a much larger degree. But to really hold the lead, T Series needs to have more subscribers than PewDiePie for a significant amount of time to be officially recognised (by us anyway) as the new most subscribed to channel on YouTube.

In the meantime, by inflating his subscriber numbers via account set-ups or stunts, fans may actually be doing PewDiePie a massive disservice. YouTube are going to keep auditing channels and weeding out bots and other false-flag subscribers and view counts and the influencer may lose his top spot because of his rabid fan base and their campaign to keep him King, despite their best intentions.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

YouTube T-Series logo with crown and distorted crying man asking if it’s over

After months of campaigning, PewDiePie briefly lost his place as the most subscribed to creator on YouTube to arch-rival T Series. Find out what happened and why.

T Series Beats PewDiePie As The Most Subscribed to Channel

Here are a few tips tricks and tools to make sure you have lots of video ideas so you can grow your channel faster.

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world with over 2 billion users.

Don't under estimate the power of answering questions people are asking. Use the YouTube search dropdown to see what questions people are asking and focus in on your niche.

After you search for a term on YouTube you will see that vidIQ has a lot of information on the right hand side. Including keyword score, related queries and top search terms. This helps you understand the universe of keywords around your niche.

You can click on any keyword to launch the explorer to see more details including the current trend of the phrase.

Ask your audience how you can improve and what they would like to see next.

Another great way to get channel ideas is to see what others in your industry are up to using the vidIQ competitors tool.

For more tips on growing your channel make sure you watch the video above. And don't forget to 

Man showing OK gesture next to glowing light bulb icon on blue background with vidIQ logo

To create a sustainable channel that will continue to grow, you need video ideas and lots of them. Video ideas will help you to create content on a consistent basis that you can feed to your audience, attract a new audience, gain more subscriber, gain more views, gain more watchtime... more of EVERYTHING!

How to Grow Your YouTube Channel Fast in with an Idea Generator!

If you've never clicked on the vidIQ Channel Audit button, now is the time.

It is our most power tool, we've just upgraded it, so this is your complete beginner's guide on how to use it.

Note: In order to follow along you’ll need to 

. Don’t worry, we offer a Free version of the tool if you’re not quite ready to access our premium features.

The Channel Audit tool is divided into five sections. Starting at the top you have an instant snapshot of the health of your channel.

Second is the Content to Double Down On section, which includes eight different metrics that track your best videos in each of these categories.

On the top-right hand-side are videos from competitor channels.

On the lower-right-hand side is the traffic being sent your way from other channels’ videos (Top Suggested). These are you cluster channels.

So whether you want to know which videos have the most watchtime, the most views, the highest audience retention or gained the most subscribers, the Content to Double Down On section is what you want to review to help you decide on what content to produce next.

We also include which search terms are driving the most traffic to your channel, as well as the performance of your endscreens and interactive cards.

These often forgotten about YouTube tools can really help with engagement and ensure your audience to directed to more of your content.

As well as showing you what you're doing right you also need to know what needs more work which is why we've included the Content That Could Use Work section.

This section shows your videos with the lowest watchtime, likes ratio, audience retention, views and which videos are actually causing your subscribers to leave your channel.

The final two sections are all about improving the metadata — that's tags, titles and descriptions — of your videos.

The Average Metrics and Items to Improve Upon sections highlight where you might have missed opportunities such as adding video cards, endscreens as well as adding videos to playlists.

Rob Wilson

Posts Written By Rob Wilson

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How to Grow Your YouTube Channel Fast in with an Idea Generator!

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