There are millions of channels on youtube and everyday many new channels come up. All these new channels start their youtube journey with only one dream of gaining a wide audience to showcase their talent, and earn good money at the same time. And they try everything they can. They look for resources across the internet for all the tips and guidance that can help them grow their youtube channel.
But one thing that we probably forget is that there is a lot to learn from the youtube itself. How? There are a lot of well established youtube channels which have millions of subscribers and also earn a handsome amount of money. And if we analyze these channels, their content and their way of doing things, we can learn a lot.
But we have made the task simpler for you. We have analyzed five youtube channels, all of which are one of the most subscribed channels on youtube. These are – Cocomelon, Dude Perfect, 5-Minute Craft, Bright Side, and Movieclips. We went through these channels in detail and looked for the clues that tell us what makes these channels something that millions of viewers like. And in this blog, we present all our findings to you.
What Makes Those Channels Special:
- Channel Art
This first thing that you notice on a channel is obviously the channel art, which introduces us to the contents and feel of the channel. And these channels have certainly done a great job there. Have a look at these channel art yourself.
The Cocomelon and Dude Perfect have very creative and complex graphics as their channels are, while Bright Side and 5-Minute Crafts use a really simple combo of images and text as their channel art but that also looks good. This tells us that it is not necessary to have a very complex design, simplicity also works well provided it looks good. The other thing that matters is how well the art conveys what the channel is about. For example, Cocomelon is a kids rhymes channel which it clearly conveys. Similarly Bright Side is an education with fun channel, and in its channel art, text with correct formal font style and black color conveys maturity and educated mindset, while yellow background conveys brightness and fun, which makes a perfect combo.
Another thing that we can notice is that all the channels have included various social icons in their channel art, which many channels neglect or forget about.
- Channel Description
These channels haven’t compromised on writing a description for their channels, even a teensy bit. See how the Bright Side describes their channel. They clearly mention what their channel is about and what a viewer should expect from its videos. And they also mention why a viewer should watch their channel. Along with this we can also notice how they have put important announcements at the top of the description and some other important links at the bottom.
- Community Engagement
All these channels are highly active in engaging with the youtube community and post content regularly. We also found them iterating actively with the viewers on various social media handles like facebook, instagram, twitter, tiktok, etc. This makes it clear that it is really important to interact with your viewers and potential viewers directly through social media. It allows your viewers to maintain a personal connection with you and it also allows you to better understand what your viewers like and what not. It also helps you to be in mind of your viewers and not fade away from their memory if you make videos less frequently like once a week or twice a month. Below is a clip from the community section of the movie clips channel. You can see that it posts content regularly on youtube and also has various social handles attached where it is also very active.
- Live Streams
We found that all these channels were going live every now and then to interact personally with their viewers or show their content to them in a little different way. Therefore you should also try to create some exciting content and go livestream, once you have gathered enough viewers who you know would watch your livestreams.
- Video On What’s Trending
We found that these channels regularly make videos on trending topics or latest news. Such videos easily catch sight of the viewers and they are more likely to watch it. See in the below images, the left one is a christmas video that the 5-Minute Crafts uploaded just before christmas. And the right one is a video by the Bright Side which it uploaded just after a research was published on the population of T-Rexes.
- Video Thumbnails
Look at these thumbnails from the above channels. We found that all of them are using custom thumbnails for their videos and these are really good thumbnails. Let’s discuss what makes them good.
- They are colorful
- All the elements like images, text and logo are properly visible in the thumbnail and are neither too small nor too large in size.
- The text is properly aligned with the images. Look at the first two thumbnails and see how the text “how did Jupiter save earth” is properly aligned with the meteorite blaze and similarly the text “bucket list” is aligned with the mountains.
- The font style and colors used for text is such that it looks interesting and at the same time, makes the text properly visible over the image.
- The thumbnails and title together describe the video properly but do not reveal too much.
- Title Of The Video
These channels have set the titles of the videos such that it includes the low competition and high volume keywords and at the same time it’s neither too short nor too long. These titles arouse the curiosity of the viewers and at the same time doesn’t reveal too much about the videos. Look at the first thumbnail image above that is about jupiter. If you write its title as “what would happen if Jupiter suddenly disappeared”, it won’t be very interesting and curiosity arousing. But the Bright Side writes it as “if Jupiter disappeared so would life on earth”, which makes us curious about what Jupiter has to do with life on earth.
- Video Description
The description of the videos play an important role in increasing the views on video. Many viewers may not read the description at all but it helps the youtube search engine to determine what the video is about and show them in search results. These channels obviously understand this and therefore in all their videos you will find very detailed descriptions. They have also included many important links in their descriptions, which can help direct viewers to their important pages or videos.
- Video Quality
While analyzing the videos of these channels I found several interesting things that made them the favourite choice of the viewers. I am listing them one by one.
- We actually get in the video what its title says.
- Videos include quality content and is something that matters to their viewers.
- The videos are shot in good camera angles, with good lights, bright colors and clear sound quality.
- All the videos have really good editing and include graphics and animations that make them interesting.
- Recommendation Cards
We found that all these channels were using cards at the end of their videos to recommend their other related videos to the viewers, or a card to subscribe to the channel or both. See the below screenshot of a video from Dude Perfect that shows recommendation and subscription cards at the end of the video.
- Video Quality
We noticed that all these channels have their videos properly organised in various playlists and video series. It is a great idea as a playlist helps the viewers to find the videos that are relevant to them easily or get all the related videos at one place. It makes things convenient for the viewers and consequently they watch more videos.
That’s all from this analysis that we did. But there is always more if you look. We recommend you to analyze many top youtube channels yourself and see what you can learn from them. Here is a list of top youtube channels for your help.