How To Create YouTube Channel?

This article will guide you through the basics of creating a YouTube channel and optimizing it for success. But before we dive in, if you’re interested in specifically creating a gaming channel, check out this detailed guide on how to start a gaming channel on YouTube. Owned by Google and one of the biggest search engines in the world, YouTube is a platform with over 2 billion monthly active users. Viewers spend over hundreds of millions of hours watching YouTube videos every day, and when you look at this statistic, it’s clear as day that the platform brings in more views than Netflix and Facebook video ads combined!

It’s no secret that YouTube is a media giant, and for anyone who is trying to build a brand or generate new leads, creating a YouTube channel is the way to go. 79% of internet users have already said that they have a YouTube account, and over 62% of businesses use a YouTube channel to promote their own video content. It’s not rocket science to figure out that YouTube will become a valuable part of your digital marketing arsenal. But we’re not here to talk about statistics.

We’re here to tell you how to create a YouTube channel and grow it organically. Just straight facts and solid tips and tricks. Let’s go over the basics below.

Create A Google Account

Creating a YouTube account requires you to have a Google account first. If you haven’t yet registered on the platform, simply sign up for a free by going to Google.com 

Click on the Sign-in button on the top right-hand corner.

Click on Create Account and select ‘For Myself.’ If you’re planning to create a Google business account or create an online store, then go for the second option. You can convert your personal Google account into a Google Business account later if you want. Hit next.

Fill in your details and type in a unique username for your Google Account. Click on next and complete the process by specifying your phone number and recovery email. You need to fill in these fields to make the recovery process easier, in case you ever forget your password or lose access to your account.

Once you have finished creating your Google account, simply login to Gmail and verify your account by following the steps outlined in the verification email. Now you’re ready to begin making a YouTube channel. 

Creating Your YouTube Channel – The Steps

Go to YouTube.com and visit the homepage. Hover to the avatar icon on the upper right-hand corner and click on ‘My Channel.’

You’ll get a prompt screen asking you to enter a channel name or brand name for your YouTube account. 

Since you’re starting a YouTube channel as a brand, select the Use a business or other name option. Hit Create Channel, type in a YouTube channel name for your brand and you’re done!

Pretty easy, right?

This is what your YouTube channel brand homepage should look like once you’ve just created it.

That covers the basics of how to create a YouTube channel for beginners. But don’t stop reading! We’re not done yet.

If you’re interested in optimizing your Youtube channel’s homepage to bring in more followers and get those views, keep scrolling. We’ve got some valuable tips for you.

How To Create Your YouTube Channel Art?

When you’re learning how to create a YouTube channel, setting it up is the first step. You need to know how to produce high-quality YouTube channel art so that your audiences tune in and stay subscribed.

The channel art cover for your YouTube page is similar to that of what you see when branding your Twitch channel. You can create your channel art easily by using a YouTube banner maker.

Take a look at this YouTuber’s homepage. Greg Doucette is an IFBB Pro who yells at the camera telling people to put the fork down and stop overeating like a moron. He is popular for his various antics on camera and dispels various myths about fitness, nutrition, and lifestyle. The links to his cookbook, coaching website, and Instagram handle are mentioned on the corner of his channel art banner. 

3DSense Media School is a world-class art and design school based in Singapore that’s popular for shaping up the art and illustration world. They’re famous for showcasing their student reels on their YouTube channels, talking about the concept art industry, and uploading illustration demos, art tips and tutorials. 

Khan Academy’s channel art reinforces the brand’s vision of delivering world-class education completely online. The channel art is fun and clean, with a colorful touch to the characters.

Another example who are successful in producing high-quality YouTube channel art according to the steps in this guide is Senses, a Scandinavian media outlet focused on entertainment and lifestyle content. Their YouTube videos include interviews with influencer celebrities, food-related content, and reviews of current video games and movies.

Hopefully, these examples have given you a few ideas on how brands represent themselves and their vision with channel art. High-quality channel art that looks professional and clean will attract more subscribers to your YouTube channel.

Channel Art Sizes

Optimizing your channel art and making sure it fits across a variety of display sizes is important. Your Youtube videos aren’t just seen on Android or Desktop. Subscribers could be watching your content from tablets, iPads or even 40-inch flatscreen TVs. 

The optimal image size for channel art is 2560 X 1440 pixels. 

Your text and logos should go within the ‘safe area’ which is 2048 x 1152 pixels. This ‘safe area’ makes sure that your designs aren’t cut off and stay visible. The maximum allowable width for your safe area is 2560 X 423 pixels.

For desktop screen sizes, the text and logo safe area is around 1546 x 423 pixels. You can use the YouTube channel art template shown above as a reference when editing your channel art cover. For creating channel art from scratch, we suggest using a high-quality image editing software like Photoshop or GIMP. If you want free templates for your YouTube channel and ready-to-use cover art, Canva and Adobe Spark are good free options. You can use a YouTube size guide in order to decode the best suitable size for your YouTube Videos.  

When creating your channel art, it’s important to make sure that you leave enough space for adding links and letting them be visible. Take a look at how Buffer made sure that their links were not crowded by their channel art design. They kept it simple and clean, thus freeing it from any clutter.

Before you finish uploading your channel art, YouTube will give you a preview of what it looks like across different devices. That will serve as a handy reference for all the edits you make.

Setting Up Your Channel Icon

Your channel icon is the logo or picture that appears right next to your name under YouTube videos. It’s also what you refer to as your YouTube profile picture. You can change it by going to your YouTube homepage, hovering to your channel icon and clicking on Manage Your Google Account.

In the Home Tab, right above the Welcome, (Your Brand Name) section, you can click on the camera logo to change your channel icon. Upload your new profile picture, make sure it’s 800 x 800 pixels in dimensions, and you will be good to go. 

Optimizing Your YouTube Channel Links & Descriptions

Your channel description is your copy and Google will index YouTube channels that have a good mix of long-tail and short-tail YouTube keywords. If you want to rank high in the search engine and be found online, you’d want to optimize your SEO. Be mindful of your YouTube channel description and make sure it’s less than 1,000 characters long. And don’t just focus on targeting keywords. Add a tagline or CTA for your brand and expand on your product copy.

Questions you should answer in your mind while writing up your channel description are –

• What is your YouTube channel about or what kind of content do you create?
• Do you offer any services, consultations, or sell products online?
• FAQs and contact email for business or personal inquiries
  
  

Vox is a great example of what we’re talking about. Take a look at how they’ve approached it. There’s a good reason why they have over 8 million subscribers. There are many tools available online for optimizing the SEO of your channel description, and TubeBuddy is one of the best free resources.

Category, Video Duration & Tags

Okay, so these are insider tips from big YouTube content creators. When you’re optimizing the content SEO, make sure you edit the video titles and tags too. Your video title has a character limit of about 1,000 characters and YouTube shows only the first two or three lines of text from that.

Add a CTA to your title and if you can, mention a keyword or two. When you’re using TubeBuddy, you want to include keywords from the tool that has a high search volume and low-competition. This tip alone will take you far.

For optimizing your tags, the same applies. Use trending tags for your videos to get noticed and be indexed better. YouTube will recognize your content and share it with similar audiences with the help of these tags. Avoid using sketchy or misleading tags since YouTube is also known to flag tags and penalize content. 

Finally, when it comes to your video duration, the optimal length is more than 10 minutes. Even if you get your SEO right, if your videos are under 10 minutes long, YouTube isn’t going to recommend it. So try to create longer duration content most of the time.

Set Up Your Channel Links

If there’s one thing we like about Nestergen’s YouTube channel despite him being a new YouTuber is that he has set up his channel links right. This is such an important practice most beginners miss and if you get it right, it pays off later. 

Your subscribers can view your content and get to know you well by visiting these links. If you offer coaching platform or consulting services like big YouTubers such as Greg Doucette, they will become an invaluable part of your business.

To update your channel links, do this:

1. Click on the Customize Channel Button, and you will see a pencil icon on the upper right-hand of your channel art cover.
2. Click on that and select ‘Edit links’.
3. Under ‘Custom links, you can mention your Instagram handle or Facebook profile and write a short bio or description for each of your links. Keep it to a few words since these are titles for those links. Add more links if you’d like with the ‘+ Add’ icon and click on Done when you’re done.

A good rule of thumb is to have around 3 to 4 links to your social media handles or online pages when creating channel links for that Cover art section. 

Make A Channel Trailer 

Your channel trailer is the very first video that plays when new viewers land on your YouTube channel. It introduces them to your content and is meant to showcase any highlights, reels, etc. The channel trailer gives a breakdown of the type of content you create, and it’s usually short.

Most YouTube channel trailers are below 2 minutes in duration. Also, the product copy next to your YouTube channel trailer has to be optimized. This makes both Google and YouTube notice it.

Here are a few examples of what good YouTube channel trailers look like. You can take inspiration from them and make your own.

Slow Mo Guys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np68FhljCb8&feature=emb_title

Zoya Abbas

WittyPen

Update Your Contact Details

When you first learn how to create a Youtube channel, people often overlook the fact that it can grow fast. If you’ve got viral content or anything unique to offer, you can expect to get noticed. Create a YouTube account and mention your email with that in mind.

It’s a good idea to update your contact details for this reason. Just go to the ‘About Me’ section of your YouTube channel and under Details, type in your email for business enquiries. 

Growing Your YouTube Channel

There are a few ways to go about growing your YouTube channel. You don’t want to spam your content online since that could turn off people. Depending on what niche you’re targeting, sign up for Facebook groups and answer questions there. You can also join Reddit threads, and if there are any opportunities to promote your content there, you can drop a link to your YouTube.

Try to keep channel promotions to 20% and focus on engaging with online communities 80% of the time. If you’re open to paid promotions and know any Instagram influencers who could give you a shoutout, you can take advantage of those too. Doing video collaborations with your YouTube friends is another good strategy to grow your audience organically.

You could actually turn the collaboration idea into a chronology series.

Take a look at how Coach Greg and Will Tennyson do it. They’re currently blowing up on YouTube in the health and fitness niche. Their channel consists of everything from a beginner weight lifting routine to nutrition advice. If you’re a gaming channel or have thought of using Discord servers for promoting your content, go ahead. 

Again, it’s a good idea to hire someone to promote and engage with your fans online as you keep growing. It can get difficult to keep track of so many responses and questions headed your way and reply to them. For general questions and FAQs, you can deploy bots to answer those, but it’s good to have someone helping out with what you do. 

Other Tips

Here a few additional tips that will help you out when you’re setting up a YouTube account. 

• Your video editing needs to be on point if you want to impress your audiences. The best way to do that if you’re a beginner is with VideoCreek, an online platform that makes the task of video editing, simple and straightforward!
  
  
• Do response videos. Do your fans have questions or leave interesting thoughts in the comments? Respond to them through your vlogs! It’s a good way to gain more subscribers and show people that you care about the viewers who watch your content.
  
  
• To successfully create high-quality videos, your camera choice, light in the room, background, and decorations are really important! Those small (and not so small) things to pay attention to are actually what determine how professional you are.
  
  
• Create video reviews, behind-the-scenes videos, and podcasts. Now, these are different content ideas for your new YouTube channel. But if you’re a brand that’s trying to grow, you’d want to showcase a level of expertise in your chosen niche. The payoff will be worth it later.
  
  
• Optimize and share your content. Don’t just optimize your channel copy, make sure every video description is optimized and promote your content. The YouTube algorithm loves it when a channel is active, constantly putting out content and is searchable. Do your research on what themes or topics are trending before creating your YouTube content.

Conclusion

If you’ve read this far, kudos to you! You’ve learned everything you need about how to create a YouTube business account. Now it’s time to make sure you keep putting out quality content and keep your subscribers engaged. Have a video uploading schedule set up so that your subscribers know how active you are online.

When it comes to engagement, don’t forget to interact with your viewers through Instagram and your social media links. Try to be helpful, engage with the community as a whole, and you will grow organically. Growing on YouTube is as simple as that.