Grow your YouTube channel

1. Give your channel the same name as your business, by choosing Use an existing brand account and selecting your brand.

Where possible, avoid using numbers or hyphens. For example, CXL Institute instead of CXL-Institute-42.

2. Create a channel icon that’s at least 800×800 pixels, and looks good as a square or cropped into a circle.

Most YouTube channels use their company logo. Headshots may be better for channels centered around one personality.

3. Create your channel banner to reiterate your value proposition, include social proof, if relevant, and add a Subscribe call to action and link.

Recommended dimensions are 2560×1440 px. For example, “Charlie Marie TV: Design and Creativity. New videos every week.” Link to your social media profiles and websites from your YouTube channel.

4. Create a channel trailer that offers an engaging first impression and sets expectations for the rest of the content.

Assume the viewer has never heard of you. Keep it short and hook your viewers in the first few seconds. Show, don’t tell. Some companies opt for a trailerless introduction, that instead highlights one of their strongest videos, like high-converting videos. This may work if all of your videos are relevant to your main audience. If your channel serves different facets of a larger audience like HubSpot’s, a generic introduction to your brand can help set the tone.

5. Organize your channel by choosing which sections you want to include, and the order in which you want them to appear.

Order video sections: Popular uploads, Recent uploads, and Liked videos. Order playlist sections: All playlists, Single playlists, multiple playlists, liked playlists. For example, Moz includes five sections: The Moz Daily SEO Fix, Moz’s Culture, Whiteboard Friday, Moz Presentations, and Popular uploads.

6. Create a buyer persona that defines your audience by demographics, psychographics, what other videos and channels they watch, and the subject matter they consume.

Send out surveys and conduct one-on-one interviews to create detailed, accurate buyer personas. This helps you understand what YouTube content will be attractive to your target customer.

7. Create content based on the problems your buyer persona faces, the frequency that your expertise is relevant to them, and when that expertise is best communicated via video.

Your YouTube audience may be a subset of your total audience. For example, for CXL, videos on Google Analytics, complete with step-by-step walk-throughs, make more sense than a focus on copywriting.  Here are five approaches to define your brand based on what you sell and what you stand for: Educational authority, YouTube-friendly product; YouTube-friendly industry; the face of the company; a higher mission.