The Key Focus Areas for Rapid Growth On YouTube

Focus and attention are the most important ways to grow on YouTube in 2024.

Right now, we're going to explore some statistics that are both impressive and alarming. If you've reached the milestone of 1,000 subscribers, you are already among the top 10% of creators who have achieved this. 

This means that over 90% of creators never reach the significant milestone of 1,000 subscribers.

There are many reasons why creators abandon their channels, but one of them is the mismatch between their expectations and reality.

This is why it’s essential to accurately assess the current landscape on YouTube and choose the right areas to focus on.

Expectation of creators vs reality on YouTube

We'll start with what all YouTube creators should definitely avoid. 

Focusing solely on your subscriber count is a definite no-no. It’s important to have goals and to reach certain thresholds but subscriber numbers don’t tell the full story. 

For example, a thousand subscribers is a very important number for beginner creators. First, it provides enough eyes to truly gauge interest in your content.

And while any subscriber count should be celebrated, you'd have to agree that a thousand seems worthy of applause.

Second, a thousand subscribers opens up the possibility to earn money from your content, if there are no other obstacles, and generally indicates that the channel has serious potential.

After all, many beginner creators believe that 1,000 subscribers is an authoritative milestone that encourages viewers to subscribe. 

However, this belief can lead to unrealistic expectations, which can be detrimental. In reality, reaching this milestone is quite challenging.

 At this point, creators often become overly fixated on the subscriber count, sacrificing the creative quality of their content in pursuit of rapid growth. 

This can lead to excessive posting and even attempts at artificially inflating their numbers.

While a beginner creator is fixated on the number of views and subscribers, they miss the chance to accumulate experience by learning from their own mistakes.

Mistakes are an integral part of growing on YouTube.

If we take a situation where you're starting your channel alone, and you don't have a team of professionals behind you, then you'll have to learn to be creative one way or another.

To appreciate how important it is to make mistakes, look at all your previous content. This is a great opportunity for your channel because you can trace the scale of growth.

And if you haven't started a channel yet, just look at what your favorite YouTube creators started with.

Most popular creators today started with low-quality content but never gave up, they didn’t focus solely on subscribers and view counts.

They just mastered the art of making mistakes.

So if you really want to achieve growth on YouTube, stop focusing on the numbers you see in the "Subscribers" and "Views" columns, and remember that creators are mainly driven by devoted viewers who simply like their content.

Focus on your "superpowers"

Competition on YouTube has changed: it has become significantly tougher, and to this day, the number of successful channels and growth rates are still rapidly increasing and will continue to grow indefinitely.

To compete more effectively, we can either increase productivity by increasing various resources - time, money, or hiring a larger team for the channel. Or increase concentration, that is, properly adjusting the focus of attention.

The first thing we advise you to focus on is highlighting what makes you unique. To make it more fun and straightforward, let's call this your superpower. This is what will set you apart from your competitors.

Many superheroes have been created, but only the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man had spider-sense, and only Superman had super strength that could be weakened by kryptonite.

Notice that even their weaknesses are unique. It's the combination of these traits—both good and bad—that set them apart from the rest.

So, how do you discover your superpowers?

You can start by viewing yourself from different perspectives, identifying unique qualities that only you possess, such as:

• experience and expertise
• approach and point of view
• personal energy, mood, atmosphere
• approach to content creation

And so on.

No one limits your superpowers. Even Superman’s abilities weren’t confined to just his strength, he could also shoot lasers from his eyes, fly, and move at incredible speed.

Think about a channel you love to watch. What are the first words that come to mind?

All of this is likely to be the superpower that the channel's creator possesses. These are his traits that are most prominently displayed in the content, and this is exactly what attracts viewers.

Therefore, let's return to the unique superpowers that will help make you and your content memorable.

Let's try to connect three main things:

• What you like

What you generally are interested in, even if you don't want to make videos about it: what channels do you watch, what books do you read, what music do you listen to, and so on.

For example, you like watching videos about history, and generally studying history. This is your hobby, your passion.

• Something you are particularly good at

This could be an area where you have experience, where you feel like an expert, or maybe just something you do best.

It might seem similar to the previous point, but it’s not. Your interests aren’t the focus here - this is specifically about your skills.

For example, despite being interested in history, you work in a different field - as a general practitioner, and you're excellent at it.

• What you strive for

This brings us to the question of what you want from your channel—how you envision it and what you’re aiming for in life. Perhaps you want to run a history channel to eventually monetize your hobby, but your skills are in a completely different area. Why not consider creating a channel about the history of medicine?

This approach combines your interests with your professional expertise, and in the future, it can generate income not only from YouTube monetization or brand partnerships but also from offering your own services, like patient consultations.

The intersection of these three elements—your interests, professional skills, and future goals—forms your ideal content. This is what will become your unique superpower.

Before you jump for joy, thinking you’ve uncovered the secret to creating a great YouTube channel. Hold on, there’s more.

As unfortunate as it may be, uniqueness accounts for only 50% of success on YouTube. The other 50% consists of:

The skill to “sell” yourself

For some, this may be obvious, and for others - breaking news. But the fact is that marketing plays a crucial role on YouTube.

The concept itself is quite broad, but we'll try to break it down in simple language, focusing exclusively on what concerns YouTube.

The first step to focus on is analyzing the area in which you publish your content.

When you understand how to convey your ideas and your uniqueness to viewers so that they become interested in the video's topic and go to watch it, this becomes a guarantee that the content will receive views.

This very "how" is the main stumbling block for both newcomers and old-timers on YouTube.

Each niche will have its own rules of the game, which you need to understand, formulate, and ultimately learn to play by.

For example, if we take the vlog niche, the question of presentation and delivery of the video will be significantly different from, say, educational content.

In vlogs, creators primarily sell aesthetics and mood, while in educational content, they sell results and knowledge.

As you can imagine, the audience's demands in each niche are different, as are their pain points.

This means that what the audience expects from creators will not be the same, and the solutions that creators offer may work well in one niche but not at all in another.

So, to understand the rules of the game in your field, spend time on tasks such as:

• Audience analysis: Who are your potential viewers? What do they want? What motivates them to watch content? What are their interests?
• Competitor analysis and their strategies: What are other creators in your niche doing? How do they attract attention to their content? What is the quality of their filming? What techniques do they use?

Since we're discussing the importance of focusing on how to market yourself, it's also crucial to remember that marketing involves topics like supply and demand.

It may sound intimidating, but it's actually quite simple.

You already understand your audience, you know what other creators in your field are doing, so now it's time to identify the best topics.

You have free tools for this, such as Google Trends, YouTube’s search bar, and the VidIQ extension.

Let’s break this down using the drawing niche as an example. What do you need to do?

1. Open an "Incognito" tab.
2. Enter the query "how to draw..." first in Google Trends, then in YouTube’s search bar, and finally in VidIQ.
3. Draw conclusions: People are learning to draw from scratch, a lot of content is needed for beginners, artists struggle with drawing human body parts, content for children and anime is popular.

Now that we've chosen the best topics in your niche—the ones that have been the most popular recently and are of the greatest interest to people, whose main pain point is learning to draw and getting started in general—let's add your unique strengths to these topics.

This creates a relevant topic that you'll present to your audience in your own style and manner. 

And you're just one ingredient away from making a viral video: trends.

If we continue with the drawing theme, you could tie it in with the buzz around the upcoming movie "Inside Out 2." 

For example, you could teach how to draw a symmetrical human face using the main character as an example, or maybe you'll draw different emotions with kids or analyze them from a psychological perspective.

Just remember what makes you unique and use it when creating your video. 

Those who have mastered content creation on YouTube don't just adapt their videos to trends—they predict or even create them.

Take the Fine Brothers, for example, and the trend of reaction content that they pioneered.

Back in 2007, the brothers began posting various reaction videos of children on their channel, which, as you can imagine, didn't gain massive success for quite some time.

But over time, the format became increasingly viral, and the channel started featuring not just children's reactions, but also those of various celebrities, like PewDiePie.

This way, the Fine Brothers didn't just go viral—they established a new format for reaction videos. 

However, their success story ended on a sour note because, in 2016, the Fine Brothers became overconfident and attempted to patent the reaction video format, which led to their complete cancellation on YouTube. 

Nowadays, their channel gets relatively few views compared to what it did at the height of their fame, but you can't erase their role in the creation of the reaction genre.

As a beginner creator, you don't need to aim to create something on that scale, but you can certainly leverage popular formats to promote your own content.

But let's get back to supply and demand.

We've already covered the combination of the best topic, your uniqueness, and trendiness. Now, let's add one more element: originality.

We have a popular problem from viewers: "How to learn to draw," and there are tons of solutions offered by other creators on how to solve it. 

Let's say we've added our uniqueness and current trends to the solution.

Now, I encourage you to think about making this solution unconventional, new, bold, and unexpected. Challenge stereotypes to capture the viewer's attention.

Show how to start drawing with your eyes closed, or how to draw symmetrical facial features using a compass, or how to create an anatomically correct body using a stencil.

So, the formula is the following:

• Identify the problems or needs of your audience in your niche.
• Offer a solution that differs from all the solutions that have come before you.
• Present a new solution.

It seems we've got that covered. Let's finish up the topic of marketing your content.

The next thing you should focus on is presentation.

As you know, every product needs proper packaging; without it, hardly anyone will notice or take an interest in it. The same goes for your video—it needs a solid presentation.

It's logical that if the appearance of the video doesn't attract someone in the search results or on the homepage, they simply won't click on it.

It turns out that 50% of your content's success depends on the thumbnail and title, because the click either happens or it doesn't.

The topic of presentation is probably one of the most extensive on YouTube because it includes techniques of composition, psychological tricks used in thumbnails to capture attention, color theory for selecting the right colors, and copywriting, which teaches you how to craft effective slogans for images and video titles.

Yes, there are many factors to consider. But the main thing is that focusing on all of them will definitely lead you to success. It may not happen quickly, but at the very least, you'll be confident that you're doing everything right for the long term. And at best, you'll start to feel that you're moving toward your goal much faster than your competitors.

Keep creating!