3 Crucial Things New YouTube Artists Must Do

In this post:

Let me know in the comments section whether you are considering starting a YouTube channel – and if you already have one, tell us what is it about 😉

Starting a New YouTube Channel

It’s never too late to start something new in life. Yes, yesterday or ten years ago might have been the finest time, but right now, “Today” is your best option. And, certainly, this is true for starting, maintaining, and expanding a YouTube channel.

A person might be interested in starting a YouTube channel for a variety of reasons. You’ve probably given it some thought if you’re reading this. For example, you might have considered starting a channel to amuse others. Or you may want to pass your knowledge on a specific subject.

I started using YouTube to give my posts about wellbeing another outlet. I think it’s a fun method to spread knowledge and provide people with another way to connect with my work. I started it not because it is a well-liked platform but rather because I wanted to get closer to my initial objective as a blogger and wellbeing designer.

I like to explore different methods and platforms to make wellbeing education accessible for everyone. I do this because everyone learns differently. Some of us take pleasure in reading information. While others learn better by listening to or watching a lesson, others prefer to have some form of visual aid. By working with different platforms, we can tap into different learning styles.

If you blog or write creatively, you can greatly improve the experience of your audience by giving them a visual and aural outlet for your work. For this reason, I started spending more time converting the material of my blog into videos.

You can benefit from this point of view even if you are not a blogger. I believe our goal should be to consider how we may better serve our audience rather than just being preoccupied with the idea of starting a brand-new channel to attract followers and earn passive income. A mindset of service keeps us open to possibility whereas extreme worry reduces our creative capacity.

Recently, I’ve also started using YouTube to share my artwork and passion for the role that creative arts can play in promoting happiness, life satisfaction and wellbeing. I’ve shared a few sketching tutorial videos to promote art therapy. I intend to investigate how using digital art might help me realize my goal of helping others make art with their lives, one life project at a time.

Managing a YouTube channel as a new creative digital artist is not easy. However, there are a few helpful practices you can put in place. All combined, these practices can give you a framework for creating and developing your channel. I find them especially crucial and pertinent for artists who, most frequently, rely on inspiration rather than consistency and project organisation (like me!).

Practice #1: Content Batching 

Your main objective when starting a new YouTube channel should be to produce and share video content. You need to consider how frequently you will make and upload videos to your channel if you want to increase your audience. 

How frequently you post is entirely up to you and your availability. However, you need to:

How well and how much you can make all these components work together to provide excellent material to your audience will have a significant impact on how successful you will be as a YouTuber. Oh, and how much fun you allow yourself to have throughout the entire creation process too!

I am aware this is a lot to unpack for beginners. Because of this, it can be helpful to divide creative content creation into more manageable tasks and keep our attention on only one activity at a time. You can download this interactive checklist that will help you with this.

Once you have your list, examine it carefully. Spend some time on the first task of your project (idea generation). Invest not just your time, but also your energy and effort to take it a step further. Keep each task separately, and focus on just one at a time. Repeat the same task repeatedly throughout one slot of time. For instance, generate as many video ideas as you can in one session. Give brainstorming your best before tackling the second item on your list (script writing).

On another time slot or day, apply this same strategy to the following task: writing down a script for each idea. “Content batching” is the term for this strategy. Instead of generating just one idea for a video, you generate several. Instead of writing the script for only one video, you write many; and instead of just recording one video, you film three or more on the same day.

The key here is to create time windows where you can batch material. By streamlining the creative process this way, you will find out that you will feel less overwhelmed when it comes to producing content for your YouTube channel.

Practice #2: Make Your Video Discoverable

If your videos are amazing and your message is top-notch, you want to make sure your videos are searchable. Otherwise, it can be difficult to find your videos. YouTube is a big universe. So how can you increase the odds of your videos being watched by those who need them? 

You must be creative and audit your content and posting method. Yes, I’m referring to SEO, but one of the biggest steps you can take right away is to think about how other people would be searching for content like yours. What sort of questions would they make? What would they type in the search bar?

Let’s work with an example. If you want to make a video about drawing with crayons and post it on YouTube, the keyword “drawing” is not good enough to make your video searchable these days. You need to be more specific and combine it with longer keywords. You could use a “step-by-step tutorial on how to draw portraits with crayons”. Include that in your video script, description, title, and keyword area to improve discoverability. 

You can find keywords using some free online tools. I’ve used TubeRanker, ahrefs, and keywordtool.io.

Practice #3: Create a Video Collection

One advantage of having multiple ideas at once is that you can organize and categorize them afterwards. Plus, you can sequence videos by putting similar ideas together. The logic behind this is that if you produce “follow-up” videos after a video on any given subject that someone is searching for, that person will probably watch a few more videos from your channel based on her initial search. 

Let’s work with the previous example. You want to create a video where you explore “10 ways to be creative with crayons”. Apparently, crayons are my obsession today, but bear with me— there’s a purpose. Someone interested in a step-by-step lesson on how to draw a portrait with crayons will probably also be interested in learning different ways to express themselves creatively with crayons. As a result, they are likely to keep watching your next suggested video on that very same topic. 

To make this easier, it might be useful to think about your videos as collections. In each collection, you address a specific theme or topic. All you have to do is to keep adding related videos to that collection. 

Although this may be difficult for you as an artist who likes to explore different topics, it will improve your chances of succeeding as a newbie YouTuber by demonstrating consistency. Sticking to a topic will also make the work of the algorithms easier and more advantageous to you.

You can use a pen and paper or make a wall of post-its in your office where you can jot down all of your video ideas before grouping them into categories. Generating a visual representation of your ideas will simplify the creative process for you. It will make it clearer. 

You can also do this by writing, creating images, and drawing on online platforms such as Google Docs. This year, I’ve started using Milanote because it has a ton of fantastic features that help me keep focused and organized, like the ability to build mind maps and enter checklists.

Final Thoughts

If you have been thinking about creating a YouTube channel, I hope you feel more confident now about moving forward with your idea. Be sure to write down your why before you do so though. Get a piece of paper and start writing down your answers. That will help you kickstart your journey with a lot more confidence and a clearer sense of direction.

If you already started your channel and are pretty much at the beginning of your journey, you can benefit from the practices I shared with you in this blog post. They are helping me become a better content writer and designer. As a result, I’m currently reviewing my practices as a YouTuber. I created my channel a long time ago, and I wish I had had these guidelines to prepare and plan my content creation more effectively.

Please feel free to use the comment section to share your YouTube links, suggestions, and questions. Share the why behind your channel with us. Can you relate to any of the reasons we reviewed here? It is always nice to connect and learn from other creatives.