YouTube Creator Playbook: Build a consistent audience with frequent new videos

This is part of an ongoing series sharing tips from the YouTube Creator Playbook, a resource of best practices and tips you can start using on your channel and videos right away.

There is no substitute for great content, and when you make great videos, your audience will want more. This post will teach you about frequency of new content on your channel and how you communicate when it will be coming out, to help build a loyal and consistent audience on YouTube.

Upload Frequency
Uploading frequently will help YouTube surface your videos to more potential viewers, and hopefully lead to more viewership. For subscribers, having something new for them every week will get them coming back to your channel more and more, and new viewers are more likely to become part of your recurring audience if they see that your channel is actively creating great videos.

A typical frequency we’ve seen among successful YouTubers is a video a week. But making a great video takes time, so it’s important to find ways to get more videos from the same amount of production efforts. For example, many successful YouTube channels create behind-the-scenes videos, comment response videos interact with fans, or other formats like these.



Schedule
Releasing videos on a recurring schedule helps build a structure to your show that an audience can rely on. Based on your audience and your content, decide what the right release schedule is for your channel: What’s your ‘prime-time’ of the week?

Then, make it clear to the audience when and how often episodes are released. This way your fans will know when to expect your content, and can look forward to your next piece of creative genius. Ways you can do this include saying your programming schedule in your videos, in the episode description in text and branding on your channel. Here’s a video example, and check out this banner screenshot of HISHEdotcom’s channel.

FreddieW put it best when he wrote that “A consistent audience requires consistent content.” If you want your audience to come back week after week, you’ll need to do your part and make sure they have new great videos to watch when they do.

Try out the suggestions above and maximize the potential of your content with the right upload and release schedule strategy! To learn more on this and many other tips, check out the YouTube Creator Playbook.

Bengu Atamer, Audience Development Manager, recently watched “Physics Nobel Prize 2011 - Sixty Symbols.”