Today I´m going to talk about how to start your own vegan YouTube channel and get thousands of views in the very first weeks as a result.

There are some proper steps you MUST take in order to become successful on YouTube, especially when it comes to cooking and recipe related content.

Now, as you may know, Veganism is growing at a fast pace as more and more people get interested in this great practice and life philosophy.

So, it makes sense that starting a vegan YouTube channel could be a good idea for those who want to reach a large audience and help people out to join the movement.

1. Stand Out Branding

If you look at other big vegan YouTubers you can easily find what they´ve been working on when it comes to branding and giving a feel of authenticity through their style, right?

Well, you should do the exact same thing if you want to stand out from the crowd.

Here are some time-tested personal branding tips from some of the best entrepreneurs of the world that you can immediately apply on your channel and overall style in order to grow your online presence.

• Remain Authentic. You want to embrace your imperfections and make sure to use your own voice when creating content online, there´s only one YOU, and then there´s the rest of us. It won´t come out that way at first but you can surely develop comfort and being your authentic self with enough time and practice. It is the first step for personal branding success.
• Value Comes First. Understanding the value you can provide to others is key and it is the first priority, make the best content you possibly can and deliver the highest quality video you can each and every time, then you can ask for some of your viewer’s attention to sell them something.
• Be Consistent. In order to be known, easily recognized across different platforms, and build trust with the viewers you have to remain consistent with your branding. This will send the subtle message that you take your business or YouTube career seriously.
• Build Relationships. More so than networking aim for building relationships, which is a long-term commitment, and possibly the best way to stand out as nobody else takes the time to do it right. You should ALWAYS take care of your online presence and treat it as a long-term process.

2. Get Viral, Get Paid

Yep, clearly getting virality will get you some cash, right? No surprise there.

But…

….what I mean by this is that (even) creating ONE video that gets some level of virality and spreads across the entire platform like wildfire will get you enough momentum and subscribers so that the very next few videos benefit from that growth too.

Just check out this example:

So, as you see, it is a great way to grow at a fast pace and one that can be planned in advance, believe it or not.

Now, I´m not talking about making funny videos or nothing like that.

The type of virality I mean is more adequate to your audience, the size and engagement depend entirely upon the vegan niche and people interested in such a topic.

You have to create something that provides actual value and follow (at least) some of the rules most viral videos have in common.

Those rules are:

• Social Currency. Which is anything that we share because it makes others like us, or because it makes us look good or probe our point of view about something. Basically, it refers to the type of content that we want to share with our peers for some reason.
• Evoke Curiosity. The second rule is to evoke curiosity, through the thumbnail design or title of your video you can make people curious about your content and, therefore, get a higher number of clicks as a result, something that is proven to impact on rankings. The video I´ve shown you above also does a great job at this as it features a 98-year-old vegan that looks great!
• Emotional Response. Finally, you want to get ANY sort of emotional response with your video as it is a great way to make people want to watch more, whether that means that you make your viewers laugh, cry, feel joy or gratitude, the point is to get that emotional response that will surely impact in the way they interact with your content.

3. Get Inspired By Other Vegan YouTubers

The way to see competition is not as if they are going to steal your followers but as another source of inspiration for great ideas that you can then apply to your own videos and content.

There´s more than enough room for new Vegan channels and you can be the next one, for sure!

Here´s what you can do:

First, do a quick search and type a BIG keyword that you know will get a ton of traffic, something like “Vegan Tips For Beginners”, and you´ll get a few channels that have done a great job answering that query.

Check it out! The first video has way more views than the number of subscribers the channel already has.

Then, simply search for those channels that make similar content to you and find their most popular videos.

You can learn exactly how to do in one of the next tips.

Finally, take notes!

Look at the length of the average video, how they edit their content, how they speak to the camera and any other sort of factor that could lead to improvement with your own content.

Actually, aiming at the same keywords, in some cases, might also be a great idea. 😉

4. Eye-Grabbing Thumbnail Design

Here´s the next step you have to take if you want to get discovered as a new channel.

Your thumbnail design can make or break your entire channel growth strategy if you don´t pay close attention to it.

An eye-grabbing thumbnail makes people click whenever they come across with one of your videos, and also makes it easier for your fans to be able easily to recognize your content when doing a search on the platform.

Now, thumbnail design doesn´t need to be complicated or super crafty to get clicks, it just needs to be effective.

One way to do just that is through the “BOGY” method, which was invented by Brian Dean from Backlinko.

BOGY stands for Blue, Orange, Green and Yellow, the colors that you should use when designing your thumbnails.

Why?

Simply because those colors are very different from what other content creators usually choose and also makes your videos stand out on YouTube because the platform relies on colors like Red, White, and Black, which you´ll avoid using.

That being said, here two more things you MUST do to create an effective thumbnail for your videos:

• Show Your Face. It´s been proven that thumbnails that show a face on it tend to work much better when it comes to clicks than those that don´t.
• Make Bold Titles. You want to keyword optimize your titles (more on that later) and use capital letters as well as upper case the most important words you want your audience to see.

That´s it!

If you use BOGY thumbnails with your face on it and a big eye-catching title you´ll get, at least, a fair chance of increasing the number of clicks you get.

5. Get Leverage With SEO Best Practices

In case you´ve never heard of SEO before you MUST know that it is the backbone of every successful online content creator out there, whether they know it or not.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which (in a very simplistic way) means creating content around what people are actually looking for.

Now, there are many different practices when it comes to SEO tactics but here I´m going to talk just about the very best ones for you to apply on your future videos.

Being one of such practices targeting long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords are one of the most effective ways to grow on YouTube as well as any other search engine there is.

Why?

Simply because there are hundreds of thousands of underserved keywords that you can take advantage of out there.

You just have to take the time to find them and create content around them in order to grow.

A second strategy you can use when starting your vegan YouTube channel is to target popular keywords from other YouTubers.

These are video keywords that have been battle-tested by other YouTubers and that can be a great way to show up as a related channel on the “Suggested Videos” section.

Here´s how this works:

• Go to one of your favorite vegan YouTubers channel and head over to “videos”.

• Then, sort by “most popular” and see what comes up.

Those are the most popular videos of her channel and are great keyword ideas for you to work with, you just NEED to make sure you do a better or, at least, similar job as the original video in terms of quality.

Now, I don´t mean you have to copy other people´s work, not at all, these are just keyword ideas you can play with and turn into your own.

The rest is up to YOU!

6. Take Advantage Of Social Media

Another key aspect of starting (and growing) a vegan channel on YouTube is taking advantage of social media promotion… the right way.

Here´s what you should do:

Promote your video clips as native content on each and every platform.

What does native content mean?

Well, it´s simple, you´ll repurpose your YouTube video by taking different clips from your original work, for example, one or two tips you give on that specific video you choose and upload it as native content instead of sharing the entire think through a link.

What this does for your posts on Social Media is that platforms will promote your video much more than if you happen to share a YouTube link on your Facebook page.

Why?

Simply because Facebook wants you to stay on Facebook, as well as Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin do.

In fact.

According to BuzzSumo, native videos (literally) CRUSH other types of Facebook posts. (source)

In short:

Repurpose content that you have already created and use different portions of it across as many social media platforms as you can uploading each clip as native content.

Although it might sound like a simple strategy I promise you it´ll work!

7. Benefit From Collabs

Last but not least, you want to start reaching out to other content creators in order to do some collaborations.

As a vegan YouTuber, you NEED to get some help at first so that your channel grows by exposing your content to similar audiences to yours.

And to do just that you have to find some willing collaborators to work with and share each other viewerships.

Now, here are a couple of things that you can do to accomplish this:

• Follow YouTube´s Guidelines. Yep, YouTube itself has established a set of rules and principles you can easily follow and find some benefit with. They talk about things like knowing your value and what you can do for your partner, how to choose compatible collaborators, how to cross-promote, tips to turn new viewers into subscribers.

Make sure to check it out:

• Take Advantage Of Forums. You can easily find other people that are also trying to grow on YouTube and that might have a similar following to yours, there are great forums like the YouTube Creator Help Forum or YTtalk Forum. However, it might be a good idea to spend some time searching for forums related to your specific niche in order to further promote your channel and get more subs that way.
• Channelpages.com. Finally, there are also great platforms such as channel pages that offer their services for you to connect with other content creators to do a collab and grow faster. That being said, there are other great options you might want to check out before you decide to go with one of them.

Now, a few other things that you should consider even before contacting a potential partner.

For example, being able to present your ideas and get straight to the point with some previous work already done so that your partner doesn´t have to think for her or himself HOW can she/he help you is a MUST.

You have to provide value first in order to ask for anything in return later.

Do some research, you should be able to reference their work and know what they are all about before even considering contacting via email.

Finally, when you decide to actually contact them don´t forget to be respectful as well as decisive, you want to come off as a serious entrepreneur with ideas that could make a difference for them.

Final Thoughts

Although starting your own vegan YouTube channel and promoting its growth might seem a daunting task it´s not that hard if you take the necessary steps and follow through each one.

There are tons of great examples you can get inspired by and I do hope this post got you closer to your goal.

For more information feel free to check out some of my other posts, it´s FREE!

Matt Porta.