[Case Study] 3 Strategies SalvationsElite Used To Grow His YouTube Channel To 36.5K Subscribers
As someone who is working on growing a YouTube channel, one of my favorite ways to learn is to study successful creators.
When I say "successful creators," your mind likely jumps to ultra-high-profile names like Scump, Ninja, Mr. Beast, etc. While there is a ton to learn from these guys, I'd much rather spend time examining successful creators on a smaller scale.
One YouTuber that I've been impressed by is SalvationsElite (Josh). He's amassed 36.5K subscribers on his channel to date, and today I want to break down 3 principles that his success can be attributed to. Walking away from this article, you'll be able to apply these tactics to your own YouTube channel.
Let's get into it:
Pre-Strategy: Consistency
I debated whether or not to include this as a "strategy," but chose instead to highlight the importance of consistency as the foundation of all of this. None of the ideas we discuss throughout the rest of this article work if you don't have a bedrock of consistently uploaded content on the platform.
Alright, now for the fun stuff:
Strategy #1: Positioning
In 2020, making it as a YouTuber in Call of Duty is a monumental task. As the scene becomes increasingly competitive, high-kill games and elite level skill aren't enough to build a following. If you need proof of that, just look to the Call of Duty league. There are a significant amount pro-level players who don't have massive platforms.
Additionally, the "tips and tricks" genre in COD YouTube is crowded by the videos from pro players who do choose to invest in content creation and other creations who have been in the space for roughly a decade. Breaking onto the scene through that approach might as well be mission impossible.
One of the drivers of Josh's growth on YouTube has been the unique way that he positions his content. It's sort of like "tips and tricks" with a twist.
Whereas most YouTubers pushing out COD instructional content are gearing it towards the general Call of Duty player base, Josh has chosen to niche down and focus primarily on the competitive scene.
Rather than posting generic "how to get more kills" videos, he's posting in depth analysis of pro players, map breakdowns, and more content types that appeal to the more dedicated COD player.
Because of this, he's been able to be a lighthouse for players who already understand the basics, but want to progress their game even more.
Lesson: Don't try to attract everyone. Get clear on your viewer persona and make sure the vast majority of your content speaks directly to that persona. Remember, when you try to attract everybody, you end up with nobody. Be specific.
Strategy #2 - Leveraging Pro Players In Titles And Thumbnails To Increase Search Traffic and CTR
In many of his videos, Josh makes sure to include the names of prominent professional Call of Duty players in both the titles and the thumbnails.
For example, one of his recent videos is titled, "AR Tips and Tricks! | How FormaL Runs AR in CoD Cold War." On the thumbnail for that video, Josh placed a picture of FormaL front and center.
I'm not completely sure if this is intentional from him, but it's effective nonetheless. Now, why is that?
Well, YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world. And when you're first starting off on the platform, search traffic is one of your best bets at getting discovered by a new audience since you have no subscribers or data YouTube can use to suggest your videos.
For you to show up in search, you need to include terms and phrases in your titles that people actually search for. If you don't, YouTube doesn't have a way to serve your video to a new audience.
By including the names of professional players in his titles, Josh makes it more likely that his videos will appear in search. While people may be actively searching for "SalvationsElite" now, when he first started that wasn't the case. But, he likely realized that people were searching for names like Scump, FormaL, Simp, Octane, the list could go on...
But, the battle isn't over when you get your video to populate in search. You need people to click on your video. The percentage of users that click on your video after seeing it is called click through rate (CTR).
Just as Josh leverages pro player names to appear in search, he then leverages pictures of pro players on his thumbnails to increase the CTR on his videos. Having a pro player associated with your video, even if they're not the creator of it, subconsciously encourages people to click on the video and watch. The video has a greater appearance of legitimacy.
Along with using pro player names in the titles, he's also mindful to include the title of the game and other phrases like "tips and tricks" which are high traffic search terms.
Once he gets his videos to rank in search and gets people to click on the video, the last infinity stone in the metaphorical gauntlet is to keep people watching and achieve a good average view duration. This goes back to strategy #1. By creating high quality content that is relevant to the audience searching for it, high view duration is nearly a given.
Lesson: You don't have to be in the CoD scene to program your titles and thumbnails correctly. Do research to see which topics have high traffic, and which type of thumbnails perform well. if you don't, you're leaving countless views on the table.
Strategy #3 - Using A Second Channel To Avoid Audience Segmentation
There's a reason why so many YouTube creators have "second channels." When you have too much variety on one channel, you risk audience segmentation. This means that part of your audience is interested in one type of content, and another subsection is interested in a different type of content that you post. As a result, none of your videos reach their maximum potential.
To visualize this, imagine you mainly posted Call of Duty videos. Then, one day you started uploading lifestyle vlogs and reaction videos. There's a significant chance that the audience members who enjoy COD content are completely disinterested in vlogs, and vice versa.
On a smaller scale, this even applies to content within the same game. People subscribe to SalvationsElite for competitive Call of Duty strategy and analysis. Not all of his audience wants to watch uploads of him playing the game. If he were to start uploading more casual gameplay content, some of his audience might tune out.
When that happens, the YouTube algorithm will be less likely to push out videos from his channel to a new audience.
To avoid that trap, he was thoughtful enough to create a second channel for gameplay. Viewers of the main channel who are interested in that can very easily migrate over, and disinterest from other viewers won't harm the performance of his main channel videos.
Lesson: If YouTube is purely a passion project and you have no interest in growing a following, feel free to post a wide variety of videos on your channel. Do what makes you happy.
If you're serious about growing a following and making YouTube a serious platform for you or your business, by mindful about why your audience subscribes to you. Experiment with new formats and content, but don't do a complete 180 on your content style and expect your audience to stick around. If you have the desire to drastically switch it up, consider starting a second channel.
In other words, do what makes you happy, and what makes the algorithm happy.
Bonus: Long-Form Content
This isn't necessarily a "YouTube tip," but another facet of Josh's content strategy that I enjoy is his use of long form content.
Besides the Codcast, there aren't many consistently uploaded podcasts in the Call of Duty industry. I think Josh is smart of have jumped on this, since long form content is a great platform to build a deeper relationship with your audience.
Also, for his niche, it makes perfect sense. Individuals who are invested in the competitive COD scene want detailed content around it — and there's only so much room a ~10 minute YouTube video allows for that type of analysis.
Wrapping It Up
If you enjoyed this article, be share to share this with a friend who's trying to grow a platform on YouTube. Also, I'll be diving deeper into this case study tomorrow on stream at 3:30pm PST at twitch.tv/tclarkmedia .
You can find Josh's YouTube channel by clicking here — if you're into Call of Duty in any capacity, he's someone I would definitely recommend following. And no, this post is not sponsored. Josh doesn't even know I wrote this (it'd be awesome if you shared it with him, though).
Thanks so much for reading, and I'll talk to you on Monday when the next article drops.