Building your community
Learn the basics of how to grow your YouTube channel, create exciting content that inspires interaction, and manage the conversation.
So many creative options!
There’s more than one way to bring your videos to life. YouTube gives you the space to create, using everything from VR to live streaming, so you can let your viewers into your world in new and exciting ways.
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Stories are short mobile videos that expire after 7 days. They make it easy to interact with your fans and are a great way for Creators to keep the conversation going between videos.
YouTube Shorts are the fun, easy way to create content for YouTube’s billions of users. All you need is a mobile phone, your ideas, and a little help from our tools.
YouTube Live lets you create and share on the fly. With all kinds of formats for streaming events, teaching classes, gaming, and more, YouTube Live is made for giving viewers an in-the-moment glimpse into your life.
Premieres help you turn your next video into an opening night event. We’ll build you a landing page with a unique URL so you can promote your Premiere and build hype before the big day, all while chatting with your fans.
Community posts are a simple but effective way to stay in touch with your fans. Any Creator with over 500 channel subscribers can post things like polls, photos and GIFs, special announcements, and more.
Finding new viewers and fans
YouTube has plenty of ways to help you attract new viewers. Learn some simple but strategic tips for helping people find your channel, from how you word your captions to who you collaborate with.
Partnering up with other Creators can benefit both of your channels. Learn the ingredients for a successful collab, including who to partner with and how to promote your video.
After posting your video, you’ll want to optimize its metadata. Learn how to edit your descriptions, track your metadata history, and compare versions to see what works best for your channel.
YouTube’s Captions Editor lets you add captions to your videos. This means reaching a wider audience, including viewers who are hard-of-hearing, deaf, or speak another language. Bonus: on average, videos with captions have higher watch times.
How to interact with your audience
Interacting with fans of your channel is a big part of what it means to be a Creator. So go ahead--spark big ideas, dream up new ways to create, and keep the conversation going between uploads. We have tools that can help with community engagement and more.
The more you engage with your audience, the more they’ll engage with you. Talking to viewers and responding to their feedback is key to growing your channel. Here are some tips to turn viewers into fans, and fans into a community.
Watch a video about audience engagement
Let your viewers know you’re paying attention to what they’re saying by replying to comments. You can answer questions, respond to feedback, or just throw viewers a little love with a heart. You can even pin comments that you really like to the top, so it’s the first thing viewers see.
Get Creator Tips to build community with comments
Read more about managing your comments
YouTube routinely removes comments that violate our Community Guidelines. However, you still may have comments or viewers that you’d like to delete or block. We have tools and filters that allow you to review or remove comments that you find offensive to you and your community.
Watch a video about our policies
Read more about moderating your comments