Our YouTube has grown mostly by accident.
The channel exists as a way to host our meetup recordings, so the fact that now people from outside the existing group find us through YouTube is surprising. I didn't expect the YT algorithm to be so friendly.
Indie Worldwide on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMps9pFrqetqXMCEZqkiQ-g/
By the numbers
From the analytics YouTube provides about 30% of our traffic to the channel is coming from YouTube search. We rank relatively well for "indie hackers" and also "bubble.io".
Only 15% of our traffic comes from outside YouTube, that is links we share on Twitter or on IH.
Now people have watched our videos over 3000 times.
What we've done
We're still figuring out how to make the most of YouTube, but here's the advice we've been following so far:
Include the channel name in every video | Like This
Hashtags can help you rank for keywords you don't include elsewhere in your description or title.
Put half your energy into the title and title card
We've also found that the same long-form interview cut up into clips can lead to way more traffic for the same content and playlists seem to help the YT algorithm decide what to recommend, so they're a good way to convert people from one video to the next.
Improvements to make
Things we can still improve a lot on:
End card -- so far we've never used one.
Consistency -- more regular meetups and better recording protocols would help us get videos out more often.