How to Become a YouTube Influencer (11 Proven Tips)

What’s the one thing that kids between the ages of 8 and 12 want to be? A YouTuber. One-in-three kids want to pursue being an influencer, but it’s not just kids – adults want to be influencers, too. 

It’s hard not to want to learn how to become a YouTube influencer when you see how much you can get paid with 10 million views.

But how?

A lot of people dabble in YouTube, but they never get past posting a handful of videos. Why? It takes a special someone to have the dedication and drive to go from their first video to success on the platform.

It’s a lot of work to become an influencer, but if you follow our advice below,👇we’re confident that you can do it.

1. Choose a Niche – And Stick to It🤔

Niche selection seems boring and always shows up at the top of guides like this one. But it’s the most important thing you can do. You want to choose a niche on:

You can choose niches based on money alone and the RPM that they average, but if you’re not confident or don’t provide accurate information, it can derail your channel.

We recommend working in some evergreen content ideas, but you want to be someone who people tune in to watch and will appreciate. We can’t pick a niche for you, but we can help you get a few ideas:

If you’re a traveler who is always on the go, you can create a channel based on traveling. Artists, musicians, entertainers and even vlogs do well.

Once you choose a niche, you want the majority of your content to focus on it because it will help the YouTube algorithm understand your channel’s purpose and show it more often.

2. Research Your Audience🔍

You have a niche, but you’re nowhere near done yet. Researching your audience is the next logical step and will help you with the content strategy portion that we’re going to dive into in just a moment.

You’ll want to do your due diligence with your audience research:

Once you narrow down your audience and have a better grasp of what they want to see with your channel, you’ll want to keep all of this research in a safe place.

You’ll need to create a content strategy soon, and all of this information will make it much easier to do.

3. Create Your Brand

Whether you’re a business or not, you want to be a brand. If you look at influencers on YouTube, they are all brands in their own right:

What do we mean by “create your brand?” Well, what do you want your channel to convey? Who do you want to be?

Your brand will also have cohesion, meaning that you’ll use the same profile picture and banner across social channels, such as:

When creating a brand from your channel, you want people to immediately know it’s you based on all of the elements we described. And you want to produce the same impeccable content across channels because your brand will be known for its quality – or lack of it.

4. Create a Content Strategy

You’ve done so much, but your content strategy is what will define your success. We know that your first 10 – 20 videos won’t receive much YouTube love, and your first 100 might not either.

But then, your channel will start to get traffic – trust me.

However, even if no one is seeing your content, you want it to be on-brand and of the highest quality possible. You can do this by doing the following:

💡 Idea

📋 Description

🖼️ Thumbnail 

🎥 Recording date

🗓️ Posting date

Content strategies require you to be consistent and also plan ahead. You can randomly post a video that isn’t on your plan, but you want a plan that will keep you accountable and help you get in the algorithm’s good graces.

Over time, you can swap ideas in and out of a plan, but the most important thing is to have this plan to guide your channel forward.

We do recommend:

If you follow your plan, because you’ve done the work here and really know what your audience wants to see, you’ll have a great chance of success on YouTube. Every influencer has a plan, and it’s time for you to start doing what influencers do.

5. Set a Posting Schedule🗓️

Posting schedules are important and one of the areas where we see so many would-be influencers really fail.

Why?

YouTube wants you to be a television channel that posts consistently on the same day so that people tune in. Seriously. You’ll find that many influencers state that it wasn’t until they were consistent that they:

What should your posting schedule be? You need to be honest with yourself about:

If you post on Sunday at 9 am, make Sunday the day that people know they can tune in and watch your channel. Subscribers will become cult followers when they know that you post at the same time, all the time.

And YouTube’s algorithm will love it.

6. Be Authentic

People crave authenticity. They want to watch YouTube content from genuine people, so don’t pretend to be someone else or try to fit into a mold you think your audience prefers.

Polls show that social media users prefer content from “normal” people over celebrity content. That gives you even more of an incentive to be genuine.

If you’re a serious person, be serious. If you’re goofy, be silly. The most important thing is to be yourself and create content that’s relevant to your niche.

7. Stay Consistent

One of the most important steps in becoming a YouTube influencer is making sure that you’re consistent.

You can’t publish a video every 4-6 months and expect to hit influencer status anytime soon. Once you’ve built up a big subscriber base, you can get away with posting less often. In the meantime, you have to be posting new videos regularly to stay in the forefront of your viewers’ minds.

How often should you be posting? The answer really depends on your niche. But as a general rule of thumb, you should aim to publish new videos:

If you’re a vlogger, you may naturally post more often or post Shorts throughout the week. 

We recommend looking at what other successful YouTubers in your niche are doing. How often do they post new videos? Their posting schedule can serve as a guide for your own.

8. Invest in High-Quality Gear💵

High-quality video and audio equipment is more affordable than ever. You don’t need to invest in professional-level gear that costs thousands of dollars. But a quality camera, a good microphone and some lighting gear will go a long way in making your videos look and feel more professional.

Remember, you don’t have to buy the most expensive gear you can find. If you have a high-end smartphone, you can probably use it to record your videos. But if you’re serious about becoming a YouTube influencer, then you’ll need to invest in better equipment at some point.

It doesn’t really matter what you use as long as the end product is high-quality.

9. Build an Online Presence Across Relevant Social Channels

YouTube has a massive reach – more than 2.6 billion active users. But it’s not the only place you should be building your brand and online presence. Yes, your goal is to be a YouTube influencer, but you can use other social platforms to promote your work, create more great content and build an even bigger following.

Once you’ve done your audience research, then you’ll know who your viewers are and where they hang out online. That will help you figure out the best social platforms to focus on apart from YouTube.

You don’t necessarily have to create fresh content for these platforms, although you should if you can. Try repurposing your content instead. Taking this approach will also help you build your brand and funnel more viewers to your YouTube channel.

10. Engage with Your Audience

One big reason why some YouTubers reach influencer status so quickly is because they engage with their audience. They spend a lot of time building relationships with their subscribers and viewers. 

A great example of this is Yes Theory. Their channel is huge, with over 8 million subscribers. Apart from their awesome content, they also interact with their audience offline. 

They created their own community and meet up with members of the Yes Theory Fam regularly. Their team hosts contests and shares personal updates. They’ve worked hard to build a strong relationship with their audience, and that has resulted in them being wildly successful on YouTube.

If you take the same approach, you’ll be well on your way to influencer status.

How can you engage with your audience more?

Invest in your audience and they will invest in you.

11. Create a Media Kit

Serious influencers create media kits that they send to potential brand partners. Essentially, your media kit is like a resume that showcases your stats and what you offer as an influencer.

What should your media kit include:

Not sure how to put your media kit together? Canva has free templates you can use. If you have design skills, you can create your own in Photoshop or a similar graphics editing program.

It doesn’t matter what you use to create your kit as long as it looks professional.

Summary

Some lucky YouTubers become influencers overnight. Their content goes viral, and they build up a huge audience in a short time. But most of the YouTubers you admire and follow spent a lot of time building their audience and creating great content consistently.

If you’re serious about becoming an influencer, use the guide above to get started on your journey. Making tweaks to your strategy along the way and constantly analyzing your content’s performance will help you grow and improve over time.