There are plenty of blog posts and videos that give great advice on how to grow your YouTube subscribers. This post, however is all about growing your subscribers quickly.

Here are 3 methods that can grow your YouTube subscriber base in huge jumps, rapidly.

Newsjack and Piggyback

Newsjacking refers to piggybacking on the popularity of a news story or industry happening, to grow your audience, views and sales. When producing video content, you can use a breaking story to benefit your business. The popularity subsides pretty quickly, within days or weeks but you can gain big viewership in the meantime, and if you do everything right, you can grow your YouTube subscribers quickly.

Another trend is to piggyback on viral videos, either by creating your own videos with a similar voice or theme, doing your own tongue-in-cheek knock off, providing commentary on the original video or filming your reaction video to the original video.  Just remember, if you are tackling any of these, to stay true to your brand.

Tentpole Programming

Tentpole programming refers to creating videos that relate to popular social or cultural events. If you have been wondering  how to grow your YouTube subscribers quickly, then this is definitely a technique that you should consider using.

Examples are: an upcoming movie release, a sports event, your personal milestones such as special anniversaries channel milestone such as 1 million subscribers.

Remember to keep your voice and genre consistent – don’t change your video format or genre to program around a tentpole event, rather get creative and see how you can incorporate the tentpole event into your channel voice and theme.

While newsjacking and piggybacking are post event, Tentpoling is preempting the event. To execute this well, look for a trending topic that’s has a lot of buzz, and make sure to engage with your fan base in the lead up to your video release – you need to stir up interest before you launch. Release your video a few weeks (preferable) or days prior the cultural or social event and ride the wave of interest!

Once you’ve tasted success with this technique, I can guarantee you’ll be marking every big cultural event in your editorial calendar and coming up with ways to create content around these events in a brand consistent way.

Collaborations

Something else successful YouTubers do, to grow their YouTube subscriber base quickly, is that they collaborate with other YouTubers and YouTube brands. With collaborations,  subscribers of one channel are introduced to another channel, and vice versa. So, both of your fan bases become larger.

Some YouTube channels use collaborations for every video they create. Epic Rap Battles of History are and example of this. However, you don’t need to be a music channel, or create a channel based 100% on collaborations to benefit from this technique. You’ll find Gary Vee, Casey Neistat, Peter McKinnon, all use collaboration as a means to grow their fan base quickly.

So are all collaboration opportunities the same?  No, definitely not. If your goal is to grow your YouTube subscribers quickly then you’ll likely want to consider collaborating with channels that have a reasonable size base so that you can benefit. Another things to consider is how quickly  channel is growing. Look for channels that not only have a lot of followers, but also channels that are reasonably small but have a strong “up and to the right” growth curve. Reach out to them for a collaboration.

Be aware that if you don’t have a large following, they may not be interested in collaborating with you, after all, their goal is probably to grow their YouTube subscribers quickly too! They may require that you pay a fee before they can collaborate with you. Just remember to stay positive and respectful if they decline your offer to collaborate – don’t burn your bridges as when you do have a larger fan base, you wan to be able to knock again!

So what are your tips and tricks for growing a YouTube channel fast?  Share them in the comments!