If a brand wants to succeed on YouTube, the brand needs to carefully plan the brand's marketing strategy. Previous online market research platform Statista revealed an interesting result in its statistics. According to their research, considering the total number of users, YouTube ranks second in social networks.

With the increasing importance of YouTube, today we will analyze YouTube’s top 250 channels for brands to learn more about what makes these channels so successful. Here are 6 common characteristics of the 250 top YouTube channels that brands should keep in mind.

What is the most popular language for YouTube

Since YouTube is an international platform, the content language of the brand is an important part of the brand strategy (the main content of the previous official account). We analyzed the languages of the top 250 YouTube channels and found that 66% of the content was in English, while 22% were in Spanish and Portuguese. Therefore, English content seems to be the most popular, with Spanish and Portuguese ranking second and third respectively.

Source: Google

With this in mind, the brand may wish to produce content in English, Spanish or Portuguese to take advantage of YouTube’s international features. However, there seem to be exceptions. As shown in the figure above, 6 of the top 250 YouTube channels are Korean channels. Considering the size of the Korean-speaking population, it is quite surprising that six Korean-language channels are in the top 250 of YouTube channels.

Who is YouTube's target audience

YouTube viewers can be distinguished by age group and gender. The table below shows that the overall age of YouTube viewers is relatively young. Specifically, exactly 50% of viewers are between 25 and 44 years old. Taking into account gender, the proportion of male audiences is higher than that of female audiences. Therefore, it can be concluded that content that attracts male audiences between 25 and 44 is the most popular on YouTube.

What are the most popular categories on YouTube

Below are statistics for popular categories in YouTube. As the picture shows, the three most popular content categories on YouTube are entertainment, music, and people and blogs.

The "Entertainment" category includes channels that can be classified as entertainment programs. This category includes content such as talk shows from multiple broadcasters or individual YouTube creators (Shane Dawson, Jake Paul, etc.). The "Music" category includes individual musicians and major music label channels. The "People and Blogs" category includes channels that can be classified as Vlog channels.

The figure above shows the supply and demand of each category. It is worth noting that despite the current popularity and demand of entertainment and music content, the supply of these categories is less than half of the demand. On the other hand, the "People and Blogs" category shows the exact opposite situation, with supply much higher than demand.

Therefore, it can be concluded that the competition between "People and Blog" channels is much higher than that of "Entertainment" and "Music" channels.

However, in order to produce lasting popular content, it is important to focus on videos that have stable needs regardless of time. These contents will be, for example, operation videos and product reviews. Therefore, although brands should consider competition in the target category, it is also important to consider the persistence of content.

How the number of subscribers is distributed

The figure below shows the distribution of subscribers to the top 250 YouTube channels. The most important thing to note is that there is a long tail distribution of subscribers to top YouTube channels.

This means that only a few channels have disproportionately high subscriber numbers, while the remaining channels have relatively "moderate" subscriber numbers. Among the top 250 YouTube channels, only a few channels have a very large number of subscribers, while most other channels have similar numbers of subscribers.

Unlike traditional mass media producing content that attracts the public, YouTube is more of an on-demand method. Therefore, viewers can watch content tailored to their specific interests. Therefore, channels are mostly topic-specific, which leads to a more even distribution of subscribers in most popular channels.

What is the best length of a YouTube video

According to Briggsby’s research on YouTube ranking factors, the duration patterns of popular YouTube videos can be identified. Studies have shown that videos longer than 10 minutes but shorter than 16 minutes are liked by more viewers. In other words, relatively short videos with a duration of about 10-16 minutes are the most popular on YouTube.

Is it important to like, comment and share

There are three types of user interactivity for YouTube content: likes, comments, and shares. Backlinko analyzed 1.3 million YouTube videos and announced that user interaction has a crucial impact on the ranking of YouTube videos.

Likes: The number of likes has a significant impact on YouTube rankings.

Comments: Comments are related to YouTube rankings. The number of comments pushed up the rankings.

Sharing: The amount of video sharing has a great influence on YouTube's ranking. Videos that appear on the first page of YouTube have a higher number of shares than other videos.

Therefore, channels that focus on topics that cause high audience interaction tend to rank higher.

What are the 6 characteristics of popular channels

Based on the above data, we can derive six common characteristics of popular YouTube channels. These common features are:

1. Global Attraction

For content with low language/cultural barriers, the most popular languages are English, Spanish or Portuguese.

2. Relatively young target audience

Content that can appeal to the age group (25-44 years old) with the largest audience.

3. Based on the theme

Content specific to certain topics/domains.

4. Lasting

Regardless of the time, there is a stable demand content.

5. Relatively short content

Content longer than 10 minutes but shorter than 16 minutes.

6. Interactivity

Contains content on topics that can arouse audience interaction.