YouTube Help Gaining an Audience with American, Canadian, and other English Speaking Viewers

[Ian Vibbert]

Hello! I have a family travel channel, and I've had some success with a few of our videos in Turkey, but I can't seem to find any viewers in America, Canada, and other predominately English speaking countries. We did a vlog series in Turkey, but they are all in English, and we are American, so I think that the English speaking population would enjoy the content. Don't get me wrong, I love that Turkish people are watching, but for the sake of monetization and reaching a wider audience, I'm wondering if theres a trick to gaining and audience from my home country. I've already made sure to mark that all videos are in English, and they all have English subtitles.

 

[Bears and Butters]

We have friends who are vloggers who are currently living in Turkey, and they always get more viewers from the country they are visiting or talking about, than their home country (USA). It's just like one of our videos... We posted a place in Los Angeles... the Malibu Hindu Temple.. and titled it Non Hindus go to Hindu Temple... and it has almost 129,000 views.... a huge majority of those viewers are from India, and not a huge English Speaking following other than the other creators we are connected with... and none of our other videos has hit that mark, or come close.

It just seems that many people in other parts of the world, are very proud of their cultures and heritages, and really enjoy content about people who are visiting their country, or related to their country and culture, and they don't care what language you're speaking in!! They just want to see content related to their home area and hope that people are enjoying their country and culture.

Regardless of what you feel about your content connecting with an American/English speaking audience...Sadly you have to go with the audience that YouTube puts you in front of, or what users are searching for....Even here in Los Angeles, when we vlog about things where we live, we tend to get the audience that relates to the content we put out. If we put out a Mukbang (eating show).. we have a certain crowd that comes for that... YouTube audiences are fickle... and you can't assume that a million English speaking users are looking for content about Turkey, or cultural things in Turkey. English speaking audiences may or may not follow you for certain types of content.

If you want to target an American or English speaking audience only, chances are you would have to pay for Google Ads or something like that out of your own pocket to specifically "target" an audience of your own content.

Hope that helps!

 

[Ian Vibbert]

Thanks so much for that insight! I assume as much, but I guess that I thought that more people were like our family. We are constantly watching travel vlogs because we are interested in other cultures and locations. We've seen our home, we want to see someone else's. What you say makes sense, though. Thanks for your reply!

 

[BraveStar]

I have to agree with @Bears and Butters, it would seem that the audience more likely to see your content are those specifically looking for content they can relate to. In this case, Turkish viewers looking for videos about Turkey. It seems your content views are based around the locations in your title and description.

I would recommend finding and testing keywords and tags that can catch a wider audience that goes beyond just specific locations and try to base the titles and descriptions on or around those keywords. That might help the YouTube algorithm share the video to viewers interested in travel blogs that are not necessarily seeking very specific locations. It may take some time but you might be successful if you try a lot of testing. I would also recommend perhaps giving your thumbnails more details to show the locations you're visiting while also showing where you're from. Viewers react more to images that catch their attention like the countries flag for example. And we Americans like being proud of being Americans thus our flag places in a visible way but not too obvious can also catch the attention of at the least American viewers and may even give the YouTube algorithm, which also analyzes the thumbnail as well, an idea of who your target audience is and could push the videos towards American and maybe even Canadian viewers looking for this kind of content. A/B testing on thumbnails is a great way to test this theory or idea.

 

[Ian Vibbert]

Thanks for your thoughts, @Brave Starr and thank you for taking the time to answer. I'll try some different title and description combos.

 

[OceanShip]

Hello! I have a family travel channel, and I've had some success with a few of our videos in Turkey, but I can't seem to find any viewers in America, Canada, and other predominately English speaking countries. We did a vlog series in Turkey, but they are all in English, and we are American, so I think that the English speaking population would enjoy the content. Don't get me wrong, I love that Turkish people are watching, but for the sake of monetization and reaching a wider audience, I'm wondering if theres a trick to gaining and audience from my home country. I've already made sure to mark that all videos are in English, and they all have English subtitles.

I also want to know, a good bit of my viewers are in Germany and Italy.

 

[SILTHW]

I would also note it is very content-dependent. Certain topics do well in certain countries. I know you are asking specifically about targeting English speaking countries, but I have topics that do very well in India, some that do well in Central/South America and some that do well in Asia, usually Singapore.

 

[Beanie Draws]

Geographic traffic sources are an interesting thing. I get a massive viewership from Portugal. I speak in English, but I guess art is an international language, and even if you can't understand what I say, you can still enjoy what I show.

Seems you're in travel, I was looking at the date you started your channel, which was during the pandemic last year. I'd also guess that currently, Americans aren't super keen to travel until the pandemic is over. Some people like travel videos as a visual escape from reality, but as way of promoting travelling, I'd say a lot of the audience would also be based on who CAN travel right now. Some countries have travel bans, other's are more open, and I'd expect the traffic on your videos would also reflect that.

 

[Lenre2021]

I guess, you better change your location setting sometimes. I do not really know how effective it is. It's just one of my friends told me to do so, yet, I don't try it.