Best way to promote content

What I've noticed is that it's kind of a mix of a lot of things. I've been active on and off over the course of 4, 5 years, but recently the past 2 years I've been extremely active. I originally uploaded a video every single day, unedited and about 20 mintues long, and now I've refined my schedule to three days a week of fully edited content, usually originally 30-40 minutes long and brought down tothe best 15-20 minutes. RIght now, I'm about to hit 3000.

That kind of attention to detail on your channel will show people care and dedication, so often times making a very specific schedule that people can adhere to will really boost your response and activity.

Social Media is huge- if you get followers, interract with them as much as possible. As small channels, we don't get the glory of just posting content and ignoring our viewers/comments. We're not gods- socially awkward or no, we absolutely should interract with them as much as possible. Make them feel part of the community, part of the channel. My viewers have an official skype, an official discord, an official steam group- and I didn't create any of those.

Livestreams. Livestreaming is HUGE, even if you have really crappy internet like me. Pay attention to the big guns of livestreaming, and what they're playing. Try to stream modern, just released games, or games that are "endless" (like COD or LoL or SMITE or something similar). Pick something multiplayer so that if you do get people in the stream/comments, invite them to join in and play with you. When they feel a connection, they feel like they're part of something bigger. Giveaways work a lot better on streaming as well, because people will stick it out longer.

Branch out your genres. Right now, gaming on youtube is like... Everywhere. We are sooo not the minority, and we're definitely not even the highest grossing or viewed. In fact, the most subscribed and viewed channels are anything to do with Music. I did a couple songs for youtubers, and that boosted my subs like you've got no clue- I originally wrote Hey Yogscast like three years ago and got somewhere like 1500 subs from that alone. If music's not something you can dive into, Vlog. Vlogging is SUPER important to youtube. People want a "day in the life" or a "watch me cook horribly" or a "here's me talking about this incident on the train this morning" video, because they're lonely and they want to listen to people's stories. I mean seriously, there's this Korean thing on youtube right now where people just record themselves eating because their viewers don't want to eat alone, or watch something alone, so they pop on a video of another person eating so they don't feel alone. I'm totally serious on this by the way, it's called something like Mak Bong (don't quote me on that name).

The point is, gaming isn't something we can do singularly anymore- you gotta branch out. ^_^ Be sociable, have fun, try to stay at least SOMEWHAT modern in your gaming repertoire, edit your content, and stream. I have craptastic internet and I still get really great turnouts. Sometimes I even invite thepeople that come into skype to chill together- if they prove to be cool peeps, nothing worst than getting a$$hats and trolls.