The Ultimate Guide to Starting Your Own YouTube Challenge for Engagement

YouTube offers different opportunities for marketing, content creation, customer engagement, and a lot more. At the same time, it is very difficult to start and maintain a successful YouTube channel since the competition is too high. 720,000 hours of video content is published on YouTube every day. It can be quite difficult to make a mark in this sea of competition.

However, it is important to understand that you are not competing against thousands of other YouTubers. You are only competing against those in your niche and those who know your target audience on YouTube. Once you crack the code to get viewers hooked, your YouTube journey will become very smooth.

One of the most effective ways to get new and existing viewers hooked is through challenges. Most of us have seen challenges taking place in different social media platforms, be it YouTube or Facebook or Instagram. Today we will talk about everything you need to know about YouTube challenges and how they can help you with audience engagement.

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What are YouTube challenges?

There is no single definition of a YouTube challenge. Anything and everything can be a YouTube challenge if you can add a competitive element to it. In a nutshell, a YouTube challenge involves viewers competing (often against each other) to solve a problem or get an answer in order to receive a prize. Therefore, challenges can involve uploading dance videos to solve puzzles. There is no limit to what you can classify as a YouTube challenge.

The most important thing to remember in the context of YouTube challenges is that every challenge should have some substantial stake. People will not spend their time and energy on what they are getting is not worth it. No matter which challenge model you follow, the rewards must be worthwhile.

The difference between good and bad YouTube challenges

If you know how to bring out the competitive side in humans, you will have an easy time coming up with challenges. But if you don’t, we are here to help you.

A good YouTube challenge will have the right balance of difficulty and reward. You cannot make a challenge overtly difficult – like shooting and editing a full-length video – if your rewards do not match. Alternatively, you can make challenges as difficult as you want if your reward backs them up. Finding this balance is the key to successful YouTube challenges. If you are wondering how to start a YouTube challenge, begin by taking into account these considerations.

A good YouTube challenge has the following features:

1. Competitive
2. Able to hook viewers
3. Able to bring many people together
4. Enjoyable

If you tick all four boxes, you will have an easy time coming up with YouTube challenges. A bad YouTube challenge will naturally not engage with many viewers. If there is a mismatch between the reward and the effort, your subscribers won’t be interested in participating. Even if the reward is decent, challenges without any hook usually fail. For these reasons, your YouTube challenges must always take into account the four factors mentioned above.

Types of YouTube challenges

There are mainly two types of YouTube challenges. In the first type, you involve the audience. In the second type, the challenge is completed by YouTube along with friends or fellow YouTubers. Both approaches have their pros and cons when it comes to engaging with the audience.

When it comes to audience challenges, we are mainly looking at giveaways and special merchandise as rewards. However, it is also a great idea to have a monetary reward in place. The higher the stake, the more people you attract. The more people you attract, the better it is for YouTube engagement.

In the case of YouTuber challenges, you also get the unique opportunity of engaging with your fellow YouTubers and their viewership. It is a great way to boost the growth of your channel. The more people you add to your viewership, the higher the chances of getting more engagement.

There are some common pointers in both types of challenges. In both cases, the challenge should have a considerable degree of difficulty. It should also have a fun element that makes it easy for viewers to get hooked. If your challenges have an element of virality, they will get shared more. Hitting it off with even a single challenge can boost your engagement to a great extent.

Below we will discuss some ideas and inspirations for both types of challenges. However, remember that these are just guidelines and not concrete suggestions. You should always add a personal touch to your YouTube challenges.

Ideas and inspirations for YouTube challenges

If you are organizing a challenge with other YouTubers, the scope for making it viral increases drastically. For example, eating challenges are very popular in the YouTube community. It exhibits the perfect amalgamation of the necessary features of a challenge. Eating challenges are difficult and have an element of virality. In some cases, they are downright bizarre or gross. Even then, you get to hook the viewer because of their curiosity.

Another example of engaging challenges is games. There are many games that you can play in collaboration with other YouTubers or with friends. These games are not like traditional sports or video games. They are usually fun games that we relate more with parties and gatherings, like being able to stay in one circle for the longest time. It is also a great way to make the most of your viewership and get hooked to a fun competition.

Coming back to challenges with your viewers, the scope is much restricted here. Since you cannot get all your viewers on board for a challenge, you have to host it over the internet. For challenges involving the audience, the stake is usually something personalized and valuable. It can be merchandise, the opportunity for a guest appearance in your channel, a gift voucher, and so on.

Challenges involving the audience usually follow the model of a puzzle or a riddle. The first people to solve them are declared winners. Coming up with puzzle ideas need not be challenging. There are tons of ideas on the internet. However, make sure all your challenges have a personal touch.

Why are challenges so effective for engagement?

Challenges have become a common way for YouTube channels to boost audience engagement. The reasons behind this phenomenon are self-explanatory.

Challenges are competitive by definition, and people love competition. Even if it is all fun and games, challenges force out the best in us. When we get recognition for our efforts (in the form of rewards), we get even more motivated to participate in more challenges.

Another useful feature of YouTube challenges is their collaborative nature. Whether you are challenging the audience or your friends, both involve collaboration. The audience loves to see videos where there is a certain extent of collaboration. It makes the videos more appealing and engaging. Everyone you bring over for a challenge adds their own personality to it. In turn, it becomes a great way to improve engagement with the audience. People are now watching your videos for the fun that collaborations bring. It is one of the main reasons all popular YouTubers frequently collaborate with others.

Common YouTube challenge mistakes

While organizing and setting up YouTube challenges is not very difficult, people still make mistakes. Most of these mistakes are not major flaws and only minor mistakes. For example, one of the biggest mistakes is not promoting your challenge. If you are not marketing and promoting your challenge across different social media platforms, you are losing out on possible engagement. If people don’t know about your challenge, they cannot engage with it.
Another mistake that many people make pertains to the nature of the challenge. You do not want your YouTube challenges to be long-drawn and boring. If you are not adding something new to the mix constantly, it is only a matter of time before you start losing the audience. Challenges need to be fun and must have the ability to keep the viewers hooked. They should be able to get you free YouTube views, and the viewers should further promote it.

The future of YouTube challenges

YouTube VR, or virtual reality, is the future of YouTube challenges. VR will elevate the way to engage with and participate in a challenge. In the future, it can become the dominant mode of YouTube challenges owing to advanced engagement avenues and enhanced experience for the viewers.

Apart from that, the sheer volume of challenges on YouTube is set to show considerable growth. Everyone is realizing their importance and jumping to the bandwagon. If you are serious about growing your YouTube subscribers, you should make challenges a priority.

Conclusion

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