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enerous lighting, crisp audio and engaging content '€” these are some of the keys in making a thumbs-up-worthy video on YouTube, the video sharing platform'€™s video makers said.

'€œMy foremost tip is to be yourself because viewers can sense that you are enjoying what you do. In addition, find something about yourself that could be your signature,'€ said Diwantara Anugrah Putra, an avid YouTube user.

Diwantara makes a living from uploading videos on visual effects through his YouTube channel, Tara Arts Movie. He also runs the Tara Arts Game channel, featuring walkthroughs of popular video games.

'€œYou must also be original with your idea, by putting up something that others have not done,'€ he said.

Tara Arts Movie and Tara Arts Game have over 123,000 subscribers in total.

Larentius Rando, who manages the YouTube channel called Jakarta Beatbox, said people should make videos that observe current social conversations. '€œIf you want people to watch your videos, make sure that you refer to whatever is trending.'€

Yet, he said the video has to be lighthearted with a touch of humor '€œbecause people are too lazy to watch something serious after a hard day at work'€.

Jakarta Beatbox showcases tutorials and performances by Jakarta Beatbox, a group of beatboxing artists in which Larentius is a member.

He said it didn'€™t hurt to look '€œneat and presentable'€ because '€œthe better the packaging, the better the video in the eyes of the viewer'€.

Technically, Diwantara further said people should shoot high definition videos free of grain and blur.

'€œEnsure that the sound is clear as well, since nobody wants to watch a video that'€™s hard to hear,'€ he said, adding that people could use a microphone to reduce noise being captured.

Fellow YouTube user Natasha Farani said people must design a schedule of videos to be uploaded '€” instead of just uploading any videos at random moments.

Natasha offers hijab and makeup tutorials through her channel using her namesake. She has at least 78,000 subscribers.

'€œI shoot all the videos during the weekend so they are ready for upload during weekdays,'€ she said.

Google strategic partner manager for Southeast Asia Niken Sasmaya said YouTuber users should treat their channels '€œas their own television channel'€.

'€œYou must upload consistently so that viewers know when to expect new content,'€ she said.

Content creators, she said, should fully utilize the tools on YouTube to gain more views and subscribers.

'€œMany content creators are unaware that tools exist to help them control the audience. For example, people can insert screenshots of older videos at the end of their new ones and then attach annotations, which will lead those who click on it to the aforesaid older video,'€ Niken said.

She said content creators often disregarded the importance of a solid title and a description of the content.

'€œGood titles are ones that show consistency. For example, consistently labeling your videos as episode one, two and so on,'€ Niken said.

'€œPeople should always provide a brief description about their video as well because people would like to know what they are about to watch.'€

She said that to optimize videos in search engines, YouTube users should properly tag their videos by using words that represented the content of their video.

Tags embedded in the video affect the rank it falls in when someone does a search on YouTube. Well-tagged videos can appear on top of the search results and hence, gain more viewers.

'€œSome people throw in tags that are irrelevant, simply because those tags are trending to take advantage of the hype,'€ she said.

'€œThey do not realize that when determining the rank, we take into account whether viewers watch the video until the end. If you put irrelevant tags that cause people to click on your video but then they end up dissatisfied because that is not what they are looking for, this will adversely affect your ranking.'€

'€” Mariel Grazella