How to Choose a YouTube Channel Name
YouTube in 2020 had around more than 37 million channels with each their own respective names, content, audiences, and niches. And that number has since increased.
With this amount of content and channels already operating in the platform, it’s often hard for aspiring content creators and new channels to imagine growing their own audiences as competitors that have had already established their own presence seem like giants to take-on.
That being said, aspiring creators don’t need to take on the competition, they just need to grow on their own with what they do best, which is sharing their own original content. The first order of business in being successful in YouTube is relatively much simpler than you might think. It’s just to establish your channel name, but then again, that can be simple to do but it’s hard to perfect.
It’s quite common to hear the “How do I pick a YouTube channel name?” questions going around the internet as many others that are also looking to make their own channels often find themselves asking what name they would go for to get the most catchy, trendy, and non-cliche channel name.
So, in this article, we’ll be talking about how you can make and choose YouTube channel names that fit best to the content that you plan to create.
But first, let’s take a look at the basics.
Why Is Your Channel Name Important?
The most obvious reason for this is that your YouTube channel name signifies who your brand and business is. That’s the standard answer that most would instantly go for, and it’s true, but it goes much deeper than that.
Channel names are also important for other reasons such as:
- Appearing in every video you upload
- The main focus on your channel page
- Recognized by YouTube’s search results
- Help YouTube Advertisements
So not only are you remembered by the people that view your content because of your channel name but also by YouTube’s platform as well since your name provides the algorithm an idea of who you are as a content creator and what content you provide.
Direct Impact on Your Brand Awareness
Your channel name also has an incredible impact on how your brand attracts attention and how easy it is for you to gain brand awareness. Having a good channel name can make it a lot more familiar with your viewers to remember who you are aside from the content that you make. Add a great logo to it and you’ve got a killer package. You can always use a logo maker to design the logo.
This makes it all the more effective, especially whenever you are selling merchandise or a service, since your channel name can also carry the weight and the reputation of the products that you sell.
Channel names provide viewers a sense of familiarity with the content that they are watching, and if your channel name is entirely random as opposed to being on-point, then that just serves to confuse your viewers rather than helping them recognize your brand.
How to Come up with a YouTube Channel Name
The very reason that you’re reading this article right now with the question of “What should I name my YouTube channel” means that you are on the right track of getting a good channel name simply because you care.
Of course, coming up with a YouTube channel name isn’t rocket science or some mathematical equation that you need to study. But there sure are some significant tips and bits of information that you ought to know to make the best with what you have.
After all, once you’ve named your channel, you might be forced to stick with your name through to the end, especially once you’ve garnered enough views, subscriptions, and a following to your channel, as having to change your name halfway through will cut your progress and pose some serious risks to your growth as a channel.
This can affect not only individual YouTubers but even brands as well as people will again have to start with familiarities, and you might even have to invest in information campaigns about the name change as well, not to mention the effort that you would have to do in coming up with a new name to replace.
That’s a situation that would be best avoided overall, as the risks involved are often too much for the effort that has already been invested in the first place.
So with that said and done, there are first a couple of factors that you have to consider:
Identify What Makes A Good Name
First, you can’t make a good YouTube name without having some idea as to what these look like in implementation, so for the first tip, you’ll be looking at some great YouTube names for examples:
Entrepreneur (528K Subscribers) – From the name itself, you already can accurately tell that the channel focuses on business-related content. This is an example of a pinpoint title where viewers know what the channel is about from the name alone. The channel name doesn’t need to carry any reputation or weight because the meaning behind the word already does the job.
Graham Stephan (3M Subscribers) – This one is pretty straightforward – Graham Stephan has his name as his YouTube channel simply because he is already established in the niche that he works for, which is real estate. He doesn’t need to put in any extra details or mention real estate in his channel name because his name already carries a reputation alongside with the content that he creates.
5-Minute Crafts (74.2M Subscribers) – DIY channels are dish out good viewable content, and in the case of 5-Minute Crafts – they’re content is quite self-explanatory already, plus viewers generally already have an idea of how long they are going to watch with just the title itself
Decide on a Channel Name Category
Now that you have seen some examples, it’s time to do some actual work and choose a channel name category that fits best for your ambitions. This idea is quite close to how YouTube Tags work to ensure that your video content can be recommended to your target audience.
However, you don’t really have to fill in an actual channel name category on YouTube’s platform unlike how YouTube Tags work. This is just more of an outline to identify different types of channel names and how you can choose which one suits best for your situation.
Ambassador Name
These channel names are relatively easy to use, and the most common usage of this category are people using their first and last names as their channel names. You can often see this with artists, musicians, and journalists on YouTube.
Business/Brand Name
Business/brand names pretty much talk about companies. Here you can often see product promotions, software tutorials, trailers, and many more relating to merchandising or content associated with the inner workings of a business.
Explanatory Name
Explanatory names are names that are well… self-explanatory! Just like 5-Minute Crafts that was mentioned as an example, explanatory names don’t need much thinking for a viewer to wonder what content they’ll wound up watching.
Categorical Name
Categorical names, on the other hand, are pretty much like the explanatory category but not so overtly specific. You can often see titles that emphasize a particular category. Like the words “Gaming, Airways, Food, etc.” It narrows down the idea of what the viewer’s content would be.
Appeal to Your Audience
Your audience is your market, and if you don’t appeal to them, then there’s not much sense in having a YouTube channel. Cool YouTube names don’t really try to emphasize that they want to sell a product or a service.
Refrain from using overly salesy words like “Buying & Selling” if you can, as these are quite too obvious for most markets and viewers.
Personalization is also essential, and showing emotions through your channel or brand name can be a welcoming sight for viewers to see. Your channel name can invoke what values your brand has, and you ought to take advantage of that to maximize potential.
Make Your Name Catchy (And Meaningful)
Making your name catchy and hip can also be another easy way to attract views and highlight your brand name. This is mainly all the more effective if your brand name is something that you can also creatively twist around.
However, keep in mind that while creativity can be a big boost, don’t forget to make sure that it makes sense as well and provides meaning to what your channel is.
Be creative with your channel name but also keep in mind the meaning behind it.
Tips for Naming Your YouTube Channel
Creating unique YouTube names can be quite a challenge, and while there are certain aspects that you ought to take advantage of and keep in mind, there are also tips that you could use to make sure that your YouTube channel name can be the best that it can be.
You now know that you need to target your audience and that you need to make your name catchy (and meaningful), but how do you go about doing this?
Being in YouTube as a content creator is constant competition with plenty of other channels out there vying for views, and if your channel name doesn’t make the cut, then you set yourself at a disadvantage against your peers and other competitors in your specific industry.
While it is true that content is always king, it won’t hurt to have advisors at your side.
Make It Relatable
Try to make your channel name as relatable as it can be to the content that you are going to produce. This prevents viewers from accidentally thinking you are something that you’re not, and at the same time, it helps viewers that are looking for your content to know who you are from your channel name outright.
Not to mention the fact that making your channel relatable also helps with SEO-related optimizations as YouTube and Google’s algorithms can conveniently identify your channel.
Also, keep in mind to make sure that your channel name is easy to pronounce. If you include your brand name or you are going to use your first and last name, but they’re not really easy to say, then consider changing it up a bit.
This makes your channel name easier to read and pronounce while maintaining the general idea and familiarity as well.
This ensures that your viewers don’t have much of a rough time figuring out what to call your YouTube channel name and makes it easier for newcomers to digest in the first place.
Keep it Short
You don’t need to make your channel name as long and informative as it can be, nor do you need to make it long just to make it meaningful and catchy. While a long title can fit all these criteria, it also eliminates one important aspect that you should always consider – readability.
Having a long channel name is hard to read and more so harder to remember. It’s important to try and keep your name as compact as you can while still balancing out the other factors involved.
This area is probably the most impactful as to how you can make your channel name as it affects a lot of possibilities with how you craft the name, from limiting your options in creativity all the way to reducing a lot of keywords to make your name meaningful.
But all of these challenges make it so that your name can be as familiar and readable to your audience, and these are critical factors in having a successful YouTube channel.
Be Careful with Word Play
Wordplay is an effective tactic to make your channel name all the more attractive to read and stand out from the rest, but at the same time, there are risks involved with how you do this. Proper execution of wordplay is as important as making a catchy channel name.
Wordplay is fun to experiment with but don’t forget to execute it properly by adding in certain modifiers if need be. If it’s too hard to crack, then oftentimes, it’s just best not to implement it in the first place.
Avoid Hyphens, Acronyms, Odd Spellings, and Numbers
It goes without saying that hyphens and other symbols are a bad idea when it comes to your channel name because they don’t really add anything of value. The same goes for numbers.
If you have a brand name that you want to use, but it’s taken, don’t use random numbers to make it available. It’ll only make your name harder to read but also unclear.
Also, avoid using acronyms that are not readable and odd spellings. If you can make your YouTube channel name a shorter version of your brand name, then go for that instead of using an acronym.
Look for Social Media Availability
One of the main ideas of a YouTube channel name is familiarity, and the only way that you can achieve that familiarity is through consistency. If you don’t have any accounts on other social media platforms, then it would be best that you first consider the availability of the name that you are going to use there as well.
The reason for this is that if you retain the same name as your channel name on other social media platforms, this would be a lot easier for you to remain consistent with not only your brand but also with the weight and reputation of the name that comes along with your business.
This is what is typically called a Domain Name Availability as you are also considering other avenues of expansion for your brand name and how you can possibly utilize the same name for consistency.
Social media platforms can go well hand-in-hand with YouTube as these sites can funnel views to your channel, and the same goes vice-versa, so having a consistent naming scheme throughout all the accounts that you use would make it easy for your brand name to be recognized but also make it familiar to those that view your content.
Out of Ideas? Use A Tool
With all these restrictions and tips to cover through, it can be quite hard to decide on what name you can make, and while naming your YouTube channel is not rocket science, it’s no picnic either.
However, this is where you can rely on others for ideas, not only with your marketing team, friends, family, or your significant other but also with technology.
There are existing tools out there that you can use to generate YouTube names for your channel.
These tools also provide you with customization capabilities so that you are also given much more accurate results that are related to the area of your business.
Not to mention that these tools are name availability checkers at the same time, so you’re hitting two birds in one stone whenever you think of relying on these tools to generate you a name and check if it is available on the platform that you want, in this case, YouTube.
YouTube Channel Name Examples
Now, let’s start taking a look at some YouTube channel names as examples for you to have a better idea as to what you ought to make with your brand name. You can separate these names into the four different categories that were mentioned before, but for this part, it’s a creative pool of ideas that you can take inspiration from.
We’ll split these into four distinct types, creative, aesthetic, catchy, and cute names.
Each of these categories invokes different emotions and themes to how they’re done. Some of these names are generated by a tool, some are hand-crafted, and some are examples from existing YouTube channels that have already made a name for themselves.
Creative Names
For creative YouTube channel names, most of the examples are pretty witty with how they are executed on the wordplay. You can easily notice the “fun factor” in these names and how they try to showcase that in the short wording and emphasis.
Aesthetic Names
Aesthetic names don’t usually try to stand out that much but instead offer a more relaxing tone to how they are pronounced and read. These are purposely made to get a good mood to the name.
Catchy Names
Catchy names are pretty much self-explanatory. They’re catchy and great to pronounce. Easy to remember and also convenient to read through. These types of terms are eye-catching because they rhyme most of the time.
What’s Next?
Once you’ve come up with the perfect name for your YouTube channel, it’s time put together a video marketing strategy – that’s where our video maker comes in. Use Promo.com as your go to lyric video maker, video cropper, video cutter, and so much more. We make it easy to create professional-level marketing videos that resonate with your audience. Happy creating!
FAQs
How Do I Know If A YouTube Name Is available?
The first easiest way for you to search if your YouTube name is already taken is to search for it on the platform. Make sure to set the filters in the proper categories, and you’ll be able to look over the most relevant results. Another way to do this is through using the tools that were mentioned to check if your YouTube name is available.
What Are Some Popular YouTube Channel Names?
There are plenty of popular YouTube channel names depending on the category, but for the most part, generic words are usually added or mixed together to create content-related names.
