In the last year and a half, Crayola has grown their YouTube subscriber base by 400,000, and recently surpassed the one million subscriber milestone.
Crayola’s legacy of colorful self-expression seeded itself 120 years before the first YouTube video was posted. Yet the creativity icon’s YouTube content strategy is rooted in translating the magic found in its yellow and green crayon boxes to the digital landscape.
As Matthew Liotti, Brand Content Manager at Crayola, put it, “We like to remind people we’re a 120-year-old brand that’s still young and relevant. We love to test and learn—especially with video. YouTube is the definitive home of video. It’s the place where Crayola can take the content our brand has always produced, and put a social-first, video-centric spin on it.”
Liotti and his team craft activation content for the legendary brand across social channels. But he says YouTube is the only channel where they exclusively publish video content—making it the perfect place for the experimentation that has led to massive growth.
We sat down with Liotti to learn more about what it takes to build and scale an effective YouTube content strategy and are sharing key takeaways you can use to inspire your own plans.
Why having a YouTube content strategy matters
First, let’s cover why it’s important for brands to cultivate a presence on YouTube. According to a Q4 2024 Sprout Social Pulse Survey, 72% of consumers have YouTube accounts, and another one-third plan to use the platform more in 2025. The 2024 Social Media Content Strategy Report found that 32% of consumers engage with brands on the platform everyday, while another 47% engage at least once a week.
Not only are consumers present and engaged on YouTube, they’re also ready to buy. The same Pulse Survey found that 20% of consumers will use YouTube Shopping to make purchases in 2025. But that doesn’t mean you should hard-sell your products—even if they are the stars of your videos.
Instead, bring your audience on a journey with your brand, helping them imagine what’s possible with your products. The Crayola team succeeds at this by spurring on their audience’s creativity. As Liotti said, “At Crayola, we like to think outside the proverbial crayon box. We don’t need to be prescriptive about how to use the product, but rather inspire. Our content is geared toward both children and adults and supports our mission to help parents and educators raise creatively-alive kids.”
YouTube metrics to measure success
When charting your YouTube content strategy, having the right key performance indicators in place leads to more meaningful analysis, better content and a stronger impact.
“At Crayola, we always ask: ‘How do we tell if the juice is worth the squeeze?’ We use key metrics, like viewership trends and subscribers, to determine what works and how we can craft successful content maps,” Liotti explained. Viewership metrics like total views and watch time zoom in on the videos with the highest audience engagement, while number of subscribers illustrates how the channel is doing from a 10,000-foot view.
The Crayola team also uses secondary metrics, like audience breakdown, to determine if the right people are watching their videos.
3 tips for crafting a scalable YouTube content strategy
YouTube can be an intimidating platform for many teams. Its video-centricity requires more budget, time and planning than mixed-media platforms. To create a consistent channel and growing subscriber base, take a few pages from Crayola’s coloring book.
Build collaborative planning rituals
At Crayola, many teams are involved in the YouTube planning process. Social, content and activation team members are primarily responsible for most of the execution, however, digital, website and platform marketing teams all lend a hand in planning.
“We try to plan as far in advance as possible—usually months ahead—to align with other teams and marketing activations, like major product launches,” Liotti said. He added that while the process of collecting so much feedback from multiple stakeholders can be time-consuming, it ultimately results in a final product that’s high impact and authentic to the Crayola brand.
A good example of this is Crayola’s “Campaign for Creativity,” the brand’s advocacy initiative that reaches across social, PR, digital, and product and brand marketing efforts and uses YouTube as a key channel.
We were surprised to learn that their vast pipeline of YouTube content is primarily created in-house. Crayola has invested heavily in growing their team’s video capabilities. But they still work with agency partners, some of which have been collaborators for 30+ years.
The Crayola team relies on Sprout’s social media calendar to keep all of their partners—from agencies to other internal orgs—in the loop. The calendar, which can be sorted by channel, makes it easy to visualize all of the upcoming YouTube content, while also giving their team the tools they need to execute. Liotti called the calendar and its cross-collaborative capabilities “hugely important” for securing alignment.
Experiment with different formats and features
The Content Strategy Report found that over half of consumers are most likely to engage with long-form video when interacting with brands on YouTube. Strikingly, short-form video (31-60 seconds) was the second most popular choice.
While the channel is well-known for its long-form content, there’s an emerging consumer appetite for bite-sized video. The variety is a welcomed trend for marketers who already produce short-form video on other platforms, and now cross-post on YouTube.
Crayola is among the growing number of brands experimenting with YouTube Shorts. Their investment in short-form video on YouTube has garnered consumer and media attention, leading to Webby, Viddy, Social Creative and Golden Marcomm award wins.
But they are just as focused on other formats. Liotti explained, “The key to winning on YouTube is using all available content types. We maintain a balanced portfolio across the YouTube platform—including community posts, long-form, Shorts, 16:9 and vertical. It’s important to play with all available functionalities to get your content seen.”
Optimize for YouTube’s audience and nuances
YouTube isn’t just a video sharing platform, it’s also a search engine—the second most popular for Gen Z, behind only TikTok. Search plays a significant role in discoverability on the network and informs how people interact with content.
It can be tempting to try to drive people to your YouTube channel from other networks. But, the results might be lackluster. Pushing people from one platform to another can create a disorienting user experience. Instead, optimizing your YouTube SEO strategy can help you master the algorithm. As Liotti said, “We don’t proactively push people to YouTube that much. Instead, we get a lot of traffic there organically.”
You can also boost your discoverability by aligning your YouTube content with micro content trends. Liotti explained, “Competitive research and social listening are integral parts of our strategy. We answer questions like ‘What are other brands doing?’ and ‘Why is everyone talking about slime?”
Liotti and his team use Sprout’s AI-powered Listening technology to track conversations happening around key topics, and assess Crayola’s share of voice. By using social insights, they are better equipped to create compelling, high performing content.
Let your creativity come to life on YouTube
Liotti summed it up like this: “The more you double down and commit to building a YouTube content strategy, the more the algorithm favors you.”
Crayola’s YouTube success is a testament to the power of creativity, consistency and thoughtful strategy. By embracing experimentation, optimizing for the platform’s unique nuances and staying attuned to audience trends, they’ve grown their channel into a thriving hub for creative inspiration.
Whether you’re just starting out or looking to scale, remember to align your content with your brand’s mission, leverage collaborative planning tools and explore all the formats YouTube has to offer. With the right approach, your brand can create a lasting impression—and maybe even hit that million-subscriber milestone.
Looking for more learnings to shape your content strategy this year? Download The 2025 Sprout Social Index™.
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