Well, quality content and good tags and video description is the usual thing, plus eye-catching thumbnail to top it off. For me, I grew by joining a sub network powered by Freedom and they really helped me grow. I think most if not all sub networks here will give you the chance to show off your stuff, it is just really up to you to make the most of that opportunity. They give you these tools like TubeBuddy and Epoxy which in my opinion is really helpful. So yeah, they show you the doors and keys to those doors, but it is still up to you whether you'll use those keys and go through that door. Hopefully I made sense here.
By the way, the tags are essential in order to show up higher in the Search Rankings. Sometimes we small channels tend to go to the 2nd to nth page, where as a viewer, you won't really bother to take a look at the 2nd page unless you didn't like what the 1st page results presented. So yeah, better tags, better chance of showing up higher in the results. Hope I helped!