YouTube stands as the second most–visited site on the web next to Google, having over 1.9 billion active monthly end users.
As the world is rapidly evolving, video content has become more relevant in this Alpha Generation, and mastering it is slowly becoming necessary for any digital marketer. The question is— with millions of videos on YouTube, how do you take most of this platform to your advantage?
Aside from the paid advertising, there are still several tricks and schemes you can use to promote your YouTube channel. The following ways and tips mentioned below are simple yet effective, and the best part is it’s 100% free!
Are you getting fired up? Now, here are the effective ways to promote your YouTube videos:
Share Your Videos
You must have tried doing this strategy across your social media platforms. However, instead of just sharing your video on your social media accounts, it would be better if you’d share it on platforms with active communities like Reddit, Forums, and Q&A sites.
There are two reasons why people visit a community or forums— to get their questions answered and find new content, and the video content you made could probably help them achieve those things.
After publishing video content, for example, for fitness, you should head over next to Quora and find questions that people are asking about fitness. Then you answer that question, then attach a link that directs to your website, helping them answer their inquiry. Make your answer brief yet comprehensive.
Keep in mind that you should put a few valuable deliverables first before featuring your video. This way, you could avoid getting spammed by the community.
Optimize Around Trending Topics
SEO is essential in getting more videos. However, most keywords on YouTube are already super competitive.
If you have a small YouTube channel, getting your video on a higher ranking will be difficult than the famous video content creators. To get around this issue, you have to optimize around new trending keywords.
To optimize your content through new trending keywords, you first need to find your topic idea on a YouTube search and then look at the suggested keywords that show. You could also utilize Exploding Topics, which curates numerous trending topics across various industries.
Boost Your CTR
CTR, or click-through rate, is essential.
Having a high CTR means a higher number of views. Let’s say you have a video that is positioned in the fourth spot for your target keyword, and the CTR of that video is at 5%. If you would be able to improve your CTR to 12%, you will get 2.4 times more views without needing to rank higher or do anything else to promote your video.
The Click-through rate serves as YouTube’s vital algorithm signal. If your video gets plenty of clicks, there’s a higher chance that YouTube will promote or recommend your video.
Although many video content creators are making click baits, YouTube clearly stated that doing so will hurt your chances of getting new viewers. Hence, you should always back your title and thumbnail with a comprehensive, high-quality video.
The thumbnails on YouTube are mostly dark, and some only use three or two main colors, which makes them blend in the platform. One of the ways to boost click-through rates without resorting to click baits is by using highly colorful thumbnails that stand out. Use more than three contrasting colors for it to look more enticing.
Collaborate with Others
Collaborating with other channels is a very effective way to promote your YouTube content. In the context of blogging, a “collab” is considered a guest posting. This simple strategy could help you reach out to more audiences.
People who will watch your collaboration with other video bloggers are most likely to subscribe to your channel too.
This is a good example of a pitch when you’re asking someone to collaborate with you.
In sending pitches to the people, you want to collaborate with, you should remember to keep your message in check— your message should include what the other party will benefit from you.
Sequel Technique
This strategy involves finding a very popular video in your niche, and then you re-create that video into a better and more comprehensive one. Don’t just rip off the video that you’ve watched.
Add the keywords of the popular video into your video title, description, and tags. This way, there’s a bigger probability for your video to appear next to the popular video.
Re-optimize Your Older Videos
Although there’s nothing much you can do to change or edit an existing video, you can still change the description, title, tags, cards, thumbnail, and end screen of it. Of course, this isn’t a way to make your video viral, but it is a good way for your preceding videos to earn even just a few views a month.
Subscribe to Call-to-Action
Having more viewers is an effective way to get more views on your YouTube channel. Even YouTube itself suggests such an approach.
At the beginning or end of your video, you need to ask people to subscribe to your channel directly. More than likes and comments— you should attract more subscribers.
Personalize Your Branding
If someone browses through your channel and sees that it looks ugly, they might feel like your videos are not worth watching too. On the other hand, if they feel a strong branding presence and professionality upon looking at your channel, they might have the urge to watch your videos and even subscribe to your YouTube channel.
Make sure that your channel cover art, your thumbnail, animation, graphics, and videos have the same feel. You need to be consistent in terms of color, design, writing style, and layout.
Customizing your channel and personalizing your branding is essential for you to leave an impact on audiences.
Unfold Undiscovered Keywords
First, you go to the traffic source, then to the YouTube section to see your Google Analytics. After that, you will get a breakdown of keywords where you’ve ranked for in a YouTube search.
Choose a good ranking keyword and add it to your older YouTube videos or create an entirely new video for the keyword.
Create a Short Preview
To excite your audience or target audience to your upcoming post, it is essential to create a short preview post and share it within a community about 2-3 days before posting.
A preview builds up anticipation that could probably help you gain more views.
Promote New Videos as Trailer
If there’s any video you set your heart to promote, consider putting it on your channel trailer. So, when someone pays a visit to your channel, they would immediately see that video you want them to see— your new published video.
Real audience engagement isn’t the tail end of content creation. Currently, the most successful video bloggers on YouTube are those who persistently monitor and interact with their fans and competitors.
You could try publishing response videos to comments and messages and identify your top fans to show them love. They will probably appreciate and love you more for it.
Subscribing to other YouTube channels that target similar audiences as you do is good too. Support your competitor’s channel, and you can leave thoughtful comments that will catch your audiences’ attention to view your channel as well.
