When a video has been posted to YouTube, and it doesn’t get any views, is the video even really there? That’s the burning question video marketers often have. Here’s a sobering fact: 300 hours of video is uploaded to the popular social media video site every minute.
How can someone get their message out when they need to compete with numbers like that?
If you haven’t heard this before or if you had, it needs to be reiterated – 2017 is video’s year. More businesses are putting their attention on web content, and in order to do that, owners must find a way to set themselves apart from the competition.
A business must have the finesse to promote their YouTube channel – a channel that’s getting recognition for their content instead of one that is just taking up space. Do you need a little assistance promoting your YouTube channel – to ensure that you get the views you always dreamed was possible?
11 Tips To Improve Your Business’ YouTube Channel To Get Views
Come Up With Eye-Catching Titles
Ask yourself what catches your eye when you determine what to watch on YouTube. Most times what catches your eye first is going to be its title. Make sure that you lay out exactly what that video is about in your title. Make sure the title is short and concise while also including keywords and descriptive.
A long video title will be cut-off or has no proper description of it. These kinds of titles are often bypassed.
If you want to increase the chance of being found, make sure you have pertinent keywords that closely relate to the material. Your video title should resonate with your viewers much like the headline of a news story resonate with readers. If you want your audience to listen to what you have to say, your title must “speak” to them.
Design A Clear Thumbnail
Besides a respectful video title, its thumbnail is another important part of promoting the YouTube channel. You may have the best title out there, but if you have a thumbnail image that’s not clear or looks odd, the target audience isn’t going to want to share or click on the video. If your video is of an animal doing something strange, you want the thumbnail that represents the video. Don’t choose a blurry picture for the channel.
How can you design a thumbnail that catches your viewers’ eyes?
- · Make it large since the image is often used as a preview image in site’s embedded player.
- · Ensure the resolution is 1280x720 with a minimum of 640 pixels.
- · Upload the thumbnail in image formats – .PNG, .GIF, .BMP or .JPG.
- · Keep in under the 2-megabyte limit
- · Use the 16:9 aspect ratio since this is generally seen in YouTube previews and players.
If you’re going to promote the YouTube channel, you want material that makes sense. And, your thumbnail will be an integral part of it all.
Optimize The Channel
Here is great example of YouTube channel branding by Gary Vaynerchuk
Be sure to come up with a clear, concise profile and offer an in-depth description about the channel. You want the profile to fit the brand and coincides with the other social media channels you use. Make sure they’re similar in:
- · Backgrounds
- · Colors
- · Custom layouts and banners
- · Logos
- · Social media icons
According to Kissmetrics, if you brand a channel, it offers a more consistent experience for your YouTube viewers and subscribers. You want the channel to resonate with the brand you’ve worked tirelessly on – to help with all the efforts you are making to promote the video channel.
Optimize Your Channel/Video For SEO
In order for your videos and channel to be found, you need to optimize it for search engine optimization. You may not know this, but YouTube is the second biggest Internet search engine. Therefore, SEO will ensure your videos are found when people search for related material.
YouTube’s algorithm will consider the following factors when they classify videos in the search results.
- · Title tag information
- · Tags
- · Description tag keywords
- · Audience retention
- · Video length
- · Likes/dislikes
- · Comments
- · Subscriber numbers after video’s are done
What is it that you want folks to find on their search to find your brand? Come up with that, then work in reverse to promote the channel.
Here are some other tips to keep in mind when doing SEO for your videos:
- · Create a long, but relevant video description – the more information YouTube has about the video, the better it’ll rank for the target keyword.
- · Use SEO for video keywords.
- · Attain views from outside YouTube social media communities – LinkedIn, Instagram, Quora, etc.
- · Encourage people to link and subscribe.
- · Develop playlists that are keyword-rich – a playlist rich with keywords provides YouTube with in-depth information about the topic. Plus, more text often equates to more views.
You can use one of these 2 tools to improve your Youtube SEO amongst others:
- Tubebuddy which is a great YouTube channel management toolkit
- VidIq which has a great free Chrome extension to help you improve your YouTube SEO rankings
Engage With The YouTube Community
Yes, search engine optimization (SEO) is going to ensure your YouTube channel becomes visible, but real engagement with your viewers is just as powerful. YouTube is like any social media network – it’s got a community. And, each topic has a sub-community within it. Therefore, your service/product will find a location for it to go in.
Make sure you find people who think like you and are active the YouTube community, subscribing to their channels. Be sure you watch videos that you really want to watch and offer feedback on it. Offer worthwhile insights in the comments section. Share videos that you think your community will enjoy.
When you help other YouTube users promote their content, it creates the feeling that you are an active member of the community. By doing this, it lets other members know about your channel. Or, as the old saying goes, “You attract more flies with honey than you do with vinegar”.
Hold Contests To Promote Your YouTube Channel
If you want to reach out to your subscriber base and viewers, consider holding a contest. Do you love free stuff? Well, of course, you do! And, so does everybody else. Who hasn’t shared a YouTube video for a contest in the hopes to win something?
Produce a call-to-action video that announces the contest, uploading it with a general description and the rules. Encourage folks to share it while also producing their own entries. What are some ideas for a YouTube contest?
- · Ask viewers to leave one comment to gain an entry
- · Ask your non-subscribers to subscribe to the channel for an entry
- · Run video contests where users must upload a video of themselves talking about or using the product/service
- · Let users submit a video of their own that other users will need to vote on
A contest is one way to get your audience talking and promoting your channels – it works for not just your subscribers but also the non-subscribers (who will eventually become your subscribers).
Work In Conjunction With Other YouTubers
A way to boost the reach you have on YouTube is to work alongside other YouTube users. You gain exposure via their channels, and you introduce your audience to new folks. Many times the people you’re working with is related to your industry, which means introducing your community to them adds value to their experience.
YouTube collaborations provide you with immediate exposure to a wider audience. It doesn’t matter if it’s a guest appearance, a shout-out, creating a video with each other, both you and your co-collaborator can benefit from the exposure you get. Some potential collaboration ideas include:
- · Mentioning one another
- · Guest appearance
- · Guest vlogs
- · Create collaborative video
By working alongside other users, you learn more about the process while also promoting your channel to build the community – to ensure it grows.
Engage With The Audience
It may seem obvious that you need to engage with and interact with your audience. However, it’s important to mention it because many fail to do it. If you want to promote your channel, you need to engage and interact with the audience. If subscribers have questions or any concerns, be you reply quickly and as thoroughly as you can. Don’t leave your commenters hanging in the wind unless you see that it’s obvious they’re up to no good.
You can also interact with the audience by doing a Q&A video. With a call-to-action video or through any social media channel, you can ask your customers/audience what they’re most concerned about it. Once you have their questions, answer them through a YouTube video. This provides you with new material and also helps the audience to feel invested in your business and channel.
Of course, it’s a way to let them know that you do care about their opinions because you’ve addressed them. If your audience is happy, they’ll be more willing to share the channel and videos to their friends, family and with other people.
Develop A YouTube Playlist
Another way for users to find your videos and share them is to have playlists. Playlists help viewers to watch more than one video at a time. The playlist ensures that once a video is over another is started. When a video isn’t in a playlist, they have to click to choose another video to watch.
Come up with a custom video list that is relevant to your brand and industry. You want the audience to share the playlist, not just one or two videos. What are some other advantages to having a YouTube playlist?
Here is an example of a playlist by Convertkit
It increases search rankings – playlists inspire users to spend their time watching the videos.
You have more chances to rank – playlists appear on YouTube and Google’s search engine results as well as suggested video sections.
Boost views for videos that are generally overlooked – mixture of both popular and non-popular videos.
Increase opportunities for keyword targeting – Playlists show up as separate entities, which supports ranking for keywords that were not used for individual videos.
When you have problems trying to promote the channel, make use of the curation skills to develop a playlist. With a playlist, you can see your views and engagement rates rise.
Use Calls-To-Action To Engage Your Viewers
Okay, so you’ve produced amazing content. That’s great! You’re not done yet, though. How can you produce content and get anywhere if you don’t ask your views to do something for you? Make sure to have a call-to-action added to your YouTube channel and video. It can be something simple like asking them questions or asking them to share your videos. There is an array of calls-to-action that can be used, and can work to promote your videos such as:
- · Contest/Giveaways
- · Free trial (works if you have subscription-based business)
- · Ask questions (gets viewers to engage with your company)
- · Vote now (produces some sense of ownership among the viewers)
- · Watch more videos
- · Complete a form
- · Sign up for webinars (if your business offers something like this)
The idea is to clearly provide viewers with what they need to be doing next to continue their interaction with you.
Promote The Channel Using Other Means and Networks
You don’t want your YouTube channel to be a vacuum. Therefore, place a link to the YouTube channel in the other social media networks, email signature, website, blog, etc. Be sure to share the videos and other important content posted on the YouTube channel via your social media accounts to establish and extend the community.
Make Use Of The InVideo Programming feature
The InVideo hasn't been used a lot, but it's a great way to include different engagement moments within your videos and help viewers find their way to other parts of your YouTube channel. It will allow you to do two things:
- Include a featured video. This is a great way if you want to promote a particular YouTube video. It will show a small thumbnail of the video pop-up so that viewers can click on the video quickly and easily . It will keep them longer on your channel or they will make a mental note and come back to it later.
- Embed a watermark. This can be done by uploading your logo or any other image across all the YouTube videos in your channel. The great part about this is that it allows viewers to directly subscribe to your channel if they hover over the watermark. Finding InVideo programming is a little difficult at first. It was called InVideo programming on YouTube, but now you find this feature by clicking on My Channel and navigating to either Branding (the watermark), or Featured Content (the featured video). You can click this link if you’re already signed into YouTube. Below is a screenshot of what the Featured Content page looks like:
As you can see, you have full control over how long and when your video (or watermark if you clicked Branding) will be displayed. You can create a custom message to go with your video. Simply update and you’re good to go.
Final Note: What Advice Does YouTube Offer For Cross-Promotion
Make announcements about your channel and videos on other social networking sites, as well as in forums and newsletters, and on television and radio. You want the YouTube channel to be linked in as many places as it can be.
Make use of YouTube’s APIs to produce badges for the website – these will show visitors the YouTube presence and give a link to the channel.
Permit embedding so other people can distribute material for you. Provide them with an embed URL that comes with every video that lets you embed videos in your website. Offer links to blogs that may want to show-off your material.
If you offer product review videos, be sure to provide as much information as you can for video tags – brand, model number, ISBN, EAN, UPC, and MPN.
YouTube is one of the most popular social media networks available, and it can be a powerful ally for your business’ marketing campaign. Use the above tactics to successfully promote your YouTube channel to garner success and increase the community you have on all social media accounts. Their are many online marketing tools available that can help you with your Youtube promotion efforts.
Do you have a YouTube channel and what have you done to promote it? Do you have any great ideas, please let us know in the comments below.
