As the reach and impact of video content continue to grow around the world, becoming a YouTube influencer or content creator is becoming an increasingly lucrative and exciting career option. The boom of video marketing has given rise to a whole new generation of marketers who are constantly thinking about video. Knowing how to promote your YouTube channel is the key to your success.
While it is important to create engaging content, none of it matters unless it reaches the right audience for the necessary subscribers, views, and engagement.
As YouTube is the second-most visited site in the world, optimizing your YouTube promotions has an incremental effect on your other marketing efforts. Improving your visibility on YouTube improves your presence across social media platforms where you are present. This increased traffic could rub off on your website visits, which is invaluable as a content creator.
To succeed on YouTube it is important to be aware of as many promotional tactics as possible. We’ve broken these down for you in this blog.
Understanding Your Audience
When it comes to the Internet, the audience is the judge, jury, and executioner. The biggest stumbling block as a content creator, straight off the bat, is to be unaware of what the target audience is looking for. The content needs to resonate with the audience, prompting them to engage with it in return.
Checking out the YouTube Analytics page is important to understand what content is working the most effectively and where the audience seems to drop off. It also includes key factors such as geographies, demographics, engagement, and other stats. Creators can also go for a more direct approach and ask the audience what their likes and dislikes are through comments or polls. A quick competitor analysis also goes a long way in understanding the content that works best within a certain niche.
Read more about increasing your subscribers, in our blog, How To Get Organic Subscribers On Your YouTube Channel.
Craft An Engaging Copy
The only way audiences will view a video is if they are tempted to click on it. In terms of words that communicate the video’s content, the title is the first thing audiences read. It is imperative to give them a video title that is intriguing and captivating enough so that they have no option but to give in to their curiosity and view the video.
The more clicks your videos get, the larger the audiences they reach. While communicating the title and description, brevity is important as concise content is easier to process.
Using numbers, like a ranking system, is another strategy that is known to work. High impact words that build up the excitement around the video helps form an emotional connect with the viewer. Mastering the ability to write concise yet descriptive titles and captions is hard, but worth the effort.
SEO For Better Search Results
It’s pretty straightforward to understand why effective SEO is necessary for better reach and engagement on YouTube. Content creators are putting out videos. Audiences are looking for videos. The missing piece of the puzzle is ensuring your videos appear when audiences search for something. This is where SEO comes in to boost a channel’s visibility.
One key factor to note is that good YouTube SEO boosts Google search results as well, as video suggestions often pop up at the top of Google searches (as seen below).
Figure 1: “How to catch birds” search on Google. Source: Google
Through effective keyword optimization and video tagging, creators can master the art of effective YouTube SEO. Creatively optimizing titles and descriptions with the right keywords while keeping the clutter to a minimum, along with appropriate categories and tags, is a great way to reach audiences faster.
Click-Worthy Thumbnails
Along with your video titles, thumbnails are the only other part of a video that audiences see before clicking on them. This makes the need for it to be captivating all the more important. Along with just what the content is about, thumbnails help audiences subconsciously understand the quality of the video – be it content-wise or production-wise.
Most of the top YouTube creators put a lot of effort into using photo apps to create impressive thumbnails, rather than just using a screenshot from the video.
Along with visual cues, the thumbnail could also include text and graphics. Adding milestones already achieved by the video helps increase its credibility among users. The thumbnail is the initial facade that the viewer sees, and it is important to make it as alluring as possible.
Audience Engagement
One way to build excitement with the audience is to run a contest. The chance to win something by viewing the video is incentive enough to boost engagement on YouTube. This helps loyal followers take pride in their choice and engage further with you. The rules and limitations of this engagement campaign are left to the creator to decide – it could be a comment, a like, or a share.
For influencers with a substantial presence, getting a brand to provide a giveaway is a strategy that works for all 3 parties involved – the creator, the audience, and the brand. These contests could also be milestone related.
Engaging directly with the audience helps the users forget that there is a barrier between them and the creator and helps build a rapport with new and existing users.
Leverage Other Social Media Platforms
This is a basic step to video promotion as it is difficult to ascertain which platforms certain users are more inclined to use. The perfect target audience member for your video might be someone who only prefers to use Instagram.
In this case, your channel might remain invisible to him forever without cross-platform promotions. There is empirical evidence to suggest that a vast majority of users consume the same amount of video content on YouTube and Facebook.
There’s more chance of videos sticking out amidst the clutter of non-video only social media platforms. Along with sharing video links across platforms, creators should look to make shorter, optimized previews for other platforms to build the hype around upcoming videos. This will drive audiences to click on the link provided, increasing overall views on your YouTube channel.
To get a deeper understanding of how YouTube works, read our blog, Ultimate Guide to Becoming a YouTube Content Creator.
Collaborations
Building relationships with other video creators and collaborating with them on videos is a great way for both creators to leverage off of each other’s presence and fan base. This could include directly mentioning them on videos, creating the video with them, or commenting on each other’s videos across social media platforms.
Through collaborative interviews, live streams and co-produced content, it is easy to build a like-minded connection among different schools of fans. The more authentic the collaboration seems, the more invested the audience is likely to be. If the collaboration could be made directly with a brand, it helps boost credibility and visibility through the brand’s following.
Creating Playlists
Once you’ve got an effective and regular YouTube channel up and running, it makes it harder for viewers to navigate through the clutter of your channel unless it’s organized. The benefits of creating playlists are two-fold: they help organize relevant videos into similar categories and give your audience the luxury of something to binge-watch. The broader the communication of the channel, the more playlists will be needed to help users seamlessly navigate your channel.
Era Of Live Streaming
As seen most recently during nationwide lockdowns, YouTube Live Streaming is a trend that isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon! Audiences love watching live streams as it helps them interact with their favorite content creators in real-time, for a more personalized experience. The benefit of this for the creator is that payment avenues like Superchats allow audiences to pay money in real-time in exchange for a shout-out or a query.
Moreover, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, and Periscope have made live streaming a legitimate content trend that is more easily accessible than ever before. The live nature of the video also helps as users are generally more forgiving towards production quality as compromise for the live experience.
Get everything you need to know about the earning potential for YouTube content creators in our blog here: Discover the Huge Earning Potential for YouTube Content Creators.
Paid Campaigns
With the ever-evolving YouTube algorithm, there is a glass ceiling on how much traction and revenue can be generated organically. The constantly evolving user behavior and trends compound the issue of increasing engagements, organically. The chances of exponential growth are limited without investing in effectively managed paid campaigns. This helps the video reach the right audience more effectively and easily.
The paid campaigns can be done directly through YouTube, Google, or other social media platforms. The upside of paid campaigns is the chance to get really specific with your audience targeting to make sure every dollar is spent effectively. By studying your own previous video analytics or through competitor analysis, you can target the specific audience you desire by location, demographic, characteristic traits, or online behavior.
From organic to paid, there are plenty of ways to boost your YouTube presence among the right audience online. These strategies work for branded content, as well as individual YouTube channels.
While building a YouTube following might feel like a grind in the currently overcrowded marketplace, there are a variety of promotional tactics that could have an exponential impact on your channel presence on the platform. While some strategies require more effort than others, it could be just what you need to grab the necessary eyeballs.
If you’ve got any influencer marketing-related questions, we are happy to help you. Our AI-based platform Atisfyre helps millions of influencers connect with leading brands across the world for paid collaborations to create trusted content and insights for customer journey touchpoints at scale. We help you understand & reach your audience, engage your community and measure performance with the all-in-one platform built for connection.
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