How to Promote Youtube Videos for More Subscribers & Likes?

Since its inception, Youtube has always been a sensation. By realizing the number of people who got success out of it, we cannot deny the fact that it is a great platform to promote any business. There are many people coming up with a dream to be in front of the masses by any means and there is nothing else better if people are able to see you. It’s pretty simple to create an account on Youtube and upload your videos. A lot of people can be seen grabbing this opportunity. These might consist of the people with some kind of passion like cooking, makeup, racing, etc., the people who are struggling actors or businesses who want to promote their products/services. If you are one of them, you must be having a Youtube channel but just having a channel is not enough. You need to market and promote it enough to gain popularity and make money out of it.

Youtube is one of the most visited websites after Google. It has around 1.9 billion users monthly. You can now judge the potential of the platform and the competition out there. Rather than reading about the services or products, people prefer to watch videos which bring people down the conversion funnel quickly.

There are a number of ways to promote your videos on Youtube. The most important ones are as below. 

Quick Overview: 

1. Perform SEO for your Youtube channel

       a. Keyword research

       b.  Title tag

       c. Description tag

       d. Create a video script

       e. Video Tags

       f. Keep video length right

      g. Video annotations (clickable)

      h. Brand your thumbnail

2. Share and advertise on social media channels

3. Work on creating a playlist

4. Be a consistent uploader

5. Utilize the power of email marketing

6. Embed Call to Action

7. Start a blog for your Youtube channel

8. Create a list of influencers and approach them

9. Interact with the audience

How to perform SEO for your Youtube Channel?

Just like Google, Youtube has a ranking algorithm through which it decides which videos are to be shown up for a particular search. Knowing SEO matters a lot if you are a Youtube channel manager. It’s not just about creating creative and unique videos, you need to work towards showing them up because more than 80% of the people visit the first video on the list. 

There is no set rule to achieve top ranks over Youtube. You need to perform a range of tests and experiments to understand the pattern.

Start with keyword research

There are many paid tools available on the internet from where you can take out the list of keywords while if you want to go free, that's also possible. 

• When you go to youtube.com and perform a search, you also see some recommendations by Youtube. These can make a good list of keywords for you because these suggestions are taken out of what people search generally. So, they definitely do have a good search volume on Youtube. You need to type your keyword on Youtube search and note down the suggestions.
• Next, you can use the Google keywords planner. With your keyword, add “Video” and see the results.
• The similar thing you can do with Google recommendation. Go to Google search and type your keyword with the word “Video”.
• You can also use other keyword research tools like Moz and Ahref.

Now, when you have a list of keywords with you, try performing a search on Google with those keywords and if you see videos as Google results then they are perfect. 

Use keywords in your video script

The Youtube algorithm understands you by the words you speak. You need to create a very relevant and authentic script which is also keyword rich. Use keywords in your speech in the right amount. Do not do keyword stuffing. 

Optimize your video title

It just like Google. You need to use keywords in your title within first fewer words. The title has to be under 60 characters in length for best results. If you think that your topic is timeless then, you can just use keywords and create an engaging and user-friendly title. If you think that there is a time restriction like if you are writing for some kind of technology or trends. They might change in the future so consider using Year with the title.

For example, “Website Designing Trends in 2019 with important statistics”

Keep the description engaging

Talking about description, use this space to make people excited about your video. Do not try to use words like “Buy” and “Purchase” here as it is considered spammy. It should be under 150 characters and use the last 25-30 characters to invite people on your website or may be a link to share your video on social media. Youtube has given you a very less number of words to make people feel reliable about your brand and can continue watching your video. As you with the title, use keywords in the first few words so as to let Youtube crawlers identify the motive of your video. 

Use tags

Use relevant tags with your videos by using primary and LSI keywords. If you use misleading tags then you might get disappeared from the search results of both Youtube and Google.

Make sure the video is not much long

Minimatters found in an experiment that among the top ten most popular videos on youtube, the shortest was of 42 seconds and longest was 9 minutes and 15 seconds long so that average length of popular videos is 4 minutes and 20 seconds.  It means that you do not have to try doing too much in one video. If you video is too long then people might lose interest in watching it and if you break that video in some parts then people might remain excited about what’s next. 

Clickable video annotations

You can add some video annotations in the first few minutes of the video if you think that your video is too long to capture the interest of the viewers. These are basically clickable call-to-actions. 

Brand your thumbnail

Do not let any random picture shown up as the video thumbnail. It is the first thing that people see when they are about to come on your video. As they say, the first impression is everything. You have only 2 seconds to capture the interest of the people so that they can click on your video and watch it. You can consider branding your video by including some catchy text like two or three words of what your video is all about or maybe if you are popular then you can include your channel name. 

So, it was all about how you can do a good SEO for your youtube channel. It is a little complex task than Google but last few years have seen an exponential increase in the competition over YouTube. Not only individuals, but more and more companies are also coming up with their youtube channel for the branding of their products and services. 

How to share and advertise your videos on social media?

Facebook is the most visited social networking website and over 80% of the people have active accounts on Facebook. Does not matter where are you creating the content, if you do not share it on Facebook then you are losing around 2 billion of people from watching you or your products/services. 

All the legitimate videos that you create, you need to share them on social media to multiply the number of viewers. Remember that the first three seconds of any video deliver 47%  of the value. You need to impress the viewers in these 3 seconds so that they do not scroll down. 

You need to know your cost per acquisition. It can be calculated by the total cost of clicks divided by the number of subscribers. It also helps Youtube and Google to decide whether you are good or not to be placed on top results. 

Whenever you put any Ad over Facebook, it asks you the motive of that Ad. Whether it is to boost your post, send people to the website, Get app installs, Increase engagement or what. You need to be really true at this time and be focussed because your ads are going to circulate the same way. 

Since you are paying for every click, you need to be really selective about your target audience. It is worth reaching 500 target users than 1 million random users. Also, use the Geotargeting feature which lets you target specific cities or countries. Your ads would be shown as per your choice. If you are a service based company then might be your target is local people. If it is not your intention to sell out products or services through ads then also you might have some target country in your mind. Might be, the people whom you want to show your skills or creativity. 

Not only Facebook, but you can also go to Linkedin, Pinterest, Twitter, and other social media platforms to see their potential and if you get good results then don't underestimate their power. 

Work on creating a playlist

Once you are done with uploading a few videos, you can create a playlist so that people can see all your videos at once place effortlessly. You need to organize your content in an intuitive and strategic manner. You can make a combination of the videos that have gotten good views and the videos which have not performed well. It will help you increase the view of your less performing videos. Since the playlist always contains relevant things, people tend to spend more time watching them. For example, if you can English tutor then you can create a playlist out of the videos in which you are teaching tenses, parts of speech, modals and more. Once the user visits tenses, he will definitely move towards the other videos, provided your videos are engaging. 

You can also segregate your videos among various playlists according to relevance and by this means, you can also see which of your playlists are performing the best. Based on that, you will come to know what face of your people loves to see. 

Be a consistent uploader

If you think that you have reached a good number of subscribers then do not step back. You need to be consistent in creating and uploading the videos so as to maintain the interest of people. It would be good for long term credibility. 

Utilize the power of email marketing 

Email marketing is all about reaching to the relevant users and telling about your work. People say that it is the technique of bygone times but it is still existing when done the right way. You do not have to just pick the list of subscribers and send a similar email to everyone. You have to segregate the list and segment users based upon their watch history, engagement, response time and more.

Personalization is the need of today. If the users see personalized emails, they might find you reliable and a brand who is focussing on personal requirements. By personalization, we do not mean that you just change the names of people over the email. You also have to work upon their pain points. Do not force them to watch you but slowly bring them down the conversion funnel step-by-step so that they can retain for long. 

Embed call to action

There can be a number of CTAs you can use on your Youtube channel to boost your videos. If you think that the users are bouncing back from your videos in the first few seconds then you consider keeping the call to action within 10 seconds so that they can at least serve your motive. If people are spending a great time watching their your videos then consider keeping the call to action at the end of the videos and show them related videos. Subscribe to channel CTA is most important for you as with that, you will be able to send notifications to the users about your new videos and any other information about your channel. There are many more other ways as well such as lead generation CTA, follow on social media CTA, Direct to website CTA and more. 

Start a blog for your YouTube channel

Videos and blogs go hand in hand. If you are running a Youtube channel for your business then you need to have a blog through which you can tell people more about the service you work upon. Many of the content marketing platforms facilitate you to embed your video. Google loves videos but sometimes it difficult for it to understand the content in a deep level so the blog comes for the rescue. Put the videos in categories as you do with your normal textual blogs. Let things work together to bring visibility to your work. 

Approach the influencers in your niche

Approach the people in your niche who are really popular and people like to watch them. An influencer can be someone whom your target audience likes, follows, admires and trusts. If you target a local audience then the influencers can be a local celebrity, local designer, local athlete, etc. You can drive a lot of views on such videos by sharing it as much as you can. The influencer that you have approached might also share your video on his account and this way you can also grab a lot of views from his followers as well. It is a great way to promote your videos like this because if the people already know someone who is there in the video then it increases the chances of having great engagement. 

It's not an easy task to get an influencer even talk to you. They get hundreds of interview request in a day. You have to offer them something unique in order to come with you and talk to you in front of the masses. May be, you can pitch them with the type of audience you have, maybe, you can give them a platform where they can speak about a pet project. Or maybe, a free service or product of your company that can be of any use to them. Continue to work on networking among such groups so that you can have many options in front of you. 

Interact with the audience

Last but not least in any way! You have to interact with your viewers because there is God to you in a way. They are bringing value to your channel and increase your numbers. Respond to their comments and reviews and ask them what they would like to watch next. Accept their reviews, be it positive or negative. Host Twitter chats, facebook fan page and more so that people can also know you personally and remain connected for a long time.