How to promote your YouTube channel

November 11, 2021
Contents

There was a time when being a content creator was scoffed upon, but now YouTubers earn more than any regular job Joe's. This goes on to say that social media has not only changed the way we consume content, it has also changed perception. Creating a YouTube channel is easy. But the tough part is getting people to notice you. As of 2020, there were around 37 million YouTube channels. Now, it must be so much more. Competing in a flooded market can be hard. You need to be ahead of the curve. People are uploading 500 hours worth of video content every minute! How do you compete with that? It is simple, you promote your YouTube channel.

The need for YouTube marketing is rising by every minute. Thousands of videos to up on YouTube every hour, it is the second most popular social media platform. Viewers spend around 6 hours watching videos in a day. YouTube has a lot of potential and power to bring more audience to you. If you promote correctly, you can be the next PewDiePie or Ryan Kaji.

To make sure your channel grows you have to create amazing videos. On top of that, you also need to promote and optimize it.

Promote your YouTube Videos

YouTube videos are important not just for YouTube creators but also for other brands. It is the best way to reach people. Nowadays almost everyone wants to learn new things, and YouTube is a gold mine of information. Want to know how gaming hacks? YouTube is there for you. Want to learn new hairstyles? YouTube is here. Want to know more about mysterious cities like Atlantis? YouTube even has answers for that. If you want your channel to grow then focus on the building blocks - your video. Below we have mentioned how you can optimize and promote the videos.

Title, captions, and descriptions

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What is the first thing a user sees when they search for a video? The title and the thumbnail. In this section, we are going to talk about how titles, descriptions, and captions promote your videos.

Video Title

  • Try to craft attention-grabbing killer headlines/ video title that makes customers wanna watch your videos. Take for example the BuzzFeed's Unsolved Supernatural series. The videos in these series receive millions of views because of their catchy Titles. Anyone is going to be curious about The Haunted Skate House Or The Horrors of Pennhurst asylum.
  • Try to come up with interesting video titles,  make listicles, question-based titles, or hyperbole to rack up the views. These kinds of titles drive curious viewers to your channel. They may even do a marathon.
  • However, refrain from using clickbait techniques. You can attract the viewer to the video, but if there is no information worth viewing them the user may feel cheated and never come back to the channel.
  • Pay attention to the length of the titles as well. It should be somewhere between 40-70 characters. Though YouTube has a limit of 100 characters, it is advised that you keep the title within 70. It avoids the title from getting truncated in the search results.

Video description and tags

Other than creating exciting video titles, you also need to pay attention to video tags and video descriptions.  Just like any other didn't if the content, video content is also privy to SEO. Keywords are as important in a video as they are important in this blog post. YouTube's SEO shows viewers the ads and videos that they are most likely interested in based on their history. So, the important question you need to ask yourself is "Why". Why should people click on your videos? Would you watch your video?

  • You should use your intended keywords in the title as well as the description.
  • YouTube can also recognize when you mention your keyword in the video. It means better rankings. So mention the target keyword in the video.
  • Mention the keyword, title, video descriptions and use relevant tags so that your video is found by targeted users.
  • Descriptions can do so much more. The more detailed they are the better your rankings. So make it deep, informative, and descriptive. You can also add links to your website, blog posts, social media handles, or other related videos.

You can also use the category option, to streamline the audience whom you want to watch your video. On YouTube you can use many tags, so use as many as you can think of. It will do your channel good. Optimizing your video content is just like optimizing your website. Do not stuff keywords unnaturally.

Thumbnails

When you upload a video to YouTube it automatically chooses a screenshot of the video and sets it as a thumbnail. It may be a blurry shot or a transition and it doesn't look good. An attractive title and a great thumbnail pack in two punch. So, the best thing to do is to customize your thumbnails.

You can do it using any tool. We have Free YouTube Thumbnail maker. You can create that perfect YouTube Thumbnail that will instantly attract viewers. It lets you customize from the different templates available and add graphics and texts easily. OFFEO YouTube Thumbnail Maker allows you to design high-quality YouTube Thumbnails effortlessly.

Template example from Offeo

Creating thumbnails may seem like a waste of time but they are not. You can use a certain template, font, and style to customize your channel's brand style. Using a particular font and style can make it more consistent and on-brand. Your channel will certainly look more professional.

After you have optimized your videos, the next step is to connect and engage with the target audience.

Customer Relationship and Engagement

A YouTube channel for gaming is no place for a non-gamer, a channel for beauty isn't a place for someone who isn't interested in it. Knowing your audience and creating engagement is of prime importance if you want to promote your videos and channel. There are a few things you need to keep in mind to win more audience.

Know what your audience wants

Knowing what the audience wants will help you formulate an effective YouTube marketing strategy. Even while writing blog posts, we have to learn the audience and their needs. There are ways to know what your targeted users may want.

  • Get to know your followers, use social media platforms like Instagram to ask users what kind of videos they want. Create polls and know about their preferences.
  • Do competitors study. Visit the accounts of leading YouTube creators in your niche and find out what the viewers love. You can take inspiration from top-viewed videos on their channels.
  • Use YouTube Analytics to understand your progress. It gives you detailed information on audience demographics, location, user engagement, and other helpful stats.

Find out what the viewers want and serve them the content they need. Studying the needs of the audience can help you create videos that resonate.

Engagement

YouTube was created in 2095 as a primary video-sharing platform. After 15 years it remains the best video-sharing platform. However, many users do not consider it a social media platform. The truth is the interaction in YouTube seems to be relatively less than other social networks. One of the best ways to promote your YouTube videos is to interact and engage with viewers.

  • Ask the viewers to like, share and subscribe to your channel.
  • Reply to comments if you can. Sometimes it can be impossible to reply to all.
  • Pin the comments you like so the viewers know you are noticing them.
  • Artzie Musik responds to comments on recent uploads. It is a great way to let subscribers know that you care for them.

Tip: Going live or hosting Premier is one of the best promotion strategies on YouTube right now. Fitness motivator GrowWithJo religiously goes live every week, and it has helped her channel grow immensely.

Optimizing videos and getting to know your audience are stepping stones to promoting your channel. If you want to fully invest yourself in the channel you must complete your profile.

Channel

Complete your Channel profile

Do you think users would spend time on half-baked websites? If your hero section is lousy, the visitors will bounce back from your site. Similarly, if your YouTube channel is not up to date viewers won't stay long.

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It all starts with one video. A viewer will find one video of yours. They will like it. They will visit your Profile. They will see your content, profile, and playlists and decide whether to subscribe or not. An incomplete profile may out off many to be subscribers. So make sure you add profile pictures and banners to your description, your channel should be cohesive with your brand.  Subscribers must know what to expect from your channel.

When filling up the profile make sure the banner image is engaging and the description informs the audience what the channel is about.

Channel Publishing Schedule

One of the most important rules of content marketing is consistency. No matter how much content you have, the key is to post regularly. For doing that on YouTube, you need to have a carefully planned publishing schedule. How do you create a schedule? Before creating a schedule you need to keep a few things in mind

  • Decide how often you want to post on your channel. While on other social media platforms like Tiktok and Instagram, you can create content thing minutes, with Youtube you need more time.
  • Keep in mind the planning, production time, and editing when figuring out your publishing schedule.
  • Learn what your subscribers need, are ready for content you are preparing, and publish it.

It is you who decides whether you are going to publish biweekly or weekly. YouTube videos need more preparation. You need time to create high-quality videos. So, while thinking of a schedule, consider your ability and the demand.

Tip: You can try and create bulk content for Youtube in one go. That way you can have video content in your hand, and decide the publishing schedule. It means you can do the heavy lifting of planning and creating videos ahead of time and schedule them out with YouTube’s Schedule feature. The Schedule feature not only lets you publish your YouTube videos ahead of time but also schedules them to publish when your audience is most likely to be online.

Increase watch time

To promote your YouTube channel you need to make sure you rank higher in the search engine. To do that, you not only need to have catchy titles, great thumbnails, and killer descriptions you also need to increase your viewer's watch time. Watch time is the amount of time a viewer spends on your videos. So, having a user watch one of your videos isn't good enough, you need to lead them to more of your videos. How can you do it?

  • Watch time is a primary Youtube metric used to analyze the amount of time content viewers spend on videos, to gauge their taste, and show them similar videos.
  • You can create playlists of related videos to make it easier for viewers to find similar videos, and keep them watching longer. You can hook viewers to your channel by creating carefully crafted, relevant playlists.
  • Another way of optimizing watch time for your videos is to create end screens and cards.
  • End screens are thumbnails of related videos typically placed within the last five to 20 seconds of a video, while Cards let you promote other videos or links during your video as an overlay.

End screens and cards will direct viewers to your other videos or lead them to subscribe to your channel. Video features use these tools to earn more audience.

How can you promote your channel outside Youtube?

Using tags, detailed descriptions and attractive thumbnails is the basic way to optimize your videos for promotion. But if you want to increase subscriber count or views, you need to do something more. Promoting your channel on YouTube is not enough, sometimes you have to urge the target audience to watch your videos. Here is how you can do that

Embed video on your website

The truth is embedding is one of the most effective ways to gain views on your videos. Adding videos to your landing page, or product page can lead to more viewers. Video content is also known to reduce bounce back rates and improve conversion rates on websites. Embedding video to a post or page can increase the watch time.

https://youtu.be/1akZ6wIHIZc

We have embedded a video from our channel into the post, it's a way to guide the readers into watching the video. And if they are interested, they can visit the channel. Video promotion doesn't need to be only on YouTube. You can use your website to attract more viewers and vice versa.  

Cross-promotion

Cross-promotion is the smartest way for video creators to reel in audiences from different places. If you know your target audience is the most active on Instagram, you can share snippets of the video, or share the link in stories for them to watch it.

The rule of cross-promotion is to use platforms that are already popular among the audience.  Why try and test new methods, when you have a sure-shot way of getting your audience to watch your videos from their favorite platforms? To promote your YouTube channel, you need cross-promotion.

In YouTube Analytics, you can know which channels are already working best for your content with the Referring Traffic metric. In the YouTube Analytics dashboard, the Referring Traffic metric shows where most of the audience is coming from. With the help of this metric, you can learn whether the traffic is coming from YouTube ads, embedded video, or any external app or website.

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Partnerships with other creators

Marketing has never been easier. Thanks to social media, every creator has the means to share their experiences, every brand has a way to advertise. Collaborations go a long way in Youtube. If you want to expand your channel's reach then you need to collaborate.

  • Collaborations with other people, creators can help you reach a wider audience, you can connect with the existing subscriber base of the person your partner up with.
  • The content you share will be different from what you normally share. It would be refreshing and users would love it.
  • The key to a successful YouTube collaboration is finding the right partner.

When you partner up with someone to promote your YouTube channel, make sure the person or brand has the same passion, goals, and ethics as you. Before Lilly Singh became a talk show host she used to be a video creator, she still is. Back then she collaborated with Priyanka Chopra, and that video was a win-win for both of them. Chopra gained more fans and Lilly gained more subscribers. Collaborations are the holy grail of Youtube marketing.

Run a contest or a big giveaway

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Who doesn't love free stuff? If you want to win more audience then giveaways are the best way to lure more viewers in. To promote your YouTube channel you need to organize giveaways now and then.

  • A giveaway should be like a reward for viewers who have stuck around until the end of the premier or video.
  • Organize contests to give away stuff if you don't want the giveaway to be easy. Ask the viewers to tag their friends in the comments or something like " best comment wins the giveaway".

The point of the giveaway is to earn more subscribers, views and ramp up the channel growth. A monthly or quarterly giveaway can be attractive for users.

More tips to promote your YouTube channel

SEO: Target Google search results

YouTube is killing it in SEO. People use Google to search for questions, and that's where YouTube comes in. Even though the written form like blog posts and articles shows up, videos also show up on the main page of the search engine. So you need to target Google search results. Video content like product reviews, how-to’s, and long-form (10+ minutes) videos covering keyword-specific topics tend to rank well in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Create playlists of your content

The more you publish content the messier your channel can become. If you upload daily ten your channel may be overflowing with videos. Like your closet, you need to organize it. Playlists group your videos into categories to organize your channel, but also appeal to your viewers’ desire to binge. BuzzFeed's channel has tons of videos but all of them are on playlists and can share anyone's desire to binge. Moreover, it is easier for users to search for relevant videos that way.

Add CTAs

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A call to action is necessary for every YouTube video. It leads the viewer to the next step, resulting in conversion. You can add windscreens, cards, and badges at the end of the video to lead the audience to what's next. Adding CTA can result in increased conversion. It is a great way to promote your videos.

There are some other tips you can follow, try live streaming for your audiences. It is nice to connect with them virtually. Hosting premiers and rewarding the audiences with giveaways after it is a classic YouTube creator move that's gonna land, you many loyal subscribers. If your videos are still not getting the attention they deserve try the YouTube ad campaign. Paid and campaigns on YouTube can give you the ROI you want if you create effective eye-catching ads. Offeo Ad maker can create exciting ads that can win your audience. Create short, impactful, and compelling ads with just a flick of your wrists. What are you waiting for?

Conclusion

How to promote your YouTube channel? After this long post, the mantra remains simple - catchy titles, attractive thumbnails, detailed descriptions, YouTube SEO, cross-sharing, and consistency. If this formula doesn't work for you, keep trying and testing until you find what works for you. The key to having a successful YouTube channel is serving high-quality content to viewers consistently.

Written By
Ankita

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