With 30 million visitors and five billion views of its videos every day, it isn’t surprising why YouTube is the second most visited website after Google in the world?
YouTube has also emerged as a powerful digital marketing tool to engage the audience, generate leads and even influence their purchasing decisions. However, YouTube videos need to be marketed smartly to get desirable results. Or else, your videos are likely to be lost in the sea of billions of videos available on YouTube.
Let us tell you some great tips to grow your YouTube video channel and get it noticed.
1. The Script is King – Invest your Time in it
The script dominates all other parameters of YouTube video promotion. If the script isn’t engaging and authentic enough, the audience is unlikely to return next time, no matter how much you promote it.
The elements of a killer script are:
- A simple, crisp and robust opening to tell the audience what they can expect from the video.
- The message should point out the benefits and solve problems.
- The script should be extraordinarily entertaining or informative, depending on its purpose.
2. Optimize Videos for SEO
YouTube has its own complex set of algorithms that determine the rank of videos in its list and recommendations. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can help you match these algorithms and optimize your videos in the YouTube search engine. It works similar to what Google SEO does!
Here are some best practices for YouTube SEO:
Keyword Research
Incorporating keywords in YouTube videos increases the probability of people finding your videos quickly. You can find keywords through YouTube’s search box. Type a keyword in the YouTube search box, and it will give you the most popular and frequently-used keywords.
YouTube Profile
Make your profile interesting with a keyword-rich bio and attractive banner image. You can also include links to your website and social media accounts.
Title
The video title should pack a punch in less than ten words or 60 characters and also include keywords.
Thumbnail
A thumbnail is an image that gives a sneak peek into the content of the video. The more appealing and creative the thumbnail is, the more likely your video is to get youtube views. It should ideally be 2 MB in size, 1280×720 in resolution and 16:9 in aspect ratio.
Description
Your video should display a brief explanation of the topic in around 150 words or 500 characters and not more. The end of the description should include links to your social media handles, website and playlists on your channel. You should also add up to 15 relevant hashtags to make it searchable in Google.
Tags
Tags are an essential element of the video description. Tags are words or phrases that can impact your video’s rank in YouTube’s search algorithm. They help YouTube determine the context of the video. 5-8 tags are good enough.
Category
Go to ‘Advanced Settings’ and list your videos under relevant categories such as Entertainment, Sports, Gaming, Education, Music, etc. This will help YouTube make the right recommendations to your audience.
Video Length
There is no optimal length of a video – it varies according to the topic. However, shorter videos ranging from 3 to 15 minutes, hold more attention of the audience.
3. Brand Your Channel
Create a brand out of your YouTube channel that defines the personality of your video.
- Use promotional video templates to add a unified branding style to videos
- Use your brand logo on all your videos.
- Keep the brand look and feel consistent on YouTube and across all your social media profiles. This will make your brand familiar and discoverable.
- Showcase your brand in a 3-5 second clip in the intro and outro (end of the video). You can consider using the free intro creator from InVideo to give a pro-look to your videos.
4. Advertise your Videos on YouTube and Other Social Media Channels
In case your budget permits, you can do paid advertising of your videos on YouTube through its TrueView ads platform available under Google Ads program.
If you are looking for free or low-cost alternatives to advertise your videos, here are some suggestions:
- Send the video link in your email list, newsletters or other communication channels.
- Talk about the video in your blog or website by incorporating the link or embedding it.
- Promote the video on your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Instagram and all other social media profiles. You can even consider paid advertisements on these platforms to generate massive traffic to your videos. You can do this by creating Facebook video ads.
- You can collaborate with fellow YouTube video creators, bloggers, influencers and brands, to cross-promote your videos.
- Be active on the YouTube community – watch, share, like and comment on videos of other creators.
5. Leverage YouTube Analytics
YouTube Analytics can tell you whether you are promoting your video in the right way, how well it is doing or is it reaching the right audience. It gives you a detailed overview in terms of reach (impressions, click-through rate), engagement (watch time, average view duration) and audience (average views per viewer, subscriber, demographics). By monitoring and analyzing the performance of your videos, you can understand what improvements you need to make in your videos and where to direct your resources.
YouTube videos need a dedicated marketing strategy, time and effort. Hence, it is always advisable to use automated marketing tools that can help you create amazing videos as well as increase their reach to the target audience.
