YouTube has come a long way since its inception. Back then, brands and people weren’t creating a lot of online content like they do now. In 2022, the platform boasted fifteen million YouTubers creating videos and around five hundred hours of content happening every single minute. That aside, you’ve come here to find out how you can promote a YouTube video or channel so that it becomes popular and (even) lucrative. Believe it or not, many ways of promotion won’t be expensive to produce (if at all). Read on for some tools you can use to promote your videos and or channel on YouTube.
Engaging Content
It’s all about the views on YouTube, but to get people to like and subscribe you need to engage them with fantastic content. That’s the very first thing to do. You want to make a video that has the viewers returning for more. Do your research and look at videos of people in your same genre. What’s your favorite thing about their content? Would you do anything in another way? Answers to questions like this will help you brainstorm your content.
Keywords and Hashtags
Thousands upon thousands of videos are uploaded daily. To make sure that your content reaches your intended viewers, you should put keywords in your descriptions, headlines, and tags for your videos. You can use tools to aid you in this process or enter the topic of your content in the search bar on YouTube. There will be suggestions that you can use for your video.
The autosuggestions can also be utilized for hashtags associated with the video. Use hashtags that make sense for your content. That way, it will reach the intended audience. You can also sneak a peek at your competitors offering similar content and see what they’re using for their hashtags.
Thumbnail Customization
The thumbnail you use is vitally important since this is the first thing a viewer will see of your video. To capture the audience, you need a clickable thumbnail. Make it special and striking. Something that the person will want to learn more about. Use a quality photo or image that has vivid colors, and action shots. Try and incorporate a human face because people typically focus on faces in images. Don’t have a lot of text, six words at the most, and make sure the text you do use is bold.
You can find a tool online that you can use as a thumbnail template for YouTube that default to the correct dimensions. These tools also have fonts, colors, background photos, and stickers to use. It’s also user-friendly in the way you can upload photos you have from your computer or phone directly to the template.
Upload Often
Posting consistent and regular content is crucial when trying to bring viewers (and hopefully subscribers) to your channel. You become a credible and trustworthy figure to your viewers because they get used to the routine of you uploading videos to the platform. Begin by posting content every other week until you can produce new videos a couple of times a week. You can also track how your viewers engage with your channel and videos through YouTube Analytics. If you find out when people interact with your channel, you can begin posting at that time from now on. This is how you will receive the most attention.
Promotional Tips
Embrace social media as a tool that will help you promote your content on YouTube. You might have everything else perfect – great content creation, thumbnails, and keywords, but you need to promote yourself on social media or risk missing out on a very large viewership. Try cross-promoting on a variety of social media platforms. You can even make teaser content to entice the audience to visit your channel. You can link up with other creators in your wheelhouse. This could lead to exposure and drive the intended audience to your content.
Promote your videos and channel on different forums. You need to contribute quality to whatever discussion you’re having since a lot of forum platforms frown upon self-promotion. Make sure you are conversational with your promotion and that it doesn’t sound like an advertisement for your channel only. Even if you don’t have creative content to plug, try and remain active in these forums to ensure that you’re a valuable contributor to whatever conversation you’re having.
Cross-promotion is a helpful tool to implement. Use the cards feature on YouTube. This permits you to promote content on your many different videos. This means, an icon will appear in the corner of the screen that links to a different playlist or video. You control the duration of the amount of time you want the card to remain on screen. You can also use an end-screen option. This is where, in the last ten seconds of your video, clickable advertisements for your other content will show up. This tends to spur the audience to look at more of your creations, like, and subscribe.
Other Tips
- Communicate with your audience in the comment section (valuable content only).
- Shout out to subscribers during your videos/ask what they think.
- Use the Community feature on YouTube (five hundred subscribers and above).
- Work and create with other YouTube contributors.
- Utilize playlists for your audience to binge-watch (more likely to subscribe).
- Attract an audience by embedding your videos (on websites, pages, or articles)
- Livestream things like questions and answers, tutorials, demos, and webinars.
- Add a widget on your website.
- Paid advertisements.
Conclusion
In addition to promoting videos online, it may also be helpful to attend trade shows pertaining to your interest. For example, if you create videos on Comic Books, attending a comic book convention can connect with your prospective audience. While at a trade show, it can be helpful to use feather flags to attract attention to your booth. The feather flags can be custom printed with your brand colors, logo, and messaging. If you’re looking to purchase Custom Feather flags, consider Flagdom at: https://flagdom.com/feather-flags.
There are numerous ways to promote your YouTube videos or channels. Aside from paying for ads to drive an audience to your channel, you can do a lot of things on your own and for little to no money. Follow these simple tips to grow your content, but above all, have fun doing it.