There’s no doubt that video marketing has become increasingly popular and accessible for businesses in recent years. While building a YouTube channel may be the ideal way to market your company, given that people spend one billion hours each day viewing videos on this platform, famous websites like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and your website are all excellent locations to invest.
YouTube, dubbed the world’s “second-largest search engine,” may help people find your material fast and connect with it provided you know a few strategies and grasp the basics of generating creative videos. Here are the top 10 suggestions for expanding your YouTube channel.
1. Build Your Videos Around a Single Keyword/Topic
The easiest strategy to increase traffic to your video and expand your YouTube audience is to create your video around a specific theme or phrase. Marketers that are unfamiliar with SEO run the danger of skipping this phase in the video ranking process, but it is essential to do so if you want your videos to receive the most views possible. Find the most popular terms in the market you wish to target by using a keyword tool, such as the YouTube-specific KeywordTool
Prior to creating your video content, it’s crucial to choose your keyword since doing so will help you create the greatest material possible on that particular subject. Additionally, it reminds you to weave your keyword organically into the text so that YouTube will recognise it when closed captions are applied. Once you’ve selected a keyword, make sure your title and description are constantly optimized and that you’re on the correct track in terms of purpose by looking at the videos that presently rank for that subject. You will increase search traffic using SEO on YouTube by doing this.
2. Reuse Existing Top Performing Content
Of course, producing and sharing quality material is the greatest approach to expand your YouTube channel. However, the material need not necessarily be created from scratch. Some of your finest films may be made using the interesting, worthwhile, practical, and useful stuff you currently have.
Especially during the COVID-19 epidemic, when people binge-watched 4 billion hours of “how to” videos in only one year, many people turned to YouTube to discover solutions and instructions. So, if you want to increase traffic, create content that solves problems for your audience. Perform a content audit to identify the blogs, how-to articles, and other high-performing items you already have. Then, consider how you may repurpose these materials to produce informative and interesting films.
Don’t feel like you need to create a film or write a novel; instead, keep in mind that the most popular YouTube videos are often between one and five minutes long. Be succinct and to the point.
3. Engage with Your Audience
It’s critical to remember that YouTube is a social media platform and necessitates social engagement. You’re missing a trick if all you do is publish videos without promoting dialogue and conversation.
YouTube rewards channels that get high levels of interaction, which includes comments, overall time spent on channel, watch time, likes, and dislikes. In order to stimulate user interaction with audio/visual cues, attempt to reply to every remark you get (if at all feasible).
You may also take the time to interact with brands you admire or that are comparable to your own by visiting their channels. Likewise, don’t always wait for the audience to initiate conversation. Asking questions about the content or even simply requesting feedback on what kind of material people like to see on your channel or would like to see more of may help you post comments or questions that can increase engagement. Additionally, be sure to express gratitude to users that share on YouTube and other channels.
To keep track of important engagement data on YouTube, consider employing a social content distribution and engagement dashboard.
4. Get Branded
Although your channel’s design may be excellent, does your content? You must appear professional if you want viewers to subscribe to your YouTube channel and take it seriously.
Users will be able to recognise your material more easily if your company’s social branding is improved. Therefore, if you have a blog or website, you probably already have a certain style and feel that helps you set yourself apart from other people and/or businesses. Therefore, extending that branding to your YouTube channel makes sense. Here’s an example from the video game industry giant Nintendo. With 8.12 million members, they offer excellent material on games and systems, including quick gameplay videos and behind-the-scenes clips.
In addition to visual branding, don’t forget to add custom URLs to your channel header – and write an interesting bio about who you are and what your videos are about.
5. Promote Your YouTube Videos on Other Social Channels
You can cross-promote material on many channels, which is one of the amazing things about social media. The simplest strategy to increase your audience is to promote your YouTube videos on your other social media accounts.
There is a substantial amount of user overlap across social media platforms, with YouTube witnessing massive interaction of over 90% across users of all the major channels, according to the Digital 2021: Global Overview Report. This implies that when it comes to marketing efforts and engagement, it’s a medium to be taken seriously.
So, consider the stations you are watching. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or LinkedIn? There are tons of options and fantastic concepts for social media videos. Additionally, you can always create a teaser for the full-length video on YouTube if there’s a channel (like Facebook) where you want to broadcast films straight in order to obtain the most interaction possible across all of them. Don’t overlook your blog either, since you may submit movies there as well! Additionally, a podcast may work seamlessly with your YouTube channel if you have one.
6. Show Up & Stand Out
It might be quite helpful to personalize the channel by taking part in films if you’re running YouTube by yourself or as part of a small corporation. Your audience will be able to relate to you as a person more readily if you put a face to a brand. Vloggers, business, life, or fitness coaches, as well as solopreneurs, should pay particular attention to this.
Your face doesn’t have to be in every video you produce, but you should appear frequently enough to draw in viewers. Use a picture of yourself on your channel if you are this kind of YouTuber (not your logo). See the illustration provided by marketing guru Adam Erhart below.
7. Post Great Thumbnails & Leverage YouTube Cards
Thumbnails may appear insignificant, which they are, yet they may have a significant influence. You want your film to stand out from the competition since YouTube uses thumbnails in its sidebar to promote other videos.
Likewise with YouTube search. Even if the material isn’t as important, videos with a snappy title and eye-catching thumbnail typically rank better since they have a greater click-through rate (CTR). Use strategies like highlighted text, arrows, huge text, and surprising or eye-catching imagery to increase your CTR. Check out Neil Patel’s samples below.
We are aware that YouTube compensates channels for retaining visitors on their pages. These increased average viewing times show that viewers are interested in your material. (Using YouTube statistics, you can check how long viewers watch your videos for.) You may offer connections to other videos or pertinent material right where visitors are leaving off by adding YouTube cards. You may include five cards each video, which display as a rectangular box or teaser in the right-hand corner of the video. There are many different card kinds to pick from, including a playlist, poll, or contribution. Even if viewers could stop viewing the video they’re watching, they’ll be driven to your other material and continue to subscribe to your channel, which will increase your ranking.
8. Push for Subscriptions
When viewers subscribe to receive notifications of any new videos that are released, this is one of the ways you may be certain that they are interested in your channel. In every video you publish, ask people to subscribe to your channel, and stay in touch with those who have already done so. (Here, you can view your subscription list.) Here’s an illustration of the subscribe button on a video.
Never pay a subscription fee. In the long term, this will only lower your interaction and damage the veracity of your account. Keep in mind that you can be losing out on a lot of prospective subscribers if you don’t urge your viewers to subscribe. After all, the more followers you have, the greater your chances are of getting more YouTube views.
9. Increase Your Uploading Frequency
Although it may seem frightening at first, you must upload more frequently—at least one video every week—if you want to expand your following. Don’t worry, you won’t need a large advertising agency or design studio to complete this. With tools like Animoto, it’s simple to edit films and produce video content on a budget with today’s smartphones’ superb video recording capabilities. The need for consistency cannot be overstated. Keep your followers informed about when new videos will be released by attempting to upload at the same time every day or week (depending on your frequency). After that, follow your timetable.
10. Become a Social Video (& YouTube) Expert
The popularity of video as a content medium keeps growing. In accordance with the “The State of Video Marketing” survey, 86% of companies employ video as a marketing technique, and 87% of marketers are pleased with the results. Marketers should comprehend the function of video and how to utilize it successfully across all social media channels as consumers become more visually oriented and sites like TikTok gain in popularity.
You will learn how to effectively build up and maintain a YouTube channel with the help of DMI’s accredited Social Media and Marketing course, as well as how to develop tactics that will set your channel apart from the competition. Additionally, you’ll learn how to expand your online following, leverage advertising and analytics for fruitful visual campaigns, and comprehend how video fits into your content mix across platforms.