Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world next to Google itself. Youtube is a highly effective business tool to demonstrate your expertise, create brand awareness, share knowledge, promote events, engage with the customer and build credibility.
If you want to promote your YouTube videos, you have literally hundreds of free and paid ways to do that. Some of them work better some don’t. If you really want to grow your channel, get more views on your videos, increase Youtube subscribers, and more engagement, and to really make your content reach more people, check out these Ways to Promote Youtube Videos.
10 Effective Free and Paid Ways to Promote Youtube Videos:
#1 Create Great Video Title:
As they say “The First Impression is The Last Impression”. Your Video title is the first thing someone will see wherever they find your video. The title must be informative and attention-grabbing. Here are some best practices you should consider when creating a video title to Promote Youtube Videos.
Make it Simple
Quality of a great title is that they are short and to the point. Google truncates page titles at 66 characters, so anything beyond that is cut off in search results. So try to keep your video title under 66 characters and make it relevant to the video.
Do keyword research
SEO plays a big part in the promotion of your Youtube video for free. Use a keyword research tool to nail down one or two relevant keyword phrases to include in your title. This will help your video rank higher in search results.
Tell What to expect from Video
Like a headline on a blog post, your title is a promise to the viewer. You’re telling them how they will benefit by taking the time to view your content.
An easy way to optimize your title is to start typing into the YouTube search bar the words you were going to use in your title. Which search did results come up? Now try other words (one word at a time because YouTube will autofill based on popular search terms) and you can see what other people are typing into YouTube and see how many results those search terms give you.
#2 Create attractive Video Thumbnail
Learning the title optimization and managing to display your video on the first page is not enough. Another really important task to increase click-through rate is to create an attractive thumbnail for your videos.
Create a custom thumbnail for each video instead of letting one be randomly generated. Use relevant text and image in the thumbnail. A custom video thumbnail with a minor annotation will tell your users what your video is all about.
How to create Thumbnail to promote Youtube Video:
YouTube offers a selection of thumbnails from three intervals of your video. These intervals are at the 1/4th mark, at 1/2 mark, and at the 3/4th mark. Choose the one that best illustrates what your video. These are very small but important tasks which you should execute while uploading a video. Here is the list of Top Youtube Channels in India. Go through these channels and learn more about how they kept thumbnails in their videos.
#3 Optimize your Content
Youtube has said that “channels and videos with higher watch time are more likely to turn up in search results and recommendations.” Now the question arises, how to increase your Watch time? You need to keep two things given below in mind while creating your content.
- value your viewer’s time.
- deliver value right away.
According to Youtube analytics, We’ve found that the first eight seconds of your video is the most important. The click-away rate in those eight seconds is most. If you make music videos, start playing music right away. If you are teaching something or explaining a product, start delivering information right away.
Many popular Youtuber suggests that skip straight to the content and then promote your products at the end. Don’t talk about other videos that you’re making or where to buy the song. Just play the song and tell them the supplementary info after the song or in the description. This will keep your audience hooked and eventually promote your youtube video.
#4 Customize your Youtube channel
Another very effective way to increase youtube subscriber is to having a well-crafted Youtube Channel is very important to create trust with your brand. If you are getting visitors to your YouTube page, you have to make the most of the customization options that YouTube has to offer. Make the most of the YouTube channel bio and custom URL to finish up your channel customizations. Keep the bio short and to the point. You can always link to your website URL in the video description for a more detailed bio.
Another important step in customizing your channel is to create an awesome introduction video. YouTube offers a great feature called channel trailers that lets you automatically play a video upon the opening of a YouTube channel.
Your channel trailer is the first thing any visitor will see on your Youtube page. So, channel trailer is something you must carefully work on and constantly improve to keep visitors engaged. Try to give a quick, informative, and engaging introduction.
#5 Promote your Video on Social Media
YouTube is a fantastic way to attract free subscribers. And often what works on YouTube can also work on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter video. You should also expand your reach by publishing your YouTube videos on different social networks. You should at least have a profile on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Instagram to promote your Youtube video
Get out there on other social media platforms with some personal connections and let them know about your undertakings. Ask them for likes and promote your youtube video to their friends. If you use a social media management platform like Hootsuite and Buffer etc you can easily upload, schedule, and publish video and then share the URL across other social networks on the dashboard.
Here is the review of different social media management platform.
| Review on Hootsuite |
| Review on Buffer |
| Review on Social Sprouts |
| Review on Klout |
#6 Start A Blog on your Youtube Channel
The more opportunities you give people to see your videos, the more views, and subscriptions you’ll get. Creating a blog is a great way to increase your audience and promote your YouTube videos by adding another online presence.
How Blogging can help promote Youtube video
- Embed your Youtube video to your blog. It enables your audience now has twice the opportunity to see your content.
- Blogging gives you the power of SEO. Search engines can’t watch your videos to see if they’re relevant to users’ interests or not, but they can pick up on keywords and key phrases. If you have a blog full of the kinds of keywords and phrases that your audience searches for, they may not directly find your YouTube channel in a Google search.
#7 Make a Playlist
You work hard to acquire a first-time viewer. The viewer needs to search for a relevant keyword, see your video in YouTube’s results, and click your result. To turn these casual viewers into subscribers, use YouTube playlists. These boost content consumption, retain subscribers and boost your watch time.
Instead of creating miscellaneous playlists, create a track of content for new users to watch. In other words, treat your viewers as a cohort, segmenting your audience into groups of users that will move through your content. By creating playlists that comprehensively cover a specific topic, you’ll attract one of the most profitable types of viewers like content bingers. These viewers are looking for collections of videos on a specific topic and will methodologically work their way through your playlists.
How to create a Playlist:
- Start with a video you want in the playlist
- Under the video, click add to
- Click create new playlist
- Enter a playlist name
- Use the drop-down box to select your playlist’s privacy setting. If it’s private, people can’t find it when they search YouTube
- Click create
#8 Use Email Marketing
Make people know that you have uploaded a new video. Email is still one of the top channels marketers can use to reach their audience. For YouTube content creators, there are multiple ways you can reach your loyal fans through email.
How to create an email list to promote youtube videos
- Playlist intro/outro: Rather than editing every single video to include a call to action, including an intro/outro for your playlist letting viewers know about your email list and asking them to subscribe. You can simply direct them to click on a link in the video description.
- Call to action: Create a call to action on a card asking viewers to subscribe to your email list.
#9 Use Influencers to Promote your youtube video:
Although this is not a direct YouTube video promotion technique, it fits perfectly in the overall strategy of your channel video promotion.Interviewing an influencer gives you an opportunity to get access to an already thriving community in your niche. Not only you will grab the attention of others who follow that particular influencer, you will also get noticed by the industry as a whole.You can find the top influencers in your niche & you can interview them using Google Hangouts or Skype.
#10 Make your Brand
There are a few branding things that you should do from now on which will ensure every video stands out. One of those things is using a branded intro and outro.
- YouTube intro: A 3-5 second clip that runs at the beginning to showcase your brand.
- YouTube outro: This runs at the end and can be as simple as showing related videos for your channel or asking users to like & subscribe to videos.
