YouTube Promotion 2021: The Ultimate Guide

Most people think of YouTube solely as a popular video hosting service. But we should also not forget that it is the second most used search engine in the world. At the moment, the audience of YouTube is more than a billion people, and this number is constantly growing. However, it is worth remembering that first of all, the content must comply with the community guidelines. From our guide you will learn how to grow on YouTube, attract attention to your videos and get a lot of subscribers.

How to promote YouTube videos: 7 Main Ways

Optimize your videos

If you want to ensure your videos are well-positioned and visible, they need to be properly optimized both before and after they are uploaded. The main ranking factors for videos on YouTube include:

• The number of inbound links to the video
• The number of embeds the video has on third-party resources
• Number of video views
• The average duration of video views
• Number of videos shared on social media
• Video rating

Video file name

Many people don’t pay much attention to this and upload files named MOV1234.avi, DSC1234.avi, Untitled1.mp4, and so on. Avoid this mistake. Include a key phrase in the file name. This will help the resource understand the essence of your video and display it in search results.

But, YouTube itself can’t figure out what’s in the video. And the user helps him in this by giving the correct description, the name of the uploaded file and the title of the video as viewers see it.

Be sure to use keywords in the title. And they should look natural in the text. If you generate a title with a bunch of keywords in it, neither users nor the YouTube search engine will appreciate it.

Keep in mind that YouTube has limited the length of titles for videos. It should be within 100 characters.

Video description

The description on YouTube for any video can be quite long, which can’t be said about the title. The resource allows you to use text up to 5000 characters long.

Remember: the longer the description for each of your videos, the better for ranking and promotion of your channel.

If you don’t know how to grow a YouTube channel be sure to use keywords in your description. Try to place them at the beginning of the text. This way, YouTube will better understand what the video is about and who it’s intended for. The first few sentences are the most important. Include in them all the salt of your video. They will be used to create snippets on search engines and social networks.

How to design a thumbnail image

For channels with a good reputation, YouTube allows you to use unique video icons. What are the features?

• The images that YouTube itself offers are simply three randomly selected frames from a video. In most cases, they look unattractive.
• Well-designed thumbnail images “hook” users and increase YouTube views. If your image stands out among others on the page, users are more likely to click on it, even if your video is far from the first position.
• You can create a unique style for your channel.

Requirements for the thumbnail image:

Format: JPG or PNG.

Size: Between 10 KB and 5 MB.

Recommended resolution: 720 px tall, 720 px wide.

Minimum resolution: 250 px tall, 250 px wide.

Quality: The photo should be in focus and well lit, and have no significant alterations or excessive use of filters. In other words, the image should represent reality.

Communicate with your audience

To promote your YouTube channel, you need to create each video with your target audience in mind to expand it get more revenue. The video should be perfectly tailored to the needs and preferences of your viewers.

Here’s an example: let’s say you have a cooking channel where you post recipes for people with an active lifestyle. What to pay attention to here: your audience tends to manage their time effectively, and you need to make your recipe videos short and concise. This will boost YouTube views.

But viewing metrics aren’t the only thing that affects YouTube video and channel rankings in general. To increase engagement on your videos, you need to make high-quality, useful, interesting content in the first place. The second is to encourage viewers to subscribe, send videos to friends. In addition, write comments, reply to them and comment on other creators’ videos. Such actions are not forbidden by the rules of YouTube, and many bloggers do it.

Set up advertising on your videos

YouTube video advertising is an opportunity to reach the target audience, which is still inaccessible to the above methods. And it can be done quite quickly and quite inexpensively.

Targeting works for:

• Demographic groups (gender, age, and other, you can even set up ads for students or young parents);
• Certain interests, topics, intentions (for example, the purchase of a particular product or service);
• Those who have already interacted with your videos or ads (this re-marketing is like advertising on Google);
• A ready-made list of email addresses or similar audiences (look-a-like technology).

Video ads can be shown on the homepage, while watching another video, in similar videos, and so on. When setting up, focus on your YouTube channel data (in the Audience section of Creative Studio), but you may test other audience segments too.

YouTube Video Translation

Even if you publish content in your native language, you can translate your video into a huge number of other languages. That way you can reach audiences in many different countries, and therefore grow on YouTube. Moreover, you can get additional income by having your content translated into some of the most widely spoken languages.

Use other platforms to attract viewers

YouTube is the №2 resource in the world in terms of traffic, but there is never much traffic. Attracting a target audience from search engines and YouTube itself is good, but it’s even better to try to find it on thematic sites as well. If possible:

• Promote videos from your channel on all your resources: website, social networks, newsletter;
• Publish your videos in relevant groups and publishers. For example, if you do reviews on gardening equipment, videos can be useful in the communities of gardeners, landscapers, eco-settlers;
• Recommend the channel or individual videos in response to relevant discussions — in forums and Q&A projects, on social networks, or below articles on information sites.

Collaborate with other creators

If you already have a sufficiently promoted channel, you can advertise a YouTube channel for free. Try to find similar channels on related topics and offer cross-promotion. This is a free opportunity to see how bloggers’ advertising can work in general.

 

Untapped Keywords From The “YouTube Search” Report

To find keywords for your YouTube channel, go to “Traffic Source: YouTube Search” under YouTube Analytics.

Next, check all the keywords your content is ranking for.

You’ll find familiar tags in this list, but if you scroll down the list, you may come across keywords for which you “accidentally” rank at the top. I recommend getting acquainted with the video to understand how this strategy works.

Conclusion

Do what the audience wants right now, study the numbers and statistics. Think through your actions. Experiment and look for new opportunities. Keep up with news and trends. Work with the semantic core of your channel. Properly write titles and descriptions for your videos, YouTube is perfectly indexed by search engines.