Are you looking for a straightforward way to promote your YouTube channel?
As a general rule. the more content you have on your YouTube channel, the easier it is to grow your brand and increase views and subscribers.
The more content you have, the more likely your audience will see you as a trusted authority and are more likely to recommend your videos to others, add comments and subscribe.
But what more can you do to drive this engagement and give your YouTube channel a rocket boost?
Do you need to constantly check in with viewers through comments and messages? Or should you be spending time on ensuring your channel has a consistent look and professional feel?
Here are a few things that I’ve found helpful if you want to promote your YouTube channel.
Write (and re-write!) engaging, clickable video titles
The title you give your YouTube video is the most essential part of YouTube marketing! You could even say it’s more important than the video itself! Because if you have a fantastic video with incredible content, but a terrible title, you’re massively limiting the number of people who are likely to see it!
A good YouTube title is concise and tells people exactly what they’ll get from your video. Keep it between 20 and 60 characters long, and be sure to include the keywords as close to the start of the title as possible.
To get the most out of your historic YouTube channel content, you’ll probably need to review your old videos. You’ll want to look at their titles and edit them to keep them up to date. If you’ve got several years worth of videos to go through, there’s an even greater chance that some of those titles might no longer be relevant.
Perhaps there’s a new search term of keyword that works really well in driving viewers to your latest videos. Could you incorporate that into your older video titles? Maybe there are inconsistencies in the phrasing or terminology? Or perhaps the quality of writing or grammar of your older videos leaves a bit to be desired?
Here are a few tips I use when writing a YouTube title:
- Keep it concise (20 to 60 characters max)
- Use your main keyword as close to the start of the title as possible
- Use emotion
- Consider the audience
- Avoid click-bait or anything misleading
The key to crafting a good YouTube video title is grabbing your audience’s attention without resorting to lazy, click-bait headlines. Similar to how you’d carefully consider what an engaging email newsletter headline would be, think carefully about what will make people click.
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Use playlists to organize your YouTube content
The more video marketing content you create for YouTube, the easier it is for your channel to get messy. If that happens, you’re bound to lose out on engagement.
Visitors to your channel are going to be turned off by how confusing it is. They came to your channel urgently looking for an answer to something, but it’s too disorganised. They immediately get frustrated, and they give up and go elsewhere.
It’s a bit like shopping in a hurry. Imagine you’re on your way to an important meeting, but your morning mocha splashes all over your white top. Do you want to spend the little time you have hunting through baskets of unorganised garments in an untidy shop? Or do you want to go to the department store with eye-catching product displays and a well-organised shop floor to get what you need in a matter of minutes?
It’s the same with keeping your YouTube channel neat and tidy. It’s window dressing for video marketing!
To keep some sense of order to everything, playlists are vital.
How to create YouTube playlists
Creating different playlists allows you to group your videos into categories and organize your channel better. It makes it much easier for people to navigate your channel and find the content they want (and the content you want them to find!).
Not only that, but playlists also appeal to your viewers’ desire to binge. For example, if you have a series of video blogs around similar topics (like I do!), having all these in a playlist makes it more likely that people will discover other content you’ve created at the same time.
Playlists can be grouped by the type of content (eg – video blogs) or by the different audiences you may have. Whichever option you go for, organizing your videos into YouTube playlists makes them easier to binge-watch!
Cross-promote your older videos on YouTube
If you’ve been uploading to YouTube for a few years, you’ll have a few videos that cover similar topics.
To squeeze more out of your older content, make sure you cross-promote your videos when it makes sense. For example, you can add a link in the new video’s description that encourages viewers to check out any existing or older videos as a call-to-action. You might even think of referencing it in the actual video itself and adding a link to the description.
Using YouTube’s End Screen feature can help viewers find older, relevant content as well. An end screen can appear in the last 20 seconds of your YouTube video and works as an interactive call to action. You can link to a video or channel you think your viewers will be interested in watching next.
Helping to point viewers in the direction of older content encourages binge-watching too.
Once your audience realises that there is a wealth of other older, but still relevant, content on your channel, they’re much more likely to subscribe and get engaged!
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Target the search engines (but not too much!)
As YouTube is owned by Google, it’s fair to say that a strong presence on YouTube will have a massive impact on your search engine rankings. It will, of course, also help you promote your YouTube channel.
The problem is that a lot of people fixate on only this and end up producing content for the search engines and not for their audience. You need to have a balance of both.
Videos like product review videos, how-to videos, explainer videos and any longer video marketing content that covered niche keyword-specific topics rank well. These types of videos naturally lend themselves to SEO-friendly titles, descriptions and tags, making your content easier to find online.
But it’s important to make sure you’re creating quality content as well. Just like if you were writing a blog or sending an email newsletter, don’t get fixated on only optimizing the title or headline. The quality of the content and how it will help your audience has to be top of mind too!
Get engaged with the YouTube community
Starting conversations in the YouTube comments is a very personal way to promote your YouTube channel.
Although you might not think of YouTube as a social network in the same way as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, it does represent a community where users are engaging with video content through likes and comments.
Any interaction you can have with your viewers is a positive thing for YouTube. Engaging with your subscribers can help you foster a stronger connection with your audience and increase growth. “Liking” a comment only takes a few seconds, as does pinning a top comment as a personal note to your subscribers.
Don’t just upload the video and forget about it! Interacting with your community via comments and “Likes” should be a cornerstone of your YouTube channel marketing. I’m sure you do the same on social channels. Why should YouTube be any different?
If all else fails, just ask!
Sometimes simply asking for engagement is the best way to spread the word and help promote your YouTube channel! After all, not everyone who watches your video is going to “like” it or make a comment.
Especially if you’re new to YouTube, there’s no shame in asking directly for some feedback and a thumbs up. But what you don’t want to do is fill the first half of your video with desperate requests. Things like loud appeals to like, comment and subscribe or to make sure you ‘hit the bell to get updates. If someone is new to your channel, they came to your video for content first, so make sure you give them that before asking for any interaction!
To avoid falling into that trap, get creative with the requests for interaction.
Something like asking viewers a question in your video, and getting them to answer in the comments suggestion is a great way to build the community relationship. Getting their feedback on what you’d like to cover in another video, or just encouraging them to ask questions with the promise that you’ll read each one is good too – you don’t have to promise to reply to them all….!
Growing your business and brand on YouTube doesn’t happen by accident.
And yes, it can certainly feel like an uphill struggle if your niche is crowded with competition.
But that’s why it’s a great idea to have different ideas to keep your audience engaged in your channel and to push for growth. Some require more direct, ongoing effort, and others might only take half an hour but have a profound effect. Whichever you choose, each of the ideas above will help you get more eyeballs on your YouTube channel and more subscribers.
