Effective Ways to Promote Your YouTube Video

We live in the era of Video Content superiority, and therefore no marketing strategy can omit video promotion, especially on platform giants like YouTube. Going viral is a modern-day lottery-winning-like situation, and so equally unpredictable. This is why you must gain views in as many ways as possible. The competition for creators is in millions, and there is a lot you should do to be seen. So what are some effective ways to promote your YouTube Video? Let’s find out:

1. Use the YouTube SEO

To begin with, learn the ‘search intent’ of the viewers by typing in the possible words they would use to search the video. Most keywords are competitive, so stick to using the trending keywords. In the Title, Description and Youtube Tags sections, these keywords must be used. This way, YouTube can better comprehend the content of your video to be able to recommend it. The bigger the description the better. It is also the strategy to reach the Suggested Sections of other popular videos that will direct organic traffic your way.

2. Eye-catchy Thumbnails

Once you’ve got the SEO part of the presentation down, let’s move on to the Thumbnail. A thumbnail is the holy grail of Youtube videos. They have to be attractive to grab people’s attention immediately because that’s what gets you the clicks. Using images, graphics and large text usually does the trick. But portraying the relevant content on the thumbnail is equally important; people don’t like to be baited. Sometimes less is more, thumbnails must match the genre and context of the video. Presenting different information on the thumbnail from the Title and Description are good ways to grab attention and create a sequence.

3. The New Video Advantage

And now you’ve published the video. YouTube tends to promote videos that are new and popular on people’s homepages, so if you get traction within the first 24 hours, it is highly likely that you will continue to get more views. The algorithm that makes these recommendations can be a big source of views in the first few days of your publishing, so don’t take this time lightly and promote as much as possible.

4. Social Media & Blogs

Where can you promote? That’s right. promoting YouTube videos on social media is very effective. In fact, most social media now have features to link videos and embed them so that they are easily accessible. Your audience on social media is more predictable, you know the kind of content they like, and they’ve connected with you for the same reason. So not only are they likely to click on it, but also share it with mutuals, friends and family and in turn multiply your sources.

5. Q&A Sites

Another excellent option is to promote your video on Q&A sites like Quora, WikiHow, and Answers. Yahoo and even Reddit. This way you get the users with the motive to find answers right at your doorstep. By giving them a part of the information, or a summary with a link to learn more will direct traffic to your YouTube video.

6. Promotional Tools

Of course, there are promotional tools you can’t do without, like Google Ads; that display your video on the top when relevant searches occur. Or YouTube’s End Screens that let you display your other videos at the end of the video, and Cards that suggest your videos on the side. If placed relevantly, they’ll surely get you some clicks.

7. Increase Watch Time

Watch time is the time duration that viewers view your videos, and YouTube recommends videos and channels with more watch time. The obvious way to increase watch time is to upload longer videos. But other than that Playlists and End Screens keep people watching. Playlists make your videos more organized and accessible, even to non-subscribers, and all the videos play automatically one after the other, while End Screens motivate people to click on the next relevant video.

8. Interact and Collab

While bringing in viewers is an important component of promotion, keeping them is the other half. Interacting with the audience by using the Community feature on YouTube is an effective way of maintaining a viewer-creator relationship. Announcements, polls, countdowns or even a simple question keeps your audience in the loop. Collaborations with other creators is also a great strategy as it brings novelty, and excitement and lets creators share audiences.

9. YouTube Shorts

In the more latest features, there’s the YouTube Shorts which is still in beta testing. But creators have already jumped on it to show their creativity. As Shorts show up for relevant searches, it’s a great opportunity for creators to put out short content and get recognised fast. Shorts can also help in promotion: to tease upcoming videos, show short bite-sized quick information videos, or even summarize a longer video to motivate one to watch the longer one.

Growth on YouTube like any other platform will be slow and not steady. The graph can go up one day and down one day. But what’s important is consistency, effort, and quality along with community building and a good viewer-creator relationship.