How to promote your channel on Youtube

Tens of millions of views, advertisers’ money and a huge reach of Internet users – it’s a sin not to take advantage of all this for an entrepreneur. We tell you how to promote your channel on Youtube, attract subscribers and promote your business on this site.

What’s good about a YouTube channel?

Many users don’t want to read text. The video format is much easier to read. You just click the red triangle and stare at the screen. You get the same amount of information, but it’s quicker and easier. Very often a person is a search query looking for a video on the topic of interest. And, of course, he ends up on Youtube site.

So, if you don’t want this part of users to fall away from the general traffic you get from the Internet, you’ve got to promote your video blog. Promotion on Youtube is based on the classic methods of SMM-marketing. Let’s talk about them in detail.

Content is the head

High-quality content on the blog is the foundation of SMM. The content must be:

1. Regular. The information field changes not every day, but several times a day. If you are not ready to publish new records periodically, but are going to do it once from time to time – about the popularity of video blog you can forget. How often should you post new videos? It depends on your technical capabilities. Experienced vloggers advise you to do it two or three times a week. In fact, it’s very much. Writing and editing a good video is not like posting a pussycat on Instagram. So a reasonable number – one video a week – is a good place to start – says Yagupov;
2. Useful. How do you estimate how much benefit a person will get from watching a video? Very simple: he should get answers to specific questions. So first decide which target audience you are counting on. If you have an online store – publish reviews of new products in the catalog, information about discounts and promotions, manufacturers’ news, product comparisons of different brands. If you are engaged in marketing and promotion – post video case studies and interviews of successful businessmen, video tutorials, disclose the video chips and secrets;
3. Qualitative. It’s not a good idea to make videos on your phone. Only a professional camera, qualified filming and editing. Up to 50% of users will close the video after a few seconds, seeing an image with a swollen horizon, made on a webcam. Let us tell you right away – you need money for a good video. So immediately put these costs in the advertising budget;
4. Interesting and original. Shoot a standard video on trite subjects – not a good idea. Choose topics for which there is not much information, but enough search queries to attract traffic. If there are no such topics, present the topic in a way that makes it interesting for the viewer to watch.

Designing your YouTube channel

Let’s start with the commonplace truth. When the viewer gets to your YouTube channel, he has to understand the topic from the first glance. If you sell auto parts, it’s not wise to put a portrait of yourself on the main page. There should be cars, wheels and motors.

The design of the channel is several components.

Banner

This is the placeholder at the top of the main page of the channel – in the header. Many bloggers do not have it, but we strongly advise making one. Youtube is structured a little differently than a normal site – there are not many pictures. And a good informative image size of 2560 x 1440 pixels, and even in the most prominent place – it’s a big plus.

The only condition here – the picture must be professionally done. Contact a good designer, give him detailed terms of reference. You can do it yourself, if you have WEB-design skills and good taste.

Channel icon

A small icon with a mini logo. Displayed in Google search and Youtube itself, it works for your brand recognition. You can use the same icon you already have on your website and social networks.

If you do not bother, the icon will be generated by the site automatically. But it will be a faceless uninformative letter or picture. Therefore, it is better to make an original icon. You can do it yourself directly through Youtube settings or, again, pay for the work of a designer.

Channel description

A small text on the main page describing the subject of the video blog. Max 1000 characters without spaces. If you are an entrepreneur, add some phrases about your company. Keep it short, to the point, no water, no unnecessary words.

In addition to getting to know you and your presentation, the channel description aims to optimize for search queries using SEO tools. Add some keywords and sentences in the text. For this, it is better to hire a SEO specialist or copywriter. They will select relevant keywords and insert them intelligently into the text. This way, the channel will be better ranked by search engines.

Setting up the channel menu on Youtube

The menu consists of several items. The more detailed and informative they are, the better:

• videos. This is where all videos are arranged in a straight-through list. You can sort them by popularity or time of addition. Section is formed automatically;
• playlists. This is where videos should be grouped into sections. Make playlists sensible when the number of uploaded to the channel will exceed a few dozen videos. And they should be on different topics. In this case group them by sections, such as: interviews, case studies, useful tips, or presentations of new products in the catalog. Playlists serve as a kind of video guide. The user first selects the section he is interested in, and then searches inside it for a particular video clip. This is much faster and more convenient than searching through videos, especially if there are a couple of hundreds of them;
• channels. Interesting channels and subscriptions can be placed here. This way the client can go to affiliate resources on Youtube;
• discussion. In this section, users can leave general comments – about the channel or your company. And of course, comments can be left under each video;
• about the channel. This is where a description of the blog will be displayed;
• trailer. This is a video which will be automatically launched when the viewer gets to the main page of your channel. It should be a short general video. It’s kind of like a channel description, only in video format. We’ve already talked about how important it is to shoot quality content. So, the trailer is particularly relevant.

It’s better to fill out all the sections of the menu in as much detail as possible. The Youtube administration keeps track of user activity on the channel. The more active ones are better ranked by the resource’s internal search.

You can also place the necessary links in the blog. Of course, they should lead to your website, groups in social networks and partners’ Internet resources. Links can be added directly in the videos in the form of annotations. Also a very good tool, especially when annotations appear in the video at the right moment. For example, the link to order a product appears at the same time as the announcement of the discount in the recording. So one wants to click and order at once, don’t you agree?

Links can also be placed in the description to the video. Usually these are links to affiliate channels or sponsor sites.

Promotion of Youtube channel

So, the channel is created, the menus are arranged, the videos are shot and uploaded to the site. But so far no one knows about your channel and you need to start promoting it. This is done in several stages.

Optimizing the video. If you want your videos to be found by search engines and internal search of Youtube itself, they should be properly formatted. Let’s start with the title of the record. It should be informative, clear and contain key queries – tags. The same goes for the description of the video. It should also include meta-information. But do not go overboard with keywords. If you stuff too many tags in description, your video will not be included in lists of similar videos on Youtube. And it’s very important: Users often stumble upon your video when watching similar ones on YT. Put the same keywords in all recordings – and only your own videos will be similar.

2. Call to action. Even the top bloggers are not squeamish about asking viewers to like and subscribe to your channel. And also to inform about their other sites and accounts in social networks. The important thing here, though, is to motivate the person. Not just “Subscribe to our channel,” but “Subscribe, click your heart, and be the first to know the latest information about discounts, sales, and specials.
3. Tell people about your channel on your other resources. Links to your Youtube should be everywhere: on your official website, in social networks – everywhere you can. If you have not one but several channels on Youtube, link to each other. In addition, you need to publish videos from your YouTube channel on all the listed sites. Again with a call to action and enticing phrases like: “More useful videos on topics you are interested in can be watched on our Youtube channel”.
4. exchange links with other bloggers. Address these suggestions to vloggers in your weight class. Should be approximately the same number of subscribers and the target audience channels. In this case, you will not be refused – no one will neglect the free PR.
5. Advertising on untwisted resources or opinion leaders. The main thing here – to hit the target audience. In advanced auto bloggers it is reasonable to advertise products for cars, not products for young moms.
6. Contextual advertising in Google. To order one, you need to contact a specialist or marketing agency. As a result, links to the channel will appear in the search engine results.
7. Advertising on “YouTube” itself. There are several of these. These may be short commercial breaks within the videos, splash pages on the home page or ads at the beginning of the video. You can set up targeting – so advertising will hit your target audience and work more effectively.

And one last piece of advice. The main thing in advertising – it must cover the money invested. If the channel costs a penny, but does not bring profit, then there is something wrong with it. Monitor the effectiveness with the help of end-to-end analytics, adjust the material, and then your channel will be profitable. Good luck with promotion!