Are you trying to get more YouTube views? Are you getting frustrated with all your videos getting low view counts?
The opportunity is definitely there for you to boost your views. People watch billions of videos a day and average viewers watch more than an hour on mobile. Luckily for you, there are some simple ways to increase your viewership and build your audience – let’s dive right in.
1. Have Regular Promotions and Giveaways
We all love free things; people rarely turn down a good giveaway. When you post about a giveaway or promotion or even a raffle on social media and invite your audience to participate via the link embedded in your video description, you’ll be boosting your views. A bigger number of users will head to the YouTube page for the video and you’ll be rewarded with a boost in your viewership numbers.
In fact, you could say that a promotion or giveaway is the perfect bait to draw some new viewers in to your channel on YouTube and look at your videos. Therefore, set up some giveaways and promotions on the occasion for your brand, and share them regularly on your social media channels. Be sure to include links directing back to your YouTube channel, and you’ll be sure to see your views increase.
2. Post Engaging and Exciting Content
At the end of the day, your channel will only be successful if you have good content. The best way to increase your viewership or subscriptions for your brand is without a doubt creating appealing and engaging content for viewers. If it’s good content, it means that your viewers are much more likely to be returning visitors to your channel, or even better to have a look at the rest of your YouTube content.
Good content is defined either as content that creates value for viewers or is entertaining. You can either create something that is educational, informative, or instructional to boost your YouTube views, or you can be entertaining or pertaining to a trend or viral video. The first type of video would usually be a tutorial or how-to video, whereas the other is more flexible. Viral and trending topics give you more chances of ranking higher on YouTube’s search engine.
To give you some guidance, some of the most viewed content on the platform is reviews of products, unboxing videos, self-improvement and tutorials. Keep an eye on your viewers’ likes and dislikes to figure out if the content you’re putting out on YouTube is well received.
Related: 6 Tried And Tested YouTube Marketing Tips For Startups
3. Start with a Bang
Research found that a staggering 20 percent of YouTube viewers abandon ship within the first 10 seconds of a video?
That’s a crazy statistic, and just shows that you need to maximize your first few seconds to grab people’s attention, or at the very least, make those seconds memorable. To do that, you can’t start with just a boring and standard introduction. Instead, dive right into the crux of your video, the purpose for it. If you start with an exciting few seconds, your viewers will have a great first impression and they won’t be tempted to navigate away from your video.
4. Draw Viewers in with Playlist Titles
Don’t just name your playlists with a generic title or whatever you think about first. You should be putting a good deal of thought into your playlist and video titles. It might not be horrible, but it has to be a lot more than that. It has to be compelling, to draw people in and make them curious to find out more. Add something like Case Studies to your title to make it more engaging and appealing to viewers, or direct information about how your video will improve their lives. Think about what your audience wants and answer that need in your video title.
You should also be using titles that are descriptive and full of good keywords. Run some keyword research using the usual SEO methods. This includes strategies like using keyword planner or similar research tools for keywords. Then, come up with a descriptive and engaging title that will tell users what the video is about but also help the YouTube algorithm sort your video appropriately.
To find out the popular keywords specifically for YouTube, when you’re in keyword planner go to the far right and choose YouTube search. Optimizing all of your video content with the right keywords will get you some organic views from new viewers by posting your content in search results so viewers can find it naturally and know what it’s about.
When you create playlists with your content, viewers can watch all of it in sequence. Your videos will play one after the other automatically, and each of your videos will get more views without your viewers having to do anything. To do this, create your playlists and embed them, then post them in your channel. You can also ask users to share them with friends so that your overall views go up for the whole playlist.
You should be careful to keep each playlist unique and following an overall theme. Make each playlist relevant to one theme and give them a good flow by choosing the order in which each video will play. This is especially useful if your content is educational or entertaining because it serves to tell a story and all of your videos are components of a whole. Furthermore, viewers love storytelling and usually respond well to that type of content.
5. Have a Consistent Video Channel Brand
Before you start posting videos, you need to think about what your brand is so you have a consistent image across all your videos and playlists. One key way to do this is by getting involved in the community for your niche topic. When you promote yourself as a key member of your community, you can build trust and engagement from your viewers. It goes further than just appearing as an expert in your own videos. Go beyond that and comment on other videos in your niche and community, offering feedback or advice.
If you notice that another video content in your area of expertise is missing key information, you can link viewers of that content to your own videos for complementary and supplementary information. When you’re helpful to the community, you’ll find that your viewership and subscribers increase because more users navigate to your channel.
Related: Why Your Business Needs to be on YouTube?
6. Create Video Subscription Links
It’s important to build not just more viewers but more subscribers. You can create custom links and visible buttons for people to subscribe to your channel. If you have a blog, consider embedding your video on a blog post to get more views for the video. Then, go beyond that and provide a subscribe button to the channel, which will get you more views in the long run. Statistics show that roughly 50 percent of the views on a video are from subscribers, so when you get more subscribers, you’ll automatically get more views on new videos.
You can do this by installing a simple subscription widget, and using it on the pages where your video is embedded. You might also wish to incentivize people to subscribe to your channel. Humans by nature love free things, so don’t hesitate to bribe them – yes, bribe! – to subscribe to your channel. It may sound unbelievable or even unethical, but it’s really not, and it actually works wonders. People naturally need to feel like there’s something in it for them to do something.
There are two main ways to create an incentive for people to subscribe. The first is to create a cross-channel contest. This means using one channel, like Facebook or Instagram, to offer something free to people if they like the post, comment, and also subscribe to your YouTube channel (and add the link in your bio). It sounds simple, but it’s an old marketing trick and it still works really well!
The second way to incentivize people is to subscribe and they will receive additional benefits. This is useful if people have already found one of your YouTube videos. If they have, it means they’re interested in your brand to a certain extent, so you can leverage that and get them to subscribe. In the video, announce a giveaway for subscribers only, such as a free e-book or a free trial of a product of yours. This is a good way to boost subscribers if you’re able to deliver on your promises made.
7. Join with Other YouTubers
It’s important to reach out to other bloggers, YouTubers, and influencers to join forces. Influencer marketing has been found to be the best source these days to reach big audiences. Influencers have their own existing audiences that will trust their recommendation, share their content, and re-post. This has the potential to make your videos go viral or give you a huge surge in your views if you can use this.
Use Unamo Social Media to help you find influencers related to your industry and niche community, then don’t hesitate to send them a message and ask them about a possible partnership and if they would be willing to promote your videos. Because the viewers you want to target should be already following this influencer in the industry, when they share your video, you’ll be guaranteed to get a huge boost in your views and engagement on the content for both that unique video and your channel.
You should also be finding your niche community and sharing your content there. Look for different subreddits on Reddit or Quora areas that are related to what your video content is about because you will have the same target audiences. These are great areas to share your content. There are also other good social bookmarking sites to generate some interest and engagement in your videos, such as Pinterest or Stumbleupon.
Finally, consider reaching out to other YouTubers to be the guest in your videos. This works the same way as getting guest posts on your blog. Guest YouTubers or influences in the community that already have their own big audience will definitely increase your views. Having a video with a popular guest can encourage users to check out your video and subscribe. You can also simply ask other YouTubers in your industry to form a reciprocal relationship whereby you would post a link to one of their related videos or website in your description and they would do the same.
8. Use Social Media for Promotion
Last but not least, use cross-platform promotion by posting about your YouTube videos on other social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. This can go a long way in sending users the way of your video. You can either share your link as the post, or put your YouTube channel link in each description of your profiles to increase your views. Another benefit to sending traffic to YouTube from other social media sites is that when you’re the source of session starts (when a YouTube session starts on your video), you’ll be ranked higher in YouTube algorithms. That’s because it shows that your video is bringing users to the platform.
It’s important to treat YouTube like the social network that it actually is. That means you should be social on the platform by responding to viewer comments, especially when questions are asked. That shows you’re willing to engage with your audience and promotes you as an expert in the industry. You should also be looking through comments to find ideas for new videos if you see something that is frequently mentioned as an area of interest by your audience.
If people see that you’re engaging in an honest and authentic way and contributing to a conversation by providing value, you’ll see that YouTube communities are much more willing to accept you and follow you. There are so many passionate viewers already on YouTube, so you just have to find the right ways to reach them and bring them in.
