If you’ve never heard of YouTube, then you must’ve been living under a rock for the past decade.
YouTube is an incredible source of every content imaginable, and with more than a billion active users, it’s definitely a crucial tool for online marketers. YouTube is so massive that it can be accessed in 76 different languages and has even launched local versions in more than 88 countries. YouTube is also the internet’s second largest search engine which means it can drastically help your overall brand presence.
Now if you want to do well on YouTube, here’s a list of killer tactics that will help you step your YouTube game up an upper notch.
1. Choose an optimized video title
While it has always been an effective tactic to create compelling headlines for any blog posts, the same goes for YouTube – you need to optimize your title. Make sure your focus keyword is included in your video title and try and see if your video title can solve a problem. For example, a title like “diet tips” is nowhere near as effective as a title like “How to lose 10 kilograms in 10 days.”
2. Encourage users to interact
You need to encourage users to comment on your video because the more comments you have on your video, the more popular your video looks. Video comments are actually one of the metrics YouTube uses to determine what should appear on the top of the search results so the more comments your videos have, the better its chances are on appearing at the top of the search results. Ending your video with a question is a great way to encourage engagement and discussion. For example, something like “what about you? Are you happy with your current situation?” can be a smart way of getting more video engagement.
3. Produce good quality videos
While it’s important to optimize your videos for YouTube, it’s also equally important to make sure you produce high-quality videos. Mobile phones are more than capable of recording high-resolution videos so you can start with that. However, if you’re really serious about making an impact with your videos, then it may be worth your time to buy a decent camera. There are some excellent ones out there that are priced at less than $500. That may seem like a large sum of money for some people, but you need to look at it as an investment if you want to make money from YouTube in the future.
4. Choose the right keywords
If you’re always doing Keyword research for Google, then you better start doing some more Keyword research on YouTube as well. Majority of YouTube keywords start with “how to,” but it’s always good practice to use Google Keyword Planner to check if your chosen keyword is actually getting any monthly searches. That should give you an indication of what keywords are already in use.
5. Tag effectively
Tagging is one of the most critical ways to rank your video in YouTube search results because it helps users find your video when they try to search for a topic related to your niche. Useful tagging means more video views that’s why you need only to use tags that are relevant to your niche. You don’t need too many tags, 10 to 12 should be more than enough.
6. Copy your competitor’s keywords
If one of your competitors is doing really well on their YouTube channel then why don’t you find out what they’re doing right? You’ll probably find that other businesses and YouTube channels are using similar keywords so might as well join the bandwagon.
7. Use YouTube to find your focus keyword
Did you know that you can use YouTube to help you determine the best keywords to use for your videos? All you have to do is use YouTube’s search bar to generate popular keywords. You can try it by typing in a word like “handbags,” you can see below that the search box will give you several suggestions. Awesome right?
8. Send an email to your mailing list
An email list is an effective form of marketing that never dies down. It’s pretty much like sending a mail to someone; the only difference is that it goes straight to your inbox. As soon as you release a new video, send an email blast to your mailing list and watch the views skyrocket.
9. Encourage people to subscribe
YouTube gives more priority to YouTube accounts with more subscribers so make sure you ask people to subscribe. Asking users to like and comment on your video is a must, but asking them to subscribe is a “double must” because if people subscribe to your videos, that means they’ll keep seeing your content over and over again.
10. Create an attention-grabbing thumbnail
Let’s face it; an eye-catching thumbnail is what grabs people’s attention when they’re trying to search for something. In fact, the majority of the people will click on a video just based on your thumbnail, so you have to make sure that your thumbnail stands out from the pack and that it specifically informs viewers what your video is really all about.
11. Use closed captions
You might not even know this option on YouTube, but if you click on this option the caption is going to appear – it’s actually meant for deaf people. But the thing is, these closed captions are search friendly, so it actually has an unexpected benefit.
12. Embed your own video
Once you’ve posted a new video, you need to embed your video everywhere. Why? Because embedding your video in various blogs and social media sites will result in more eyeballs and engagement in your video.
13. Begin your description with your focus keyword
If you know how to work SEO on your website, then you would know that adding a focus keyword in the first paragraph of your blog is a great way to make your post search engine friendly. Similarly, using your focus keyword in your video descriptions is a must because it’ll help YouTube’s bot to find your video and give it a higher ranking.
14. Review your video’s performance
If you want your subscribers to keep watching your videos again and again, then you need to have actionable stats that will help you figure out how your videos are performing. There’s what you call the watch time report, which helps you see determine how long people are spending on your videos. All you have to do is go to your channel icon and click on Creator Studio then go to “Analytics > Watch time” in the menu on the left side. There’s also the audience retention report which shows your average view duration and your top performing videos. You can view the report by going to “Analytics > Audience retention’ which is within your Creator Studio. There’s also the engagement reports where you can measure your overall performance; there’s the Subscribers report which lets you know how many subscribers you’ve gained or lost, and there’s the Share report which lets you know how much your videos have been shared.
15. Create playlists
It’s relatively easy to create a YouTube playlist once you’re logged on. First, you can start with your latest video then you click the “Add to” option underneath the video to add it to a playlist. Videos can be added to an existing playlist, or you can start a new one. Using playlists is an awesome technique that can definitely increase view time on your videos and retention.
16. Create compelling content
Let’s face it, no matter how well you optimize your videos or channel, if your content is rubbish then your efforts are useless. Content will always be king so make sure that you have content that is unique and that provides high value so that people would want to share it.
Editorial credit: Alexey Boldin / Shutterstock.com