There is no denying it: You have heard it. You have read it and you know it. Video was the best and the most effective medium popular brands used in their marketing campaigns in 2019. Although popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram and twitter saw meteoric rise in 2019, YouTube remains the giant, and the leader when it comes to video marketing.
Business owners, entrepreneurs, entertainers, news channels, local brands and just about anyone with an idea used YouTube as an effective medium to communicate to their audiences. If you still don’t know what YouTube can do for you here are ten reasons on how to grow your youtube channel… If you already have a YouTube channel or planning on starting one, here are ten ways on how to grow your Youtube channel.
1. Build Videos Around a Single Keyword Phrase.
This is the BEST way to build traffic to your channel. So before you get started think about what keyword phrase you want people to find your videos/channel. If you are an entertainer, or a coach you may want to give your videos different titles, but include your keyword phrase on your titles. For an example if your channel is about Sri Lanka cricket, and you want people to find you using those keywords then use it on your video titles. Also make sure the videos you upload have to be about Sri Lanka cricket. If you take the top TV channel YouTube videos they always mention the channel name with the video title when publishing on YouTube.
2. Entertainment, Education, Inspiration.
The effectiveness of your YouTube Channel will depend on the percentage of viewers watching your videos till completion. If your viewers are turned off by your content then they are not going to hand around till the end. The success of your videos relies on three things: Entertainment, Education and Inspiration. If your videos don’t deliver any of the above three traits, that means you need to start planning on how to make your future videos engaging.
3. Naming Playlists
YouTube playlists gives your channel to nestle videos that are similar to one another in a long list. So… if your channel is about Sri Lanka cricket, and you have videos relating to batting and bowling, then create unique playlists. So your playlists could be Sri Lanka cricket –batting or Sri Lanka cricket – bowling. You can always get creative with titles. YouTube audiences love videos that start with “Top 10” or “Top reasons”. So you can come up with a creative playlists such as Sri Lanka cricket – Top 10 performances. You can create videos that list top 10 catches, top 10 victories, top 10 batting performances or a radical video titles top 10 embarrassing losses. Your video titles can garner a ton of attention, so get creative.
4. Engage Your Audience
Quality social content always has its rewards. YouTube is a social network just like Facebook and YouTube rewards channels with great engagement – likes, dislikes, shares, overall time spent on channel, watch time, likes and dislikes, and most importantly, comments. So make it a point to ask users to comment on your videos or put out a text message (at the end of the video) and try to respond to every comment you receive and end it with a question (so they will respond back). This is a key point in building awareness to your channel.
5. Get Your Channel Branded
Remember everything that is communicated over the internet has a value (or not). If your intent is to entertain, educate and inspire, then what you communicate has value. Turn that value to a brand… yes I am talking about branding your YouTube channel. If your have rich, engaging and valuable content it is important to brand it visually. That means to give striking cover images, bios, video thumbnails, custom URLs (links back to your website for further inquiries), promotions, etc. If great content is generated, your audience will have a natural curiosity to find the source of their inspiration, entertainment or education. Do not deny them this.
6. Promote Your YouTube Channel on Other Social Platforms
The beauty of social media is that you can cross-promote content. The easiest way to build your audience during the initial stages is to promote your YouTube channel on social channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, , and Pinterest. Twitter and Instagram is another option but it does not allow any video imbeds – meaning you can only provide links to your videos that needs to be clicked. Twitter and Instagram followers rarely click links that take them away from their preferred site. To counter this problem, plan on making 60- second video intros, and create curiosity. Link them back to your YouTube channels for further inquiry.
7. Personalize Your Channel
A touch of personal branding works wonders in any medium of communication. In fact it is a “must have” on any visual communications, you plan on doing in 2019. Putting your face in front of the camera has reaped great results for bloggers, vloggers, fitness, success and life coaches, entrepreneurs or anyone with an ideology who wants to connect with his or her base. This does not mean that “every” video needs to see your beautiful face, but every video should have a personalized message from you. Even if you don’t want to appear in front of a camera, you should at least try to put an image of your face either on your videos or on your cover image. This build trust, and helps to create feelings.
8. Personalized Thumbnails
DO NOT rely on the automated thumbnails generated by you tube. You MUST create your own. Here is another place to put your face in your videos. You can also add in text to elaborate more on the content of your video. Again… you don’t have to do this on “every” video thumbnail, and a personalized thumbnail don’t mean you “must” put your image. Personalize the thumbnail to suit the video. Derrel Eves has a great YouTube channel that I personally follow. His videos are all about on how to become a successful YouTuber. I am sharing a few of his personalized thumbnails below just to give you an idea.
9. Uploading Frequency
Making just one video (or several) is not a strategy to build up a YouTube channel. I agree, committing to do more videos do sound intimidating at first, but to grow an audience, you must plan on doing at least a video a week. Consistency is of utmost importance to grow your channel, because once you build up an audience, they will expect to see more content. Creating more videos also suggest to YouTube that your channel is active and YouTube will give your videos more prominence over other videos that has similar content.
10. be Yourself – Originality Counts.
What works for others may not work for you. Trying to emulate others (of the same niche) is no guarantee of the success they enjoy. Be true to yourself. Be creative. Break barriers and have lofty expectations. Nothing is ever achieved without enthusiasm. As you keep making videos, keep your creativity open and look for new ways to improve your videos. YouTube is the BEST medium to communicate with video. In 2019, you should plan to make at least 10-12 videos for YouTube Marketing Sri Lanka 2019.
So there you go… Hope you find this article insightful and I hope it will help you build a successful YouTube community. Good luck – Vijith
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