If you want to attract an audience to your YouTube channel by promoting videos, this article will help you develop your project quickly and effectively.
How to generate new YouTube audience and promote videos
The hardest part of working with YouTube is engaging viewers and keeping them on your channel. Keywords help with this, but their main task is still to get your video into the search results. Viewer retention is the publisher’s responsibility to improve the behavioral ranking factors of YouTube videos.
YouTube favors content that is watched, discussed, rated, shared. YouTube video promotion solves the problem of getting users to subscribe to channels and spend more time on the platform. In this endeavor, YouTube is no different from websites, social media, television, and, in general, media.
As a reminder, YouTube’s algorithms primarily focus on three factors:
In addition, search and view histories are taken into account.
Viewer engagement and retention, as well as video quality criteria, are the topics of this piece. Real followers, likes and views in social media – https://lowcostsmm.com/
Engagement is measured by signals from YouTube viewers. Audience reactions can be compared to the behavioral ranking factors of websites in search engines.
Engagement and retention signals matter for search engine rankings, but especially when building recommendation feeds.
How to get into YouTube recommendations
Sources of organic traffic on YouTube:
- YouTube search, Yandex, Google. Keywords and video page optimization matter.
- YouTube recommendations. Engagement signals and search and view histories play a role.
- Channel subscriptions.
- External link clicks, including views of videos embedded in the content of external sites. https://doctorsmm.com/ – real promotion on the social media.
Many channels get more traffic from YouTube recommendations than from all other sources combined. It’s not surprising, therefore, that publishers are trying their best to “hit the rivers.”
Tellingly, YouTube has only one search results feed, albeit one with nearly 30 filters to sort the output.
Among the recommendation feeds on the video page are:
- All recommended videos.
- Recommendations from search results.
- Similar content.
- A feed of the author’s videos.
- Most recently published.
In the YouTube app for gadgets, you need to open any video and scroll down. A horizontal scroll bar will appear below the video with recommendation tabs for “Similar Content,” “Last Published Videos,” and more.
What to speak of video pages! The entire YouTube homepage is made up of recommendations to the user. It is formed with the viewer’s interests in mind, but also adds new content that can attract their attention or shows a quick increase in traffic. If you update the homepage, the selection of recommended videos will change.
In the recommendations, the user sees:
- videos from a channel he visited or subscribed to;
- videos that he once watched or opened but didn’t finish watching;
- videos that match the viewer’s interests;
- videos that are watched by a look-a-like audience;
- competitor videos of an open video, as they may contain similar keywords;
- and others – YouTube’s recommendation algorithms are well-developed and constantly improving.
Today, YouTube’s recommendation algorithms strive to determine a user’s intent, as correctly anticipating a viewer’s desires and interests is the best way to keep them on the platform.
If a video makes it into the recommendations but shows low depth of views and few interactions, YouTube will stop recommending it.
When a user is not happy with the selections the platform offers, they can be changed. To do this, the viewer has several options for action:
- selectively remove the details of the videos and search terms viewed from the history;
- pause the history recording;
- clear the entire history.
In a situation where history recording is paused, information about the viewed videos is not saved and is not taken into account when making recommendations.
YouTube does not hide the principles behind its ranking algorithms. In the YouTube Creators section for publishers, everyone will find a lot of relevant tips to ensure that videos don’t get lost in search and “fly into the rivers”.
Let’s take a closer look at the main behavioral factors for ranking videos on YouTube.
YouTube watch time
“Everything we do, we do for women,” said a writer. To paraphrase: everything we do on YouTube, we do to increase the watch time of a video and the channel as a whole.
Watch time or watch time is an important factor in ranking a video in search and a key factor in recommendations.
If users close a video almost immediately after they start watching it, YouTube will realize that viewers are not interested in it and will stop recommending it.
On the contrary, if people watch a short video to the end and stay on a long video for a long time, YouTube will recommend it more often. You can monitor your performance in YouTube Analytics.
Perhaps the best advice for increasing watch time would be this: make interesting videos. How exactly to do that is a huge topic. Film schools teach you how to make interesting videos.
Still, let’s dare to give some advice for expert videos, guides, and business reviews.
Do not let the viewer “fall asleep”.
YouTube is all about the picture, not the text. Think visually.
Shoot the object or person from different angles, make general, medium and close-up shots – there will be something to edit a non-monotonous video sequence from.
If possible, more movement in the frame, less static.
Watch the background.
Eliminate long takes:
- lengthy branded intros at the beginning of the video;
- long intros at the beginning and goodbyes at the end of the video;
- keep the outline just long enough to make it clear what’s going on in it – no longer;
- visually speed up the video if you need to show a long process (the timelapse effect).
In the first few seconds, make it clear that the viewer has come to the right place: say the title of the video, indicate the theme of the release.
Put the main message or main benefit at the beginning of the video – don’t expect all viewers to watch the video to the end.
Capture attention:
- Promise a bonus at the end of the video – this is how you keep some of your viewers engaged;
- Start a long interview or webinar with a punchy, intriguing, funny segment.
Improve your video shooting and editing skills. It’s easy to find guides for beginners and more experienced writers online.
Choose the best video length
There is no fixed video length for the best ranking and promotion of videos on YouTube. An ideal release should last exactly the right amount of time so that the author has time to communicate what they want to communicate and the viewer doesn’t get bored by the length.
The duration of competing videos can serve as a benchmark for timing. Other metering benchmarks are YouTube’s sorting filters:
- videos less than 4 minutes;
- 4 to 20 minutes;
- more than 20 minutes.
Short videos:
- Are more willing to start watching them;
- are more likely to be watched to the end;
- but they do little to increase viewing time.
Long videos:
- Are only started to be watched when clearly interested;
- are less likely to be watched to the end;
- but they easily increase viewing time;
- generate more viewer reactions – comments, likes.
According to Backlinko’s research, the average duration of a video on YouTube’s homepage is almost 15 minutes. It makes sense: YouTube likes long videos because they increase watch time. At the same time, the gap between 4 and 20 minutes is time that many viewers are easily willing to give to YouTube.
Keep an eye on the technical quality of the video
It seems paradoxical, but the main technical requirement for a video is quality sound. Many video bloggers talk about the importance of good sound on YouTube.
Post videos in a resolution of at least 720p, or better 1080p or 4K. Today it is not difficult, even smartphones provide high picture quality. A Backlinko study showed that 68.2% of content on the YouTube homepage is in HD (1280 x 720p). The upshot is that high quality videos are more likely to make it to the top.
Now videos with any aspect ratio are displayed correctly. But it’s better to stick to the 16:9 format, because that’s what users are used to seeing.
YouTube has official recommendations for choosing all the main technical parameters of the video. It’s frustrating when viewers quit watching because of technical imperfections in a video.
Keep the viewer on your channel
YouTube takes into account not only the viewing time but also the duration of the session. A session starts when a user logs into YouTube and ends when that user leaves it.
After watching the video, transfer the viewer to your other videos: the more of them in one session, the more the algorithms will offer in recommendations.
You can do this through:
- tooltips – messages that pop up on top of the video and can take the viewer to other videos or the publisher’s playlist;
- end screensavers – video previews that appear at the end of the video and motivate the viewer to watch non-stop the author’s other videos;
- playlists – collections of videos united by one topic.
We talked more about cues, end screensavers and playlists in the first article on YouTube promotion. These features are provided in the Creative Studio settings – they are activated in a couple of clicks.
Viewer reactions on YouTube
Promoting videos on YouTube will be difficult without connecting with your audience. Encourage viewers to respond to the videos they watch. YouTube believes that comments, likes/dislikes, video sharing, and other behavioral activities are less susceptible to spoofing and give the video a credible rating.
Work with comments
Commenting is one of the strongest signals for ranking algorithms. It doesn’t matter whether the comments under the video are positive or negative. YouTube values live traffic. And discussions under a post are a direct proof of viewers’ activity. The platform’s algorithms see that the video arouses the audience’s interest, and the video rises in recommendations.
Allow users to leave comments on the video. You can delete a recording or block a viewer at any time.
Address viewers directly and offer not only to like and subscribe to the channel – everyone does that – but also to comment on the video and share it on social networks.
Anything can prompt users to leave comments: a hot topic, a question, a joke, a contest or even a mistake. The emotional reaction that arises in the course of communication most often increases viewing time.
Don’t forget to respond to comments.
Do not delete all negative feedback: firstly, subscribers will quickly notice it and will definitely not approve, and secondly, criticism can become a source of ideas for you.
Interact with viewers in the comments with mentions. Comment on other channels so that yours will comment back.
It’s high-flying to use video comments as a source of metadata. When interacting with viewers, use keywords and ask questions so that users themselves can use the right keywords and phrases.
Offer to give likes
The situation is a little different with likes and dislikes. They are not as important as comments, but they also show viewers’ reactions to content.
There is almost no difference between likes and dislikes – the algorithms evaluate them in almost the same way.
Invite viewers to “like” the video if they like it. Include a call to like and subscribe in the video description.
Make content that people will want to share
When users actively share a video on social media, it increases the likelihood that it will win when sorted. YouTube’s algorithms take social signals into account as an important ranking factor. They explicitly demonstrate engagement. Video distribution is tracked in YouTube Analytics reports.
It is noteworthy that the mentioned three factors – comments, likes, shares – were chosen by the Brand Analytics platform to calculate the monthly ranking of YouTube channels, see the screenshot below. Experts believe that the sum of these indicators better characterizes engagement than the number of channel subscribers and video views.
YouTube algorithms give some weight to almost any behavioral activity on the platform. Repeat views, adding your video to viewers’ playlists, and clicking on active elements, such as timecodes in the description, are useful for promoting videos on YouTube.
Number of views is no longer #1
Number of views was the #1 ranking factor in the past. It was based on a simple idea: more views means a higher quality video.
Now YouTube prioritizes wochtime, engagement signals, search and view stories. As a result, releases with relatively low view counts often make their way to the top on YouTube.
Still, the number of views still correlates with ranking and recommendations, because more views means more comments, likes, and unfollows. In other words, views affect ranking, but through social signals.
Don’t discount the fact that users often sort videos based on the number of views.
Build up the number of subscribers
If other factors are equal, a video from a channel with more subscribers will be shown higher. As a rule, old channels have a lot of subscribers.
But even channels with a small audience have a chance to get to the top on YouTube. Unlike Google, which favors big brands, YouTube supports the content of newcomers and ordinary companies. Their videos often appear in the “New to You”, “Last Published” and beyond recommendation feeds.
A video that generates subscribers is a clear signal of quality for YouTube. Algorithms take into account not only the absolute number of subscribers, but also the dynamics of their growth after the video is published.
A clear call to action after viewing, namely: subscribe – increases the number of subscriptions to the channel. Make the call at least twice: in the middle of the video, when you have already shown your expertise and gained the trust of the audience, and at the end of the video.
Use both verbal calls to action and visual elements to indicate to viewers what they should do and how important it is to the channel and to them.
When a viewer subscribes to a channel, only random notifications that YouTube’s algorithm picks up will be turned on by default. The viewer will start receiving all notifications if he clicks the bell icon after subscribing to the channel. Suggesting he do so.
Lifehacks to improve engagement on YouTube
A few tricks that improve engagement and make it easier to promote a video on YouTube:
- If the video is long and you only want to show a small snippet of it, it’s easy to do. Rewind the video to the desired moment, right-click on the image and select “Copy URL of time-stamped video”. You can send this link to your colleagues and they will start watching from that point.
- YouTube has an option to get a link to subscribe to your channel. It can be inserted in emails, posts, in the description of your video, in the video itself. This is an effective way to increase the number of subscribers. It is enough to add (without space) ?sub_confirmation=1 to the channel URL.
- Decoding audio into text takes a lot of time. You can radically speed up the process with YouTube’s tools. Click on the three-dot icon below the player and click “View video transcript”. The subtitle text will appear to the right of the player, you just need to copy it and then edit it well. The option is available only on desktops.
- Make videos on trending topics. As soon as a hot topic appears, make a video on it, but with the channel’s theme in mind. Add relevant keywords. This approach is called newsjacking and can give an explosive increase in traffic.
YouTube traffic from external sources
Promoting videos on YouTube involves seeding videos on external sites. On your websites, social media accounts, all the content islands you manage, post links to your videos, playlists or channel. Or embed videos in the content of your sites. YouTube stats won’t be affected: views of the embedded video will count.
Allow others to embed your content to help it spread. An embed code snippet is available for each video.
Seeding your video on external sites has multiple benefits. We counted seven benefits:
- Additional traffic to your videos and channel.
- Building link mass to the channel.
- Improved behavioral factors on external sites where video is embedded – a plus in ranking.
- Viewed videos remain in viewers’ history – the system may recommend some other video of your channel to them in the future.
- YouTube prioritizes the videos that start a session of interaction with the platform. Videos that are clicked on via a backlink are just that.
- Popularizing the publisher’s brand whether it’s the company brand, the channel name, or the author’s name.
- Reinforcement of engagement signals as a result of a spike in traffic after a video is published.
The last point needs clarification.
It is better to place links and embed videos outside of YouTube immediately after the video is published. The fact is that video hosting algorithms attach great importance to the dynamics of engagement signals in the first 60 minutes and the first 24 hours after the video became available to viewers. The performance of the first hour and the first 24 hours determine how well a release fires on YouTube.
Hubspot published the results of a survey of 300+ marketers on when it’s best to publish videos on YouTube. According to those surveyed, it’s most effective to upload videos on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays. The best time for publishing on YouTube is recognized as the intervals from 18:00 to 21:00 (31%), from 15:00 to 18:00 (23%) and from 12:00 to 15:00 (19%).
When placing links on external resources, use as anchors the same keywords used in the description of the video.
Advertise your channel for money and for free to get a constant inflow of new audience. Promote your channel not only online, but also in traditional media – let as wide an audience as possible know about you.
What kind of videos YouTube considers quality
Video quality is the third ranking factor on YouTube after relevance and engagement. The platform applies different quality metrics to different videos for different intents.
When a viewer is looking for music or something entertaining, YouTube considers the relevance, novelty, and popularity of the video. When the query is about news, politics, finance, science or medicine, it is important for users to find reliable information. In these types of topics, YouTube analyzes E-A-T signals (expertise, authority, reliability of the publisher).
The quality of information presented on a channel or in a video is assessed by experts from all over the world – assessors who are trained according to detailed publicly available rules. YouTube also calls on certified experts, such as doctors, when content contains health-related information.
Videos that are categorized as borderline content are removed from recommendations.
To self-assess the quality of your video, ask yourself questions:
- Does your business video have a purpose?
- Do viewers benefit from watching it?
- Is the content consistent with the scientific or professional consensus on the topic the video exposes?
- Are claims supported by citations to authoritative sources?
- Is it clear from the video and description who the author of the video is?
- Is it explained why viewers can trust the author?
- Are the title and preview free of clickbait?
- Is the metadata, credits, description free of errors/typos?
If all or most of the answers are positive, YouTube will probably recognize the video as high-quality and will rank it above counterparts with insufficient E-A-T elaboration.
The publisher’s expertise is confirmed by the phrases that the algorithm will probably look for in the text: “we tried it,” “we analyzed it,” “we conducted a study and based on it we recommend it,” “the article is medically approved,” and so on.
In 2020, Google created the How YouTube Works website, where it answered frequent questions about how the video hosting works. In particular, it talked about evaluating the quality of content. This site complements the rules of YouTube, non-compliance with which leads to the ban of a video or the entire channel.
YouTube for business
“Even the most beautiful girl in France cannot give more than what she has,” the saying goes. YouTube will disappoint if used incorrectly.
Yes, it is possible to sell through YouTube. A video page can generate traffic to a website. Still, YouTube is more of a PR platform than an instant convert to applications.
Entrepreneurs and marketers use YouTube mainly for showing expertise and branding. It’s for businesses with wide funnels and long decision times.
YouTube is about content and usefulness, not direct advertising, which on YouTube only repels. Video should benefit the viewer, so study your audience, their needs, doubts, fears and work them into your video content.
According to Ascend2’s research, the most popular video formats in B2B topics are:
- product reviews – they are chosen by 39% of buyers:
- product presentations – also watched by 39% of respondents;
- tutorials and training videos – chosen by 33% of people;
- live broadcasts and webinars – they are relevant for 31% of buyers;
- educational videos – they are of interest to 20% of buyers.
Adhere to universal rules accepted on the Internet, so that video promotion on YouTube will be successful:
- Follow the chosen topic. Use the same or similar keywords in each video. If you shoot about everything, YouTube won’t know what queries to show your video for and who to recommend it to.
- Create original videos that provide new value. Like search engines, YouTube doesn’t like non-unique content.
- Within a video, stick to one format. For a channel, on the other hand, make videos in different formats to diversify your feed. We’ve collected 44 content formats for businesses. Many of them are mastered by video and look great on YouTube.
- Release videos regularly and consistently – show that you are a systematic author. To make sure subscribers don’t miss fresh releases, suggest they turn on your YouTube bell – notifications of your new releases.
Take a closer look at the Hero-Hub-Help content strategy. It’s designed specifically for video marketing and involves alternating useful serialized content with something sensational that’s long and carefully prepared.
Many business leaders are stopped by the belief that video production is an expensive endeavor. Today, this is not always the case. You can make a quality video with a smartphone, not to mention a DSLR camera. Detailed guides have been developed on how a small company can set up in-house video production.
Video content builds brand trust for 93% of customers – the conclusion of the mentioned Ascend2 study. It’s clear why: audiences see you for who you are.
Some more statistics:
- According to eMarketer’s 2021 report, 50% of marketers said they plan to increase their investment in YouTube in 2022. 20% of respondents said they plan to invest the most in the platform.
- 81% of users will choose video over text instructions when learning how to use a product.
- Users spend more time on YouTube than any other social network – 23.7 hours per month.
- The Federation Council estimated the Russian YouTube audience at 90 million users.
YouTube opens up huge opportunities to promote your brand through video marketing.
Engagement through YouTube Shorts
Channels that publish long-form video content and short vertical YouTube Shorts videos are growing faster. This observation was shared by the platform’s staff in July 2022. They answered questions about how the Shorts service’s algorithms work.
Recently, the audience of YouTube Shorts reached 1.5 billion users per month. The short format on YouTube reached the level of popularity of TikTok in less than two years after its launch.
The main secret to the success of short videos is the recommendation algorithms, which:
- are great at keeping viewers on the platform;
- allow to increase the number of subscribers for free and quickly.
TikTok, Shorts, Reels (a product of Meta, a company recognized as extremist and banned in Russia), VK Clips, Yappy select videos for each viewer, taking into account their viewing history, comments, likes, subscriptions and other behavioral signals.
Keywords in the video title, description, hashtags matter when searching on the services.
“I don’t Google anymore. I search on TikTok. I need facial cosmetics – I go to TikTok. I don’t know how to cook a dish – I go to TikTok. Why do I even need to google when I can go to TikTok and find an understandable 15-second video?” – opined ticktocker @stazzylicious, whose emotional video viralized this summer.
To Zoomers, short video services have replaced search engines, social networks, and even more so websites. Many teenagers sincerely do not understand why to use other services in principle.
The audiences of traditional YouTube and Shorts are different. For this reason, some experts advise creating two channels – for mature audiences and a channel with YouTube Sorts for young people.
Realizing that the short vertical meter has come seriously and for a long time, Google (owner of YouTube) is working to increase the number of short videos in search results. In addition, in the future, the search engine may start using this format for educational purposes – for example, in reference documentation.
Businesses can safely recommend Shorts. You should create separate videos for placement or make a cut of the best moments from the main clips. While the well-known social network is blocked, and TikTok has restricted the publication of videos, more audience is moving to Shorts, which can subscribe to your channel.
Conclusion
Successful video promotion on YouTube is almost impossible without taking behavioral ranking factors into account. To get your videos to the top of search results and recommendations, focus your efforts on the following aspects:
- Make interesting and useful videos that people will watch to the end.
- Strive to keep the viewer on your channel.
- Work with comments.
- Invite users to like your videos, share them on social media, subscribe to your channel, enable notifications of new releases.
- Promote your videos and channel on external platforms.
- Keep the quality bar of your videos up to E-A-T standards.
- Try YouTube Shorts, especially if your products are geared toward youth.
