7 Tips to Promote Your YouTube Channel

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Video

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300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, which means you have quite some competition. Here are seven steps you can take for a better chance to be seen – and heard – and to increase your subscriber numbers.

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Make the Most out of Your Video Descriptions
Put a link to your website and your social accounts in your description – best is an “About.me” link where you can list the links to all your web appearances – and ask people to click! Important: place the most important text / links into the first three lines! For the rest to read viewers have to click on “read more”. You want to have your message seen at the first glimpse.
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Design a Stunning Thumbnail
You never get a second chance for a first good impression. Your thumbnail is the first thing people see when they open their YouTube page. Create an enticing photo you can be proud of and that give a glimpse what your video is about. Upload a custom thumbnail when you upload your video. Google suggests:
Image formats: .JPG, .GIF, .BMP, .PNG.
Minimum width of 640 pixels resolution of 1280X720
2MB limit, a 16 width: 9height aspect ratio
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Keywords for Better SEO
There are many tools on the web to help with basic keyword research, for example the Google Keyword Planner tool and “Best SEO Tools“. Google’s Keyword Planner is for building new Search Network campaigns or expanding existing ones. You can search for keyword and ad group ideas, see how a list of keywords might perform, and even create a new keyword list by adding several lists of keywords together. Use those keywords in specific places throughout your video page.
Don’t stick only to titles and meta descriptions that match the exact keywords, use more engaging ones. Google’s algorithms have the ability to recognize different words or search terms with the same meaning. You can also work with SimilarSiteSearch, a mixture of keyword based searches and directory listings. Research your competition, always check out other videos too. After all: YouTube is the worlds second-largest search engine.
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Use Annotations
These are little pieces of text that will appear over your video, and on which a viewer can click on at any time. Annotations increase the number of clicks tremendously! With annotations you can layer text, links, and hotspots over your video. They help you enrich the video experience by adding information, interactivity and engagement, such as subscribe to the channel, watch more videos, like or share a video and leave a comment. Decide the length you want this overlap to start, and when you want it to appear.  There are five different types of annotations to choose from:

  • Speech bubble: for creating pop-up speech bubbles with text.
  • Note: for creating pop-up boxes containing text.
  • Title: for creating a text overlay to title your video.
  • Label: for creating a label to call out and name a specific part of your video.
  • Spotlight: for highlighting areas in a video; when the user moves the mouse over these areas the text you enter will appear.

Once you’ve chosen which type of annotation you want to insert, use the settings underneath the “Add annotation” button to change the font size, font color, or background color.
Position the annotation on the video by dragging and dropping it within the video player.

Click the “Link” box underneath the “Start” and “End” settings.  You can choose whether you want the annotation to link to another video, your channel, a playlist, a fundraising site or direct the users to subscribe to your channel. Learn more about setting up annotations – creation, customization, and editing – in this video.
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Turn on the “Embed” Feature
The “embed” feature allows others to take your video and then publish it on their website, blog, social media sites, channel, etc., which will help you gain even more exposure.  Specify that you must get credit each time your video is re-published.  You can switch to the embed feature by visiting the Video Manager, clicking “Edit” under the video you want to edit, then test at “Advanced Settings” that the embed option is checked.
It’s easy to embed your video for viewers: copy and paste the link that will show up when viewer clicks “share”.  A click to “embed” brings up the HTML code, that can be copied and pasted into a website or blog, and will show the videos image on the web presence.
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Embed a Watermark
It allows viewers to directly subscribe to your channel if they hover over the watermark. This works by uploading your logo or another image across all the YouTube videos in your channel. You can find this watermark feature by clicking on “My Channel” and navigating to “Branding” . You can click this link if you’re already signed into YouTube. As you can see, you have full control over how long and when your video (or watermark if you clicked Branding) will be displayed. You can create a custom message to go with your video. Simply update and you’re set to go. I almost forgot to mention: Taking ads off ensures that people who visit your channel page are seeing just you and only you, and not a whole bunch of unrelated images that might confuse them.

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Promote Your Videos in Your Web Presence
From your email newsletter, to your blog, to your email signature, and certainly all your social media accounts: post the link to your YouTube videos. You will have great chance that people are visiting your channel for one video and then clicking around to all of your related videos. Important is that you have more to show than only one single video! To have one video only is a bit pathetic, it’ the same as having only one book for readers to offer…

Excerpt from our upcoming book: 111 Tips to Market Your Book for Free

 

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