YouTube is severely underutilized in the marketing world! The platform has over a billion users, but only 9% of small businesses use the platform to promote their content. If you’ve given up on YouTube as a tactic, you likely had poor engagement with your videos. Let’s look at 10 tips to boost your views!

1. Get the Basics Down

You need a consistent visual identity for your channel and your brand. That means your channel icon, channel art, thumbnails, and title cards, etc. need to be visually cohesive.

Make sure that you have a complete and informative ‘About’ section and up-to-date contact information so all your potential customers and future brand partners can get in touch.

2. Custom Thumbnails

In general, thumbnails perform best with brightly colored backgrounds, close-ups of faces, text overlays, and subtle branding like a watermark or logo.

You also need to stay within the proper technical specs:

• Aspect Ratio: 16:9 
• Resolution: 1280×720
• File-Size: less than 2MB
• Format: .JPG, .GIF, .BMP, or .PNG

3. Create Playlists

By organizing and creating playlists on YouTube, you minimize the chance that your viewer will hop to another channel after your first video plays. 

When viewers are engaging with content in a playlist the next video begins as soon as the previous one ends. If content is not in a playlist, as viewing ends a screen with suggested videos pops up (and they may not be yours).

4. Cards and End Screens

Outside of playlists, your options for bypassing the YouTube algorithm and influencing your viewer’s next choice are slim. Two of the only tools available are clickable cards and end screens.

Cards pop-up and can be annoying, so make sure if you utilize this tactic that they add value and don’t leave your viewer feeling spammed.

End screens placed at the close of your video are a visual call to action that allows you to encourage viewers towards your other content.

Most viewers don’t watch videos all the way through – that’s why cards and end screens are important. If someone has made it all the way to the end of your video, they’re likely more invested and willing to respond to a call-to-action like subscribing or checking out your website. 

5. Encourage Subscription

Because of the YouTube algorithm, the more followers you have, the more likely your video is to be served to viewers as soon as you hit publish. You can ask your viewers to subscribe, add a watermark that invites subscription, and include CTA in your cards and end screens.

6. Include Subtitles

You have the choice of uploading an SRT file, doing auto-sync for your video, or creating closed captions in YouTube. Whichever method you choose, providing subtitles will increase your views by making your videos more accessible and easier to follow.

7. Invite Guests

If you can, invite someone to be a guest contributor in your videos. You’ll open up the opportunity to bring their audience to your content and vice versa. Ideally, choose a partner that has similar values you align with and someone you would actually have fun creating content with. If you make more than one video together make sure that you create a playlist so that your viewers can see all your co-content in one place.

8. Make Metadata King

YouTube has stated that their algorithm recommends videos from the same channel, videos that have high engagement, videos a person might like based on their viewing history, and videos with related or similar metadata. Metadata is the titles, tags, and descriptions of your videos on YouTube.

Really, in that list – metadata is the only thing you can influence. YouTube keywords aren’t listed visibly. If you’d like to do some keyword research with popular videos in your industry, right-click on the webpage and select “View Page Source.” Use Control-F for “keywords” until you find the list.

9. Engage with Your Community

Engaging with YouTube viewers increases the chance that they’ll care about your brand and that they’ll subscribe to your channel. Easy ways to engage with your community are to reply to comments, run a contest, make reaction videos, or ask to include viewers content in your own videos.

10. Create Value with Your Content

Last, but not least, create great content that no one else is creating. There’s not a hack or a shortcut for this one. To create great content, zero in on your audience or an industry niche to focus on. Lean into your expertise, your unique value proposition, whatever makes you different and superb in your industry. Content marketing can’t be sustained with tricks and hacks, you’ve got to add value to your customer’s life.

If you only take away one tip from today, let it be the last one. Create value for your viewers. Does high-quality content instantly guarantee tons of YouTube views and followers? No – but without it, no other advice will generate that sort of traction.

If you need help creating content or strategizing your YouTube content marketing, get in touch with us. We’re always here to help.