New kids on the block, like TikTok, are making a huge impact on social media right now, but one video-sharing platform still rules all: YouTube. It’s the second most-visited site on the web, with more than 2.1 billion users worldwide.
If you are a budding YouTuber looking to increase your channel’s visibility and reach a wider audience, you are in the right place. Promoting your YouTube channel is crucial for gaining subscribers and boosting views on your videos.
Simply creating and publishing content—even high-quality content—isn’t enough. To get your YouTube channel to take off, you need to promote it. According to Statista;
Every single minute, 500 hours of new content is uploaded to YouTube. That’s 12,000 hours of new content every single day.
It means your three-minute video has a ton of competition! Without promotion, your YouTube content, no matter how good it is, could end up never getting the views it deserves. Fortunately, with the free YouTube channel promotion tips and ideas we’re including here, you’ll be able to catapult your content from the depths of YouTube anonymity and get more views and followers.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore 15 effective strategies to help you promote your YouTube channel and attract more viewers.
What Counts As A View on YouTube?
Views represent the total number of times your video or channel has been watched. Every time a viewer starts playing a video and watches it for at least 30 seconds, YouTube registers it as a view. Even if a person watches your video multiple times, each instance counts as a new view. This counting system applies universally, whether the viewer accesses the content via a smartphone or desktop computer. Moreover, views are tallied regardless of where the video is watched, including embedded players on websites or when shared on social media platforms like Facebook.
Additionally, it counts as a view whenever someone navigates to your channel page. For detailed insights into your channel’s performance, you can access YouTube Analytics and navigate to the Overview tab, where you can track the number of views your channel has received over the past 28 days.
Why Are Views Important on YouTube?
Views play a crucial role in shaping the YouTube algorithm’s behavior. The more views your video accumulates, the more likely the algorithm is to promote it to a wider audience. This increased visibility can lead to a snowball effect, driving even more views and engagement. Furthermore, views are a key component of monetizing your content on YouTube, as higher view counts can translate into increased revenue.
Beyond monetary considerations, views are essential for enhancing brand awareness and fostering brand loyalty. While it may take time to reach your desired level of viewership, consistently accumulating views is vital for connecting with potential customers at the top of the marketing funnel. Building a substantial viewership not only boosts your channel’s credibility but also helps you achieve your long-term objectives.
15 Best Ways to Promote a YouTube Channel
To promote your YouTube channel for free, you have to follow the below quick methods for your channel’s organic growth.
- Understanding your YouTube niche/audience
- Knowing the YouTube keywords you want to target
If you’re good in both of these areas, here’s how to promote your YouTube channel for free!
- Choose the Google Friendly keywords in Your Headlines, Descriptions & Tags.
- Fill out your Profile Information
- Create Compelling Content
- Customize your Thumbnails
- Make Evergreen Videos
- Post Videos in Multiple Parts to Increase Curiosity
- Optimize Your Video Descriptions (Include Metadata)
- Post Regularly & Promote Your Channel on Social Media & Forums.
- Engage With the YouTube Community
- Run a Contest.
- Create Playlists for Your YouTube Videos
- Try a Q&A
- Give Live Streaming a Try
- Increase Engagement With Calls To Action
- Collaborate With Other Creators And Brands
Now, let’s discuss each of the methods one by one.
1. Choose Google Friendly keywords in Your Headlines, Descriptions & Tags
Hundreds of thousands of videos are uploaded to YouTube every day. To ensure your videos reach your target audience, you need to incorporate keywords into your headlines, descriptions, and tags.
There are free tools like Google Keyword Planner, which can be accessed from your Google Ads dashboard. Don’t worry — you don’t have to run ads to use it. All you need is a Google account.
“Pro-Tip: One of the simplest ways to find the right keywords without using any tools is to enter your video’s topic in the YouTube search bar, and use the autosuggest to find words and phrases you should incorporate into your content.”
2. Fill out your Profile Information
Many YouTubers skip the profile section and get straight to content creation. But a compelling profile is one of the easiest ways to promote your YouTube channel—and boost your SEO.
Here are some best practices for creating an effective YouTube profile:
- Be consistent: Use a similar color palette, writing style, and layout as you do on your website and other social channels.
- Optimize your YouTube channel description: This is a great place to add keywords. YouTube penalizes “tag stuffing,” but including a couple of keywords can go a long way.
- Keep viewers coming back for more: When and how often will you post new content? Let fans know your schedule—then make sure you stick to it.
- Include contact info: You never know who might want to reach you. Make it easy for them and you could land some great partnerships.
3. Create Compelling Content
Compelling content captures viewers’ attention, provides value, and fosters audience connection. Key aspects include understanding your audience, investing in quality production, and storytelling, highlighting your channel’s unique value, and maintaining consistency in posting. By focusing on creating compelling content, you can attract and retain viewers, driving long-term channel growth and success.
4. Customize Your Thumbnails
One of the simplest yet effective tactics to promote your YouTube channel is creating custom thumbnails. Think of your title and thumbnail as a sort of one-two punch to grab a viewer’s attention.
By default, YouTube snags a screenshot from any given video and uses it for the thumbnail. Unfortunately, sometimes the image it grabs will be a blurry shot of you adjusting the camera or a transition.
Not a good look, right?
Creating thumbnails yourself not only makes your videos look more appealing at a glance but also signals a certain sense of professionalism.
Thumbnails don’t have to be rocket science, either. You can even create a template with a particular font and style to make it more consistent and on-brand. This is made especially easy with the help of image creation tools such as Canva. Here’s a good example from Binging with Babish:
5. Make Evergreen Videos
Upload a few timeless videos that your subscribers will return to again and again. Popular evergreen content includes how-to guides, tools and resource lists, stat collections, tip roundups, and more.
This kind of evergreen content can rank well for years, increasing traffic and boosting SEO.
6. Post Videos in Multiple Parts to Increase Curiosity
Instead of uploading a single long video, you break it down into smaller, digestible segments and release them separately. By doing so, you create anticipation and intrigue among your viewers, encouraging them to return for the next installment to find out what happens next.
This strategy taps into the psychological principle of curiosity, as viewers are naturally drawn to incomplete stories or information. By teasing them with a partial narrative or content, you can compel them to stay tuned for the next part, driving up both views and engagement for your channel.
7. Optimize Your Video Descriptions & Include Metadata
You should pay attention to optimizing your video descriptions by including relevant metadata. This optimization can improve your videos’ visibility, attract more viewers, and ultimately grow your channel’s audience.
Here’s how you can optimize your video description & include metadata;
- Optimize Your Video Descriptions: This part emphasizes the importance of optimizing the text descriptions accompanying your YouTube videos. Optimization involves crafting detailed, informative, and engaging descriptions that not only describe the video content but also contain relevant keywords and phrases to improve searchability and attract viewers.
- Include Metadata: Metadata refers to the additional information about your video, including title, tags, and description. By including relevant metadata in your video descriptions, you can provide more context to both viewers and YouTube’s algorithm. This metadata helps YouTube understand the content of your videos better, making them more discoverable to users searching for related topics.
8. Post Regularly & Promote Your Channel on Social Media & Forums
In every YouTube video I post, I always take advantage of the platform’s “cards” feature. This feature allows you to promote a video across different videos on your platform.
This works by posting a small icon at the corner of your video that links to another video or playlist. You can set the duration for how long you want the card to appear. Below is an example of what a card looks like.
Another way to cross-promote your videos is to include an end screen. Have you ever watched a YouTube video and seen clickable ads for other videos appear in the final 10 seconds? That’s an end screen, and it encourages viewers to explore more of your content and subscribe.
9. Engage With the YouTube Community
Although you might not think of YouTube as a social network per se, the platform does represent a thriving community where users are engaging via content, profiles, “likes” and comments.
Sounds pretty “social” if you ask us.
As noted earlier, any sort of interaction with your viewers is seen as a positive signal to YouTube. If nothing else, engaging with your subscribers can help you foster a stronger connection with your audience. “Liking” comments only take a few seconds, as does pinning a top comment as a sort of personal note to your subscribers.
For example, the music channel Artists Of Morality regularly likes and responds to comments on its recent uploads. The channel’s creator regularly engages with subscribers to show appreciation and answer questions, too. She even posts a call to action or challenges in her pinned comments like the one below:
Artists of Morality’s YouTube comment section features several interactions with subscriber comments and a pinned comment. The pinned comment challenges viewers to comment on the timestamp of a bride and groom walking in the video for a shout-out in the next video.
Just as you’d respond to comments and engage with your followers on any other social network, YouTube is no different.
10. Run a Contest
Running a contest is one of our favorite ways to promote a YouTube channel for free. Contests tend to bring in a lot of attention and, when done correctly, will get you more YouTube subscribers without artificially inflating your subscriber count with folks who are just there for the contest and aren’t interested in your brand or your content.
We recommend giving away something closely related to your niche to keep out those who aren’t genuinely interested. No matter your niche, you should be able to come up with something exciting to give away. If you’re a life coach, for example, you might want to give away a free goal-setting session or even a month of weekly life coaching sessions. The more value there is to the prize, the more interest you’ll generate.
Don’t forget that you’re running the contest to get more subscribers to your channel. Be sure to make subscribing to your channel one of the criteria for entering!
11. Create Playlists for Your YouTube Videos
Playlists are a great way to get people watching more of your content in one go. That’s because these collections are a little addicting. As soon as one video ends, the next begins.
Playlists also help with discoverability. Videos in a playlist are more likely to appear in YouTube’s Suggested Videos column. Plus, playlist titles are a great place to add keywords.
You can create effective playlists in two ways:
- On your channel page, group existing videos together under a common theme. This keeps viewers on your channel and not your competitor’s.
- Collect videos from other relevant influencers or partners. This signals to your viewers that you’re “in the know” and encourages them to share your playlists.
The Cut’s “Lineup” playlist is more than a little addicting.
12. Try a Q&A
Audience Q&As are one of the most effective ways to build a community on YouTube. Ask your subscribers to send you questions by comment, email, or tweet. Then create a video to address them.
By showing your fans that they matter, you’ll boost watch time, view counts, and engagement. Plus, Q&As can be lifesavers when you’re out of fresh content ideas.
13. Give Live Streaming a Try
YouTube is one of the internet’s most popular livestream platforms, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic when in-person events were canceled. Take advantage of this by creating content that engages viewers.
Webinars, Q&As, and events all work well live. Browsing YouTube Live is another great way to get inspired.
14. Increase Engagement With Calls To Action
Include a compelling CTA in your video to make the most of your hard-earned audience.
Maybe you want to push your viewers to like or share your video. Maybe you want them to click through to your website. Whatever the “ask,” the best CTAs are always clear, compelling, and urgent.
YouTube has a call-to-action extension for in-stream ads. But there are also lots of free ways to add CTAs to videos:
- Direct host mentions: Look into the camera and verbally tell viewers what you want them to do.
- Video descriptions: Ask viewers to comment, share, or like your video in the description itself.
- End cards: Add a customizable screenshot to the beginning, middle, or end of the video. These powerful visual cues add punch to your CTA.
15. Collaborate With Other Creators And Brands
A tactic some of the biggest YouTube stars use to grow their following is collaborating with other users. Each collaboration gives you exposure to a new audience. The best part is those new viewers are more likely to subscribe to your channel since you’re working with a content creator they already know, like, and trust.
The key to a successful YouTube collaboration is finding the right partner. You want to collaborate with content creators who share similar passions with your brand so your video comes off as authentic. This now-classic collaboration between BuzzFeed and Purina is a prime example of a thoughtful collaboration that doesn’t feel overly promotional.
In the last, you can run a paid YouTube ad campaign but we don’t encourage you to do this. By following the methods mentioned above, we are sure that you can easily promote your YouTube channel & gain organic followers.
Promote Your YouTube Channel Through Data-Driven Digital Marketing Agency
In conclusion, promoting your YouTube channel requires dedication, creativity, and strategic planning. From optimizing your video content and engaging with your audience to leveraging social media platforms and collaborating with other creators, there are numerous opportunities to promote your channel and drive organic growth.
Remember, consistency is key, so stay committed to your content creation schedule and continue refining your promotional tactics over time. Therefore, expert guidance and support are needed to maximize your YouTube channel’s potential. Consider partnering with CraxyNinja, a data-driven digital marketing agency specializing in YouTube promotion and audience engagement.
With our tailored strategies and proven expertise, we’ll help you achieve your goals and take your YouTube channel to new heights. Get in touch with us today to learn more about our services and start growing your channel with confidence!
