In the digital age, increasing the number of views your social video marketing and YouTube videos get should be a top priority. While many content marketers prefer to focus on other short-term goals, the commitment and investment that goes into a YouTube channel is absolutely worth it.
That’s because YouTube is exceptionally good at creating brand awareness, engaging with potential customers, and building brand loyalty. Even better, there are easy tools like create.vista.com to help you create YouTube content.
Increasing your YouTube views, followers, and subscribers is one of the best ways to generate qualified leads and promote your brand. So, how do you do that, exactly?
Here are the top five expert tips to help you get more views on your YouTube videos.
1. Create Valuable and Unique Content
There are no magical shortcuts to gaining more viewers on your YouTube channel – that’s why the number one tip for getting more views is to create quality content.
Although there are some nefarious ways to get more views, creating valuable content that people actually want to watch is the only long-term way to grow your channel. And it makes sense if you think about it.
YouTube’s parent company is Google. So, it makes sense that it operates like a search engine. Search engines are designed to serve the most relevant and helpful content to the user. According to Google, content creators must always focus on creating value for their users – and YouTube is no different.
2. Try Making a Video Series
Have you noticed that many successful YouTube creators organize their videos into playlists? But why do they do this?
The answer is simple: if a user clicks on a video that’s been embedded into a playlist, the next video in the series will line up and play after the first one ends. This means viewers can let the playlist ride and watch multiple videos without lifting a finger. When users play YouTube playlists, the platform generates more revenue because it creates more user engagement, which also translates into more views.
Of course, you shouldn’t compile a huge playlist of videos that have nothing to do with one another because it makes for a bad user experience.
A great way to create organic playlists of videos that are relevant to one another is to shoot them as series. Doing this means that you’re constantly adding to your playlists as time goes on, and they are organized in a logical manner. Your viewers will have an enjoyable experience, and you’ll increase your views.
3. Familiarize Yourself with YouTube SEO
Because YouTube works like a search engine, SEO principles apply. Like Google, YouTube uses ranking signals to organize its search results. An essential part of increasing your views on YouTube is understanding and applying YouTube’s SEO ranking signals.
The first part of SEO to focus on are keywords – we won’t go into the rest now. To optimize your keywords, make a list of all the topics related to your content. Search for them one by one in the YouTube search bar and see what suggestions come up. These suggestions are what users have searched for – that’s what makes these suggested keywords great candidates for your keywords.
Once you’ve found your keywords, try to incorporate them into your video titles, descriptions, and video tags. Optimizing your content to include these relevant keywords will help your content appear in users’ search results so viewers can find it.
4. Collaborate with Other Creators
When you find other content creators in the same niche with the same audience as you, try to collaborate with them instead of regarding them as adversaries. It pays to keep Google’s number one rule of creating value for your viewers in mind.
So, how do you establish a symbiotic relationship with other collaborators in your niche? Simple – collaborate with them. Appearing in your competitor’s videos as a guest will expose your brand to another group of viewers. Your competitor will also benefit from the additional traffic generated to their video via the exposure on your channel.
5. Use Cards and End Screens
When viewers are engaged with your content, they will be open to watching more of your videos. That’s why you should take advantage of the cards and end screen options on YouTube.
YouTube cards are notifications that appear on the screen at a certain point in your video. Their purpose is to let the viewer know that there are other videos related to the topic of the video they are watching.
End screens, like cards, direct viewers who have reached a certain point of your video to another related piece of content. The difference between cards and end screens is that end screen notifications appear when your video is near the end.
You could promote other pieces of your content on the end screen, add a call to action, or do both. A call to action end screen will prompt the viewer to subscribe to your channel.
