Video has established itself as one of the most popular source of media online. With the introduction of YouTube in 2006, many have taken to the video hosting website to publish their content in the hope of gaining exposure and establish a following. YouTube offers an enormous platform to its user base, which over the years has made many videos world renowned. YouTube has created careers for many content producers as well, and increasingly plays a huge part for start-ups looking to gain exposure.
Whether you want to produce videos to entertain, educate or promote, there are certain steps that are recommended to be followed in order to gain the most out of your YouTube videos.
How to increase your view count on your YouTube videos
Step 1 – Creating Content
The first rule when creating content for your YouTube videos is to know your target demographic. Is it aimed at the general audience? Or is it aimed at football fanatics? Establishing this will help you down the line when you go on to promote your videos. Do not try to create something out of your expertise merely because “there is a larger audience for it”.
The most important thing is to have fun: your passion will be reflected through your content. Always remember to take your time and put in a 100% effort in your work. Strive to give your viewers a compelling reason to watch your content.
Secondly, always be prepared for harsh criticism. The online viewer base have nothing to lose so they WILL be harsh. Use the feedback wisely and learn to ignore the trolls. Most of the time, the feedback you gain from your audience is golden because it will be the honest truth; it will not be sugar coated in the way your parents will give their feedback.
Once you have your content ready, the next step is the uploading process.
Step 2 – Uploading
When it comes to uploading your video, there are minor details that are often overlooked such as the file size, resolution etc. The first thing to double check is to ensure that your video is well edited; lazy editing can—and will—cause backlash from your viewer base because it shows a lack of effort. You should always strive to set the best standards; simple things such as colour correction can take you far.
If you want to leave messages such as “subscribe” or “follow” on your YouTube videos, ensure that you attach them clearly to the credit sequence. Avoid using annotations on YouTube as most users toggle annotations off at the beginning of a video. What’s more is that annotations are not supported on mobile devices.
Take care when choosing the title of your video: this is probably one of the biggest factors that will draw viewers in. Think about how people would stumble upon your video if they were to manually search for it. Thumbnails are also an extremely important factor, as a well presented thumbnail will catch the attention of your viewer base and tempt them to check out the video. Remember to keep the thumbnail relevant to your content—an irrelevant thumbnail will just draw criticism.
Finally, when writing up tags for your videos, make sure the tags are in quotations; this will make your tags into topics and it will help make your video more relevant when certain tags are used in search engines.
Step 3 – Networking
For new YouTubers, this step is probably the most important part of increasing your view count. A simple marketing strategy will help you gain more exposure; connecting your YouTube account to your social profiles such as Facebook and Twitter will help you share the video far more easily. Reach out to similar YouTubers with a similar subscriber base in order to cross-promote or collaborate. Look for blogs or forums that cover the same content as your videos and try to get it published.
Communicate with any of your viewers if they reach out to you. Encouraging communication and making it easy for them to reach out to you will help to build up small relationships and a loyal viewer base.
Reach out to relevant social network profiles on Twitter and Facebook to help promote your videos. Again, you can use your social network with others to help cross promote your content. Communication is key in this step.
Consistency
Consistency is important, since potential new viewers will judge on whether to stick around or not by the quality of your videos. Be consistent in quality, and put 100% effort into each video. If you start slacking, it will be reflected through your videos and your audience will catch you out.
I hope these tips and tricks will help you gain some extra exposure on your YouTube videos. I have been following these guidelines and it has allowed me to have my own videos gain views in the high thousands.
Please contact me if you have any questions.
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