How to Promote YouTube Videos - 18 Simple Ways

It is not unknown to anyone that YouTube is the biggest platform for online videos which is also the second largest search engine after Google. With an increasing amount of users and creators on the platform, there is no shortage of competition. The platform is having over 51 million channels and the number is increasing drastically every year. With such a competitive situation, only making good YouTube content is not enough to create a buzz in the market. So, if you are trying to gain more organic views and subscribers for your channel; you have to put ample effort through promotional strategies. 

YouTube video promotion can take place through various mediums. Here are 18 simple ways to promote your channel with tactics that are lesser-known and more effective in the field.

Let’s get started!

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Table of Contents:

* Keep an eye on the watch-time

* Clickable titles and thumbnails

* Engage with popular videos from the niche

* Use end screens and cards to cross-promote

* YouTube Channel & Reddit: A great combination

* Utilize Social Media to share your videos

* Paid ad campaign

* Boost the rank of videos on YouTube

* Rank in the Google Search Engine

* Embed your videos in relevant blog posts

* Stay engaged on Quora

* Add videos to the custom playlists

* Collaborate with other fellow YouTubers

* Ask audiences to help in the promotion

* Be a part of a community

* Create an email list for marketing

* Run giveaway contests

* Live Streams and YouTube Shorts

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1. Keep an eye on the watch-time

Know for a fact that the YouTube algorithm is made in a way that if it finds your video content good enough, it will take care of the promotional side for you. The algorithm is designed to push engaging video content through YouTube’s recommendations that viewers seem to enjoy. So, if your video performs well on the platform, it will be definitely recommended to as many users as possible. It can either appear on the homepage or the sidebar of the relevant videos. 

Now, the biggest question is how can make YouTube believe that your video content is worthy enough to get promoted. The answer is watch time. When the watch time is high on your videos, it will automatically get promoted by the platform. Watch time is an important metric that is determined by the time spent by viewers watching your video. When a viewer clicks away from your video within the first 30 seconds; YouTube considers it as a bad signal. Similarly, when most users are more likely to watch your video till the end; YouTube considers it as a highly engaging video for all. With the help of YouTube analytics, you can keep an eye on the watch time. 

So, the key lies in engaging the viewers within the first 30 seconds. Trailers work pretty well in this case as it creates anticipation among the viewers and when the full video releases, they cannot help but watch the whole content without skipping. 

2. Clickable titles and thumbnails

Other than the watch time, there is another metric that plays a vital role in gaining more views and that is caller CTR or the click-through rate. It is referred to the number of viewers who click on your video that adds to the percentage of total impressions. Suppose, there are 100 viewers who can see your video on their feed but only 10 of them click on the video to watch; then the CTR is 10%. Based on it, YouTube promotes a video and pushes it forward. So, the higher the rate; the better it gets for promotion. 

One of the simplest ways to enhance the CTR of your video is to add clickable thumbnails and titles to your video. Add super-catchy thumbnails that instantly make viewers click on them. Make sure to use custom thumbnails by utilizing the editing apps. 

3. Engage with popular videos from the niche

Did you know that commenting can also be a vital part of a promotion? But this technique is quite underrated and less known even among marketers with experience. You can simply dig for the popular videos from niche and comment on them to get relevant exposure. Firstly, you would have to make a list of popular channels from your industry that has at least 100,000 subscribers or more. Now, subscribe to them to get notified every time they drop new content. As soon as you get the notification, go to the video, watch it, and leave a comment that is detailed, insightful, or funny. Aim to put the first comment on the video. 

The idea is to comment first so that other users can see your comment and get likes. When your comments receive many likes; they will be pushed to the top where more users can see them. Interested viewers will check your channel for similar content, and eventually, your channel would receive more views and subscribers as well. Commenting on videos also helps to improve your presence on YouTube. 

4. Use end screens and cards to cross-promote

With the help of YouTube Studio, you can simply add end screens and cards to your video content. If you repeat this every time you upload new video content, it helps greatly in promotion with just a little effort from your end. If you add end screens, it appears in the last 20 seconds of the video that suggests another one. Therefore, viewers can immediately click on another video to watch it after finishing one. This way, you can gain more views and watch time for your videos. At the same time, it also brings more traffic and engagement to the channel which improves its organic visibility. 

Although, cards are not as important as end screens; they are still effective to suggest other video content to viewers, in the middle of watching a video. This appears on the upper-right corner of the video player and viewers are free to click on the while watching one. 

5. YouTube Channel & Reddit: A great combination

Reddit is an amazing platform to promote your YouTube videos as well as your channel. It is not utilized by most creators and so, if you can get it right; there is a chance to stay ahead in the game. Firstly, you would have to search on Google with “site:reddit.com + [your niche] YouTube channels” which helps to find relevant threads about the topic. Reddit is a highly active community and they actively look for recommendations. Leave a comment on these threads while suggesting your YouTube channel. However, make sure to keep it as organic as possible, without making it obvious that you are promoting it. 

Redditors are helpful but also notorious for disliking advertisers and in worst case scenario, you can get banned from the forum. Therefore, it is highly important to make sure that nobody understands it is your channel. Think and act like a subscriber rather than a creator and you will get the complete support of the community. 

6. Utilize Social Media to share your videos

The worldwide influence of the social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and many others is widely visible in case of every industry. You can also utilize these platforms to promote your video content on YouTube. This requires patience and consistency as you would have to regularly create social posts in order to promote the YouTube channel. Encourage your followers to subscribe to your channel and make sure to share engaging posts every time you come up with a new video. It is important to target a handful of platforms like Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and others as all online users are not active on the same platform. 

You can also create short snippets of your videos and share them on Facebook in order to create a social buzz and encourage users to watch the full video by adding the YouTube link. More than 500 million people watch videos every day on Facebook and if you are able to engage even a handful of them; the number of views will be increasing rapidly. However, it is a lot of work for a creator to single-handedly handle everything alone. Taking help from online software can help to minimize the workload for all. 

7. Paid ad campaign

You can always invest to gain more success and YouTube can offer you a handful of tools for the promotion. Let’s take a better look at the elements including various ad formats to run a campaign. 

• Overlay Ads – These are basically in-video ads that appear like a semi-transparent banner at the bottom of the screen of the video player. 

• YouTube Video Ads ( Skippable and non-skippable) – Everybody knows that many ads appear at the beginning of the video. In most cases it is non-skippable but sometimes skippable ads also appear that can be skipped after 4 to 5 seconds. 

• Display Ads – These ads are shown outside of the video player YouTube. It mainly appears on the sidebar at the right. 

• Sponsored Cards - These are just cards but the only difference is that do not appear in your video, rather appear on other creator’s video content. 

For these ad campaigns, you will be charged either per view or per click. Based on your requirements and the video content, you can create strategies for paid ads. 

8. Boost the rank of videos on YouTube

As mentioned before, YouTube is the second largest search engine, and maintaining a high rank on the SERP (search engine result page) is not an easy task. To boost the rank of your videos, you need to know the SEO tactics that help your video content rank better on YouTube. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is mandatory for all kinds of promotion. However, YouTube video works in a different way. 

Just like website content, keywords play a vital role in this case as well. So, focus on the topics that come with a high monthly keyword search volume. To optimize, you can incorporate those keywords in the video description, title, and tags as well. With the latest option for transcription, YouTube now also focuses on the words mentioned in the video. So, if you even verbally mention the keywords on your videos (especially in the first 15 seconds); it will also help to boost the rank of the video. By gaining more online engagement and traffic; your channel will receive improved visibility and presence. 

9. Rank in the Google Search Engine

SEO optimization is required for all cases, whether you want to boost your rank on YouTube or Google. Improving the rank of the video on Google searches is also important for the promotion of your YouTube channel. Google search engine directly integrates YouTube videos to the SERPs in case of a large number of queries. In many cases, Google also prioritizes videos more than anything. For example, Google pushes the videos forward in case of ‘how to’ content. These videos tend to rank well in SERPs. If you try creating such kind of videos and optimize them, it will automatically improve your rank on Google. It can also offer a new group of subscribers for your channel. 

You can also create blog posts based on the targeted keywords and embed your videos in the blogs. But only following SEO practices is not enough as you would need to monitor them as well. Or else, how would you know whether keywords are working effectively or not? Monitoring allows getting critical insight into the promotional approach and helps to improve it even more. 

10. Embed your videos in relevant blog posts

The practices of boosting the rank of videos are already mentioned. However, there are still many ways to improve SEO that can get you more views and subscribers. Embedding videos within relevant blog posts and articles help to rank better on both YouTube and Google. Check out the online SEO content writing tools for better results. Once the blogs and articles are published, they will help to drive additional traffic to your YouTube channel. Similarly, backlinks are also very important and powerful to boost rank. 

It is an excellent idea to link your article from YouTube as well some viewers can prefer the written version as well. It allows an opportunity to increase the number of email subscribers. If you are still wondering why you should put more effort, here are some compelling reasons.

• Two opportunities are provided to rank on Google’s first page of the targeted search result, one through the organic listings and the other one in the video pack. Either way, you will be receiving more clicks.

• Embedding videos to website content helps to retain visitors longer on your website and as a result, it will help lower the bounce rate. 

• You will be receiving more views on the videos which are coming out of YouTube. It happens due to the initial promotional efforts. These beneficial aspects help to build up important engagement metrics that help to perform well on YouTube. 

11. Stay engaged on Quora

Most people do not consider this but Quora is an excellent platform to promote your video content which is mainly used as a Q&A website where people ask and answer various questions. However, need to work on the niche industry to get relevant viewers. So make sure to find the questions from your industry which are relevant and you can answer well. The answer should be organic and helpful that can engage the readers. You should subtly promote your video or channel through the answer that does not appear like you are directly promoting; rather offering a solution to a problem. You will find plenty of questions where people are asking for channel recommendations. Make sure to utilize them organically. 

You can also add a link to the channel in certain cases to support your answer. This not only helps to get more subscribers but also provides a great opportunity to build relevant backlinks that enhances the SEO efforts in your promotion. 

12. Add videos to the custom playlists

Who does not like an organized channel with designated playlists? Yes, exactly! Everybody does and so, your channel should be organized as well. YouTube allows you to gather or chain up relevant videos and organize them under different playlists. This can also help in your promotional efforts as it makes it easier for the viewers to navigate through your channel and find the exact video they have been looking for. It also allows them to binge the videos that are under the same thread. Thus, you are paving the way for users to watch multiple videos in a row. As a result, you can gain multiple organic views from a single viewer. 

There is another sneaky way to promote your YouTube videos in case you are starting from scratch. If you do not have a larger audience base yet, you can create custom playlists featuring other relevant videos from your niche by other YouTubers and embed your video under the same playlist. Viewers who will search for relevant content will be able to find your playlist and also find your video under the same playlist. So, basically, you are inviting audiences from niches to enjoy the curated videos on similar topics. This will not only help to gain more views but also offers an ample amount of organic exposure to create a buzz. 

13. Collaborate with other fellow YouTubers

Collaboration is one of the greatest ways to gain similar audiences while promoting your channel. It helps to expose your channel to a brand new audience base and helps to increase them gradually who like such collaborative content. It is more of a mutually beneficial method where two or three collaborators or YouTubers get to share their audience base while simultaneously increasing it. And since you are working with the creator they are already familiar with, they are more likely to subscribe for more content in the future. But if you want to maximize the results; it is very important to be picky when choosing your partner for the collaboration. 

Make sure to reach out to the YouTubers who have a similar audience base and popularity to yours. Because, if you are an emerging artist, some well-established mogul in the field might not want to collaborate. Joining forces with similar kinds of creators feels more authentic and organic rather than a promotional approach. 

14. Ask audiences to help in the promotion

It is one of the easiest ways to promote your YouTube channel where you get help from the audiences directly. A simple call-to-action at the end of the videos that ask and encourages viewers for likes, comments, shares, and subscriptions works pretty well. Usage of such call-to-action is going around in the industry for a long time now. If your video content is worth sharing, it can go far with the ‘snowball effect’. It happens when your regular viewers recommend your videos to their friends, and then the friends share it with other friends, and the cycle goes on. This is why most videos become viral and gain millions of views within a short span of time. 

15. Be a part of a community

YouTube is not a just video platform but also a platform where numerous communities serve and support each other, the reason why every YouTuber is supposed to follow the community guidelines. If you are able to foster a sense of community among your viewers and followers, they are more likely to share your video with their friends, family, and others. 

That is why interacting with your viewers and subscribers is one of the most important aspects of marketing your YouTube channel. You can also do this by setting up a members-only Patreon page or a Discord channel that acts like a community hub. Here are some simple steps to build your community,

• Always make sure to like and pin a few favorite comments for every video that you post

• You can also ask your viewers what kind of content they are willing to see from your channel. If you work based on their suggestions; it offers them a special feeling of being a fan

• Utilize social media platforms to interact with your viewers. You can also use the social media listening tools that will notify you whenever a user mentions your brand online 

16. Create an email list for marketing

Email marketing is one of the oldest and the most effective ways to promote your YouTube channel which is quite simple yet serves the job. But first, you would require an email-list to embark on your marketing journey. You can simply set up an email opt-in form with the help of an email marketing tool. But you will have to offer some kind of incentive to encourage users to join the email list. In case you have an official website that gets monthly web traffic, use that to drive opt-ins. 

Once the email list is set, you can send regular emails to the subscribers whenever it is time to post a new video. It helps notify the users and get more views every time a new video is posted under your channel. Email marketing also helps to build anticipation even before it premiered. 

17. Run giveaway contests

Giveaway contests are great to promote YouTube channels and to engage a large number of audiences. If you can conduct huge social contests for giveaways, it can offer a huge amount of views and interactions. The idea here is to offer a kind of reward to the winner of the giveaway contest where users can participate by liking, commenting, subscribing, or sharing it on social media. Make sure to offer more additional rewards for the users who share your videos for the highest number of times. Giveaways are great to drive more traction and make your video go viral quickly. Other than that, it also helps to gain a huge number of new subscribers with participation in the contest. 

18. Live Streams and YouTube Shorts

Those days are when YouTubers used to only stick to standard 10-minute videos. YouTube promotes creativity and you can experiment with all kinds of video formats to add more dynamic to your channel. It will also help to enhance your channel’s visibility while reaching a new audience base. For example, if you experiment with YouTube's live-streaming feature; it will help you reach the viewers who especially prefer live content over anything. Live streaming has been greatly popularized in the last few years and now it has become a major part of most users’ online viewing time. 

YouTube shorts are also very effective in this case which are less than 60 seconds in length yet capable of garnering a huge amount of views as modern users have less attention span. The meteoric rise of short form of videos is visible in every other platform and it has also become a part of the marketing trend. Experimenting with shorts can definitely boost the exposure for your channel. 

Concluding thoughts

Now that you are aware of the modern strategies of YouTube video promotion, you can take your marketing plan to the next level. Remember, it is all about consistency. Success does not come overnight and that is applicable in the case of YouTube Channels as well. So, if you want to become more successful in the field; stay put and use the aforementioned tips to reach the top gradually.