As the second-largest search engine in the world with over 2 billion monthly users, it’s no surprise that many advisors leverage YouTube to create and share video content. Though with so much traffic, it’s important to do everything you can to attract users. Promoting your channel is integral to its growth.
Promoting your YouTube channel is more than sharing it on social media. The core of promotion involves increasing video traffic to acquire more views. So, in order to snag more views, we need to focus on the features that drive traffic in the first place.
Understanding YouTube Video Traffic
The majority of YouTube traffic (and subsequent views) comes from three places; YouTube searches, external traffic and suggested videos. For example, here are our main sources of traffic for the Twenty Over Ten YouTube channel:
These aren’t all traffic sources. Direct traffic and built-in features, like the subscription bar, also contribute, though often to a lesser extent for most channels.
To promote your YouTube channel you will need to boost your highest traffic sources. To do so, you’ll need to develop strategies for both active and passive promotion.
Active promotion.
This is all about showing people what you’ve created, promoting your videos by sharing them in blogs, email, social media, etc.
Passive promotion.
This uses the YouTube algorithm to improve the chances of including your video in search results and recommendations. It involves improving the two of the biggest metrics for measuring video success — watch-time and click-through rate.
Combining both strategies ensures that your videos receive promotion from your efforts and YouTube itself. So, let’s jump into exactly how you can do this.
1. Attract Views With the Right Keywords
Keywords are important for helping search engines understand your content and for placing it in front of the right viewers. But not all search engines are the same. Choosing the best keywords means optimizing for YouTube and sometimes Google. Here’s how:
Use YouTube’s recommendations:
Whenever you perform a search on YouTube you will receive a list of recommended search terms. For example, here’s the list of recommended search terms that appeared when we typed “Financial advice” in YouTube’s search bar:
Each term is a keyword that YouTube associates with your search. By performing these searches, and checking the recommended keywords, you can find topics and search terms to help you optimize your existing content and create more. Including these keywords in your title and description sections increases your videos chances of being found in a search.
Perform a reverse search on Google:
Google often recommends YouTube videos with their search result pages:
Of course, Google provides more than just videos, so the keywords you use here might be different from the ones you use on YouTube. Try testing out a few on Google to see what appears. If a video is prominent in the search, then it is most likely a good term to use. So be sure to check with both.
Tap into third-party Resources:
The strategies above can help you find relevant keywords, but they won’t let you know much about search volume or potential performance. To get the most out of your keyword research, you’ll need to use other tools. Soovle is a great website for viewing the recommended search terms for a variety of search engines and can be used to compare both Google and YouTube at the same time.
However, our favorite tool is TubeBuddy, an extension that will allow you to perform keyword research directly from YouTube. The tool provides trends and performance results for a variety of search engines. This helps you measure potential performance. For example, here are the results of a recent keyword search:
As you can see, the keyword “financial advisor” doesn’t have the best ratings. You would still use it in titles to differentiate, but it wouldn’t be the focus of a video. Instead, let’s perform another search:
Here we see much better results. The keyword “Investment for beginners” is promising enough to develop a piece of content around it.
2. Take Advantage of Your Title and Description Sections
YouTube provides space for 5,000 characters in your video descriptions and recommends titles of 60 characters. These are the perfect spots to start putting those keywords to work. Keep in mind, YouTube’s algorithm uses this information to understand and sort your video, so taking advantage of this space is key.
YouTube recommends making titles concise, with the most relevant information near the front. So keep your target keyword near the front of your title. As for the description section, start with the following to create a video description:
- Provide a brief summary of your video. What is it about? This could be a quick list of bullets or an intro and transcript, depending on the length of your video.
- Include any relevant links. Links should always include your website and social media, though other relevant links, like blogs, can be included as well.
- Leverage YouTube Chapters for larger videos to help SEO. YouTube Chapters allows you to separate your video into snippets, making it easier for viewers to find the info they want.
- Include tags to help sort your content. Backlinko recommends making your first tag your chosen keyword.
3. Increase Your Click Through Rate (CTR) With Eye-Catching Thumbnails
Thumbnails have a huge impact on click-through rate and traffic. After all, your thumbnail is the first thing potential viewers will see. Creating an effective thumbnail isn’t too difficult. Most effective thumbnails contain two things:
- A clear, attention-grabbing title.
- An emotive image of a person.
For example, check out this thumbnail from one of our recent videos:
If you’re looking for a tool to create thumbnails, then check out Canva. It’s an excellent resource to design custom images and also allows you to save designs for future use, making it easy to quickly create thumbnails for your next video.
4. Drive Views With Effective Calls To Action
Adding a call to action on your video improves the overall performance of your channel by drawing viewers to your other content. There are three main ways to include a call to action in your videos.
- Use cards and end screens. Cards and end screens are built-in links within your video, promoting your other content during the video or at the end. By using these, you can recommend related content to interested viewers.
- In-video. Promote your channel in your video. Near the end, ask viewers to like your video and subscribe if they enjoyed your content.
- In your description. Including a link to your channel in your description, along with a quick call-to-action provides another way to access your content for curious viewers.
5. Improve Viewer Retention With High-Quality Content
Your videos don’t need to be high-budget, but your content does need to offer value to attract views. Advisors know this as both watchers and creators. But how do you determine what content is working well, and what isn’t? Navigating to your YouTube Analytics can help you find out.
- To get there, start on YouTube and make sure you’re logged into your Google account in the upper right.
- Click on your account image, and select “YouTube Studio” from the dropdown.
- You will now be on your Dashboard. Select “Analytics” from the menu on the left to access your channel analytics.
The information here can be broken down to discover how your videos perform. But a great place to start with is engagement, found from the Analytics tab. Here you will see a breakdown of your most recent videos and their viewership:
But one of the best places to look here is on the right side, where we see an overall percentage of viewer engagement for your selected video expressed in a graph. Many videos will appear as above, while others will look like this:
Both have natural downward trends, but to improve video performance there are two things you want to note:
- Peaks and valleys. In the above image, you will see minor increases and decreases in engagement. These represent points of interest and disinterest for viewers. Don’t make this too complicated. Check these times and see what you were discussing. Repeat what was working, and remove what wasn’t.
- The first 30 seconds. The beginning of your video is incredibly important. It needs to provide immediate value and get to the core of your video. Don’t waste your viewer’s time. Show them what they will get out of watching as quick as possible. Skip the long intros.
6. Create a Playlist
Playlists make it easy for viewers to continue watching your content as it naturally places your next video into a queue for the viewer to watch next. YouTube provides a helpful guide for setting up your playlists.
But one great way to get views on your playlist is to add it to your end screens. To do this, start by locating your highest-performing videos. You can find these in the Engagement tab under Analytics:
Clicking “See More” will let you filter the dates selected but leaving things to default when you’re starting out is just fine as well. Once you’ve located the video you want, simply click on it, then select the Editor from the sidebar. Here you can add elements to your video, particularly End Screens, allowing you to link to your created playlist.
7. Upload To a Blog
Adding a video to your blog is a great way to not only attract views but improve the performance of the blog as well. A win-win. Adding a YouTube video to a blog is relatively simple. For our Website Engine users, it’s as easy as copying your chosen video’s URL:
Then clicking Insert Video and pasting it into your editor:
Clicking Insert will then add your video to your post:
As a final tip, be sure to insert your video near the top of your blog post. This will allow visitors to see it as soon as they click on the blog post, instead of waiting for it to appear after scrolling.
8. Share It on Social Media
Successful content on social media often catches the eye and stops users from scrolling. Video is incredibly good at this. Not only does it stand out from other posts by being different, but it offers viewers a more entertaining medium to absorb content. In fact, according to Sprout Social, 15% of all Facebook content is video. So before you post your video to social, consider the following:
- Captions. Including captions improves the accessibility of your video. Some platforms even use an auto-play feature, immediately starting your video when it appears on the user’s screen. Addin captions will allow users to engage the video without the need for audio. YouTube provides an automatic caption feature, which can work on the fly but can sometimes contain errors. For the best accuracy, use a tool like Headliner to create your captions.
- Video length. Due to the nature of social media, it’s recommended to keep your videos short. Doing so can improve the overall retention of your video, a key indicator of performance. Based on data from Sprout Social, most platforms recommend videos no longer than 15 seconds, though there are certainly exceptions. Experimenting with your videos to see what receives the best performance is always a great start. YouTube also now provides YouTube Shorts, so keep this option in mind as you experiment with video on social media.
- Video type. The content that performs well on your blog or YouTube channel might not be the same content that performs well on social media. Keep this in mind as you select the video that you want to use.
9. Send It Out in a Newsletter
Clients want information from their financial advisor, so why not deliver it through video? In fact, According to YCharts, respondents both under and over age 50 listed email as their preferred communication channel:
In fact, videos can also help improve your overall email performance, having been shown to provide a significant increase in open rates. Just be sure to include a reference to your video in your subject line. Something as simple as “video included” or [Video] will work.
10. Develop a Watch-Strategy for Your Firm
Share the videos you create with your team. Ask them to comment and share them. And make sure to emphasize the video needs to be watched in its entirety. This will help boost your video’s performance and increase the likelihood that others see it.
Depending on your approach to video content, your team could also leverage the other ideas on this list.
Wrapping Things Up
Video is an incredibly powerful medium. Using YouTube, you can create video content that can easily be distributed and discovered by clients and prospects alike. But in order to see success from your YouTube channel, you’ll want to promote it. Keep the strategies above in mind as you look to do this. And with some optimization and effort, your channel could see a greater performance.
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About The Author
Stuart Farst
Stuart is a Content Marketing Specialist at Twenty Over Ten and enjoys creating content that both entertains and educates. A Game Designer at heart, he can be found pursuing one of his many hobbies during his free time.