There’s no better time than now to start thinking about how to promote your YouTube channel.
The video-sharing platform has 1.86 billion users worldwide in 2021 and it is ranked as the second most popular social media networks.
Making it a great platform for your to share content about your product or services.
But if you are launching a YouTube Channel with the hope of publishing content about your product or services and receiving tons of views and subscribers without doing anything else, then you are in for a big surprise.
Therefore in this article I will be sharing with you strategies that you can use to promote your YouTube Channel for free that will enable you to get more viewers and subscribers, which will help you build awareness for your product and services.
For more practical steps on how to grow your business online register for our 90% digital marketing course and get all the strategies you can use to grow your business online.
How to promote your YouTube Channel for free
There are over 37 million YouTube channel out there, and every single minute, over 500 hours of new content is uploaded on YouTube and that’s 12,000 hours of new content every single day.
Therefore Your 3-4 minute video content has a lot of competition and it is not enough to simply create and publish your content on YouTube, you must find a way to promote your YouTube channel in order to stand out.
Promoting your YouTube channel isn’t that expensive because you can actually promote your YouTube channel for free.
Also, YouTube channel, like other social media platforms, is always evolving.
What was trendy when YouTube initially became popular isn’t necessarily what you will discover on the platform today.
In recent years, YouTube has become a place for businesses and brands to market their product and services.
Today, YouTube has become a great addition to any marketing strategy, with a lot of businesses and brand using it to promote their content.
However, in order to make the most of YouTube, you will need to attract people to watch your videos and subscribe to to your YouTube Channel without spending a lot of money.
That is why knowing how to promote your YouTube channel for free is very vital.
Here are free strategies that you can use to promote your YouTube channel for free.
Develop content worth promoting
We understand that the even the best content in the world won’t be relevant if no one gets to see it and no one wants to see a bad content too.
If you want to promote your YouTube Channel effectively you will need to fill it with content worth promoting otherwise viewers will only watch once before unsubscribing and never engaging with your Video content.
Furthermore, even the best content can be ruined by poor video quality. So, before you post anything, make certain that it appears professional.
Use a high-quality camera, conduct a sound check before recording, and properly edit the video content before uploading it on your YouTube.
Maximize YouTube SEO
If you really want your YouTube channel to be seen then you should take advantage of the use of SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the best strategies you can use to promote your YouTube channel for free.
The reason for this is that YouTube is not only a video-sharing platform but it also the second largest search engine in the world after Google with over 3 billion searches per month.
Search engine optimization for YouTube will significantly improve your chances of being discovered.
Therefore you need to ensure you are using the right keywords in your headlines, Video descriptions and tags.
Keywords
To discover the right keywords for your YouTube content, start by entering the topic in the YouTube search bar and use the suggestion to guide your choice of keywords
There are also tons of YouTube SEO tools that will help you find the keywords that your target audience is looking for so you can create the right content and optimize it for search.
These tools include Tubebuddy, YouTube analytics, Google keyword planner, YouTube Autosuggest, RapidTags, etc.
With these tools you can conduct proper SEO research, getting the top, real and necessary information to yourself while conducting SEO.
Video titles
When you’ve chosen your target keyword, You can include it in the title of your video, preferably at the beginning of your title. Because the title of your video is the first things viewers will see.
So, your title must be catchy and contains your keyword.
You should also note that Google will automatically abbreviate your video content title if it exceeds 66 characters, so it is very important that your title fits within that limit.
Video description
When it comes to getting your content to show up in YouTube and Google search results, Your YouTube video description is vital.
You should determine what information you want to share with your audience about your video when writing YouTube video descriptions.
To make sure that you’re optimizing your description for SEO, include your target keyword and other keywords relevant to your target keyword in your video description.
Tags immediately inform the YouTube algorithm about the content of your video.
Always ensure your tags are relevant to your brand and content.
Don’t use irrelevant tags with the aim of improving your ranking; this will lead to viewers leaving your video, and YouTube algorithm will modify your ranking according.
YouTube wants viewers to stay on their site, so if your video isn’t engaging them, it won’t ranked.
Determine who your audience are and what they want
When creating YouTube video content you must ensure that the type of video content you create aligns with what your audience wants.
Start by getting to know your audience and what kind of content they want to see from you.
You can take a look at your competitors or other video creators in your industry if you are just starting to promote your YouTube channel.
Examine which of their videos receives the most attention and participation. This can give you an idea of what topics and video styles your audience is interested in learning about.
YouTube like many other social media platforms, utilizes hashtags for category tagging and search.
Using hashtags can help people find your video more easily.
YouTube allows up to fifteen (15) hashtags; if you use more than these all hashtags used in the video will be ignored.
Always ensure you use hashtags that is relevant to brand and content.
You can use create custom branded hashtags that when followed will guide viewers to more of your content on your YouTube channel.
Customize your thumbnails
Creating custom thumbnails is one of the simplest yet most effective ways to promote your YouTube channel.
Consider your title and thumbnail being a one hit to stir up a viewer’s interest in your YouTube video content.
If you don’t create a custom thumbnail YouTube automatically grabs a screenshot from any given video and uses it as the thumbnail; unfortunately, the image it captures is sometimes a blurry shot
Making your own thumbnails not only makes your videos look more appealing at a glance, but it also conveys a sense of expertise.
Build a community
One of the advantage of developing YouTube content is that it helps you establish yourself as an expert in your industry.
People will start to seek you out because of your expertise and by forming a community you can keep them engaged.
One way of building a community is by simply engaging with your viewers when they leave comments on your videos, offering additional interesting material and always providing them with value.
Also on YouTube platform you can also create a community.
Run a contest
One way of promoting your YouTube channel is to run a contest.
Running a contest attracts a lot of attention and when done correctly, it will increase the numbers of your YouTube Subscribers without trying to to increase it with people who are only interested in the contest and not your brand or content,
To filter out those who aren’t interested, it is important you give away something that is directly linked to your niche.
You should be able to come up with something exciting to give away irrespective of your niche.
For example, if you provide a digital marketing service, you can offer a free E-book or Free practical session on how people can grow their business online.
The greater the value of what you are giving out during the contest, the greater the level of interest.
Remember that you’re running the contest to increase the number of subscribers on your YouTube channel. Make sure that one of the entry criteria is subscribing to your channel.
Ask Viewers to engage with your Video content
Simply asking for engagement is sometimes the best way to get your videos noticed.
Because not everyone who watches your videos will remember to like it, share or subscribe to your YouTube channel.
So, it is very essential to include these reminders in the description or mention it in the video itself.
Encouraging your viewers to answer a question in the comment section, like, share, subscribe or to watch another video is a great way to keep them engage in order to promote your YouTube channel.
Promote Your YouTube Videos on Other Social Channels
The simplest way of increasing your audience is to promote your YouTube videos on your other social medial channels.
It’s no secret that video content on social media dominates in terms of engagement and performance.
As a result, you should use other social media channels to promote your YouTube channel.
You can easily share your YouTube Videos to Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, LinkedIn and so many more.
However Facebook like most social media platforms, rewards native content.
Therefore instead of simply sharing YouTube Video on Facebook, you can create a teaser or sneak peak video that you can post on a Facebook page or any other social media platform and link to the full video on YouTube.
Embed your YouTube video on Emails and Blogposts
Embedding your YouTube video is another way of promoting your YouTube channel.
You can embed your YouTube videos on your emails or blogpost.
That way you could get people on your email list to view your YouTube video Content and people who read your blogpost to watch your YouTube video content.
That way you will be promoting your YouTube Channel.
Conclusion
Despite the fact that YouTube is overflowing with video contents on a daily basis, consumers are always asking for more.
Therefore you will need a strong YouTube marketing strategy that comprises of both paid and free advertising to keep your videos from being lost in the crowd.
If are just starting out a YouTube channel, you might not have the financial resources to run sponsored ads inorder to grow your YouTube channel.
But you can obtain more YouTube views, grow your subscriber base, and manage your own narrative all for free if you follow the strategies i shared in this post.
For more practical steps on how to grow your business online register for our 90% digital marketing course and get all the strategies you can use to grow your business online.