If you feel like uploading YouTube videos is a great marketing strategy, then first of all, you are not the only one thinking this as every minute, more than 500 hours of videos are uploaded on YouTube, and second, it is indeed a great idea.
But uploading videos without any strategy will just fill the servers of YouTube and contribute to adding minutes to the hours of content uploaded every minute on the platform but not help you succeed in using the platform’s potential.
By not grabbing this opportunity of uploading videos on YouTube, you are missing out on an audience that is equal to the whole world, as YouTube has more than one billion users, which is close to one-third of everyone on the Internet.
Every day the competition on the platform is increasing as even kids find it fun to make videos. More than 75% of kids between the age of 6 and 17 want to become YouTubers. The contest is so dense that your competitor could be a 60-year-old retiree who finds YouTube a great pleasure or a 10-year-old that has recently discovered YouTube. Whether it is an individual or a multibillion-dollar corporation, everyone wants to make their own space on the platform.
It is 2023, so strategies like having a profile picture, banner, or writing a lengthy about section are the basics that everyone is aware of, and one gets knowledge on them through YouTube. What we are going to explore are the secret strategies that have worked exceptionally well for Popular YouTubers and are a significant reason for their success. So let’s dive in and learn the top strategies to help you master the YouTube game.
Create Quality Content
There is a reason why everyone puts a high emphasis on the quality of the content. Because the thing even if you apply all the marketing strategies in the world and get the customer to watch your video, the user will still not watch it if the content in it is not up to the mark. Always give priority to the quality of the content. Whether it is the writing part, editing, or shooting, make sure you intend to create content that will draw people close even after years.
Let’s understand this better by the Case of Bhuvan Bam. Bhuvan Bam is one of the most popular YouTubers in India, and if you look at his channel, you will find that he is not very consistent with his uploads; there is a gap of months between his videos which might lead you to think that he gets fewer views.
But that’s not the case; even his old videos get consistent views, and whatsoever video he uploads on his channel, the video goes on the trending tab. The audience engagement is phenomenal as well. So what is Bhuvan doing right that is compensating for his inconsistency? Well, you guessed it right, the content’s quality is top-notch, making the viewer watch it multiple times.
Just keep Uploading
Even though it sounds undeniable, it is something everyone misses at the start of their journey. We are too critical of our work, and we also get demotivated by seeing no growth on our channel, which makes us make the biggest mistake of not uploading videos. The more videos you upload, the more chance you give yourself to succeed as you increase the chances of your videos getting pushed by the Algorithm.
Casey Neistat is a pioneer in the YouTube Industry, and when he started the journey in his early days, he got this advice from a fellow YouTuber, Roman Atwood. According to Casey Neistat, these 3 words “Just Keep Uploading” are the reason that got him to 3 Million Subscribers. Although, now Casey has more than 12 million followers.
Understand your Audience
A significant factor differentiating Great YouTubers from Good YouTubers is that Great YouTubers understand their audience well. Once you have even a tiny audience, you can take things to the next level by understanding what the audience wants from you, and then all you need to do is provide it to them. Constantly ask your subscribers what they want to see, whether they want videos with better editing, a topic the viewers want you to touch, or a different style they want you to adapt. You can use YouTube Creator Studio to get in-depth knowledge about your Audience and understand their demographics, age, viewer retention, and other factors.
Shlok Shrivastava from Tech Burner is an excellent example of this. Shlok Shrivastava started his YouTube journey as a student and showcased his love for technology on his channel. Earlier, his videos were in English and very standard, but he understood what audiences wanted from him. He started making videos in Hindi and added humor to his previously bland and essential style of video making. Boom, within months, his view and subscribers count crossed the roof. Shlok now has more than 10 million subscribers on his channel. He also co-founded a mobile and laptop skin brand named Layers after that.
Make the Content Memorable
If you want viewers to constantly come back to your channel and watch your videos repeatedly, then you must master the skill of making your videos memorable. Remember how one thing reminds you of a video, and you immediately watch that video. Add aspects in your video that will attract the viewer to come back to you. You can choose a background score in your video that is very catchy or have characters in the video that makes the audience fall in love with them.
The ad from Hero MotoCorp of 2015 perfectly shows if we make the content memorable, then Viewers will even search ad and watch it. The ad is made to promote their bike Hero Splendor and the defining part of the video is the background song by Ankit Tiwari, “Chalta Rahe Tera Mera Milon ka Yarana.” The Song became an instant hit, and even though it is more than 7 years old, the public still watches the ad purposely. Any standard Ad on the channel used to get around 4-5 lakh views, but this video has over 70 lakh views.
Focus on a micro niche
Millions of videos on beauty, fashion, education, and other major topics exist on the platform, so for your video to make it to the top, have to outperform lakhs of videos, which is practically very challenging, so a more innovative approach will be to focus on the micro niche that YouTubers haven’t targeted. Try finding topics that are not widely covered on the platform and have a comparatively small audience. Try to target your video for a single person, and you will have millions watching you, whereas making a video for everyone, and no one will watch it.
Give an Answer to the Problem
YouTube is a platform that people come to to get answers to their issues. It is the second-largest search engine in the world and the second-most-visited website on the Internet. So, make videos that solve the problem of the masses and the journey on YouTube will be smoother for you.
How-to videos are, to date, one of the most searched videos on the Internet. Essential Videos like How to Tie a Tie or How to Make Birthday Cake are great examples of how content can forever help viewers and impact their lives.
Engage with Audience
How many of us give value to the comments? Most of us won’t even read them, which we lack in making our brand more human and close to the public. People buy stuff from people they like.
Take some time out and reply to the comments, and constantly interact with the Audience so they can connect with you. Focus on building a community.
Use the power of Influencers
This era is of social media Influencers. The impact they have been able to make to the customers is incomparable. When it comes to building connections and convincing the customer, influencers have even surpassed celebrities. So if you want to make your brand famous brand on YouTube, then influencers are the way to go. More than 70% of people buy a product after seeing it on YouTube.
If we look at MamaEarth, a considerable part of its success is its collaboration with social media influencers. Mamaearth ditched the traditional ways of marketing and focused on influencer marketing. One specific thing that the brand focused on was to do continuous collaborations so that the customer gets familiar with the company’s name. This resulted in the grand success of the brand and made it a Unicorn Company. The public feels influencers are someone close to them as they have seen the journey of influencers from the start.
Paid Advertising
Investing in paid YouTube ads is a great way to get views and subscribers on your channel. If you aim to create Brand Awareness among a specific audience, then ads can help you achieve that.
You should consider advertisement as an investment, not an expense. Because the platform can provide multiple times of returns of what you invest in Ads through the reach it provides. In 2020, Apple spent a whopping $237.15 million on YouTube Ads, so you know that the money spent on ads is worth it.
Short From Content
Even though it has been just a few years, YouTube shorts have entirely exploded on the Internet. The 60-second vertical videos are highly entertaining and addictive. If you are not uploading Shorts, you are missing out on many views. YouTube shorts have crossed 50 billion daily views. Shorts have become an easy and quick source of entertainment that one can get. We have a small attention span and shorts target on this.
Dan Rhodes is an excellent example of how YouTube Shorts can bring a revolution in one’s career. Dan has excellent magic skills and used to show them on his channel. He had 18,000 subscribers in April 2021, but things took a turn as he started uploading Short videos. The result was in the same month, he gained 1.75 million subscribers. Now, Dan has close to 25 million subscribers.
Utilize your Thumbnail
Everyone scrolls through their feed to select the video they want to watch. One of the main factors in clicking on a video is its attractive Thumbnail. A proper thumbnail can shower your views and subscribers and help create brand recognition for you.
A great idea is to use your face or logo in the Thumbnail. When we see a face on a thumbnail, we trust the video more because we humans believe what we see. Having your face makes your Audience immediately click on the video as they get to know it, a video from their known. While not everyone will click on the Thumbnail, people will surely see it, so you can also add your logo to make it look more professional.
YouTube Channels like BBC, TMZ Sports, Fox News, CNN, and 9 News use this strategy and put huge logos on every Thumbnail so that their brand gets more recognition from the public.
One more thing to remember while making Thumbnails should be to keep the colors and tone of all your thumbnails the same or close to each other. This helps create a theme for your channel and makes it more recognizable. Lallantop is a news channel that has done well in the past few years, and they also maintain the same style, color, and pattern for all their videos.
Don’t trick your Audience
If you think that by making Clickbait titles and thumbnails, you can create an audience for your channel, then you are absolutely wrong, we are in 2023, and now viewers understand if a creator is trying to trick them. Even if you force them to click on your video by any tactic or fake contest, they will never again visit your channel, and you will end up losing a genuine subscriber.
A better approach is to be transparent and honest with the Audience, as the public has a soft corner for honest content creators. Focus on eating eggs (the small but genuine Audience that will regularly watch your videos) and not the hen (the huge but tricked Audience that will never watch your videos again).
Use keywords in the description
SEO is a crucial aspect of making your videos get more views. Most new YouTubers don’t give importance to this, but one should understand that at the core, YouTube is a search engine, and if you don’t rank on the platform, you will have a tough time getting views on your content. You should find trending keywords related to your niche and use them in the title or Thumbnail.
But one more effective way to gain traffic is to mention all the relevant keywords in the description box. This way, if anyone searches any of the keywords, then you have an excellent chance to make the rankings on the platform.
Hook the viewer in the intro
We, humans have an average attention span of just 8.25 seconds, which is less than even a Goldfish’s. It means that even if your content is top quality, you have ticked all the marks, but still, you can struggle with views because of our low attention span. The key here is to only hook the viewer in the first 8 to 10 seconds. These few seconds decide whether the user will watch your video or hop on to the next one. Focus on making the introduction exciting and pleasant to view so that viewers stick to your content.
Mr. Beast has proven how effective this technique can be. In the past few years, Mr. Beast has gained vast success with his videos and got over 20 billion views on his main channel. In each of his videos, you will find the intro part extremely intriguing and eye-catchy, which makes the viewer watch his long videos with utmost fun.
Give a call to action
If you want to boost your views, just don’t let the viewer watch the video and leave; instead, provide him with a simple call to action, and you can see wonders happening on your channel. There will be a time when the viewer will love your content, and your content will also solve his issue; you should not let that moment go empty instead at that moment, if you ask your viewer to watch another video of yours, or like the video, share the video among his friends, then he will do that.
You can give the call to action, preferably at the last of the video, so that the moment the viewer finishes watching the video, he doesn’t get distracted and directly takes the action you want.
One major mistake we make while giving a call to action is we give way too many calls to action, such as visiting my website, liking the video, sharing it with your friends, watching another video of mine, and following me on Instagram at the same time. This looks like a big task to the viewer, and he does none of it. A better approach will be to give a straightforward call to action and make it doable for the viewer. This will encourage the viewer to do it and help spread your channel faster.
Understand what your Competitors are doing
You don’t need to commit all mistakes on your channel; instead, try to learn from your competitors’ mistakes. Give some time to understand the technique that your competitor is using. If some videos of your competitors are doing exceptionally well, then you should give them a try in making videos related to that topic. If their videos are not performing well, then understand what mistakes they are making. You can use the keywords they are using to have a vast audience for your content.
ConclusionThirty thousand hours of new content is being uploaded every hour on YouTube, so standing out from the crowd is incredibly challenging. Using the above techniques, you can get an advantage over other YouTubers and increase the chances of boosting your videos by the Algorithm. The more views you get on your videos, the more algorithms will push it. So implement these strategies on your channel in 2023 and see the dramatic change in Results.