9 ways to promote Youtube channel tested by InnMind

Nowadays, video is the most powerful tool for marketing and here are some numbers to prove it.

According to Renderforest survey, 78% of users got more traffic to their website after using videos. Besides, 71% of them claimed that thanks to videos the average time on their website has increased. 69% of users generated more leads with the help of video content, and 54% of users increased their sales.

(Source: Renderforest blog)

Knowing this, we began to search for valuable content about attracting more viewers to our Youtube channel. We decided on Hootsuite’s article “23 Smart Ways to Promote Your YouTube Channel” and in this post, we share with our results after having tested those tips.

Our Youtube channel “InnMind Community” has existed since May 2016 to help entrepreneurs, investors and everyone who is willing to learn more about business. YouTube was never our focus area, and just supported our community with some educational content. Now we have 641 subscribers, many of them have joined us recently.

We started with channel appearance, first of all, because people always pay attention to appearance. It means the look of your channel, thumbnails and video should be high-quality.

Maintain your brand colours and style of the channel and video thumbnails to get an impression of a professional company.

There are many templates of thumbnails in Canva. I think it is the most suitable tool which makes graphic design simple even for non-professional designers.

1. Social Media Icons

The first step we did to improve our channel appearance is adding social media icons. In the channel settings, you can add links to your website, social media pages and add your email. These icons will appear on the channel banner (as you can see on the screenshot under).

It’s a small detail that makes a connection with you more convenient for users and partners.

2. Video Titles

This thing that people also pay attention too. Here we significantly improve our index.

Analyzing our channel, I found out that we have plenty of videos with titles that do not tell our users anything. We have videos from “Startup Booster”, video-course for acceleration and viral growth of startups, and the same video course in Russian “Cтартап от А до Я” (“Startup from A to Z”). Many titles of these videos begin with “Startup Booster. Episode #3”. For users, such title tells practically nothing. What is Startup Booster? 😵

Titles should be concise and descriptive. Many people read only the first half of the title to understand if the video is worth watching or not. That is why you should have short and at the same time attractive title for your target audience. Keep in mind that only first 60 title characters are visible on YuoTube. If there are more letters, they will be hidden.

Interesting: titles with “how-to” or “tutorial” are attractive and you can use them to raise views.

We changed the titles on our channel to give viewers information about what these videos are about. And here is the result that we got after this change:

• ➕ 66% in watch time;
• ➕ 21% in views;
• ➕ 500% in subscribers.

3. Company logo

Another detail is the company logo in the videos. In channel settings, you can add the company logo in all the videos. You don’t need to use other external software to do it. The logo will be visible during the whole video and help people remember you.

4. URL appearance

The appearance of your URL also can influence channel visits. Usually, URL of Youtube channel looks like https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKHiA-dJxESze4gFBxk3ygQ. In the channel settings, you can change the URL to more attractive and memorable. Now it looks like that: http://www.youtube.com/c/InnMindCommunity.

5. Playlists

To improve your channel appearance organise the videos to playlists. First of all, it will help your viewers to find the topic that they need and make people watch more of your content. As soon as one video ends, the next begins. Second, playlists help with discoverability. Videos in a playlist are more likely to appear in YouTube’s suggested videos column.

You can create playlists with your videos and can gather into playlists video of other people, experts, influencers.

6. Video description

The description under the video can also play a role to engage viewers. You can add information to motivate users to watch, share links, etc.

Here we checked the information and links. For example, we always give the links to our social media pages but Google+ has not existed yet. So, keep the video description updated.

If you have long videos (lectures, webinars, etc.), don’t forget to add timestamps in the video description. It will help to save the viewers’ time when they want to find some particular information in the video.

7. Hashtags

In the title and description, you can use hashtags for video search (#hashtag). Hashtags are hyperlinked so, clicking on them users will be followed to search page with relevant videos. With specific hashtags, you can mark the series of videos and help users to find these videos.

If there are no hashtags in the title, the first three hashtags in the description will appear above the video title.

We have added three hashtags that describe the video topic the best.

You can find here more about hashtags.

8. End screens

The most impactful part of the video is the end. Here you should add call-to-action. It could be a link to your website, other videos, etc. Here Youtube gives you an opportunity to add an external link, your Youtube channel, other videos and playlists.

Here on our channel, we found there were many videos without call-to-action in the end. There were end screens with irrelevant videos. For example, in the end of the webinar, we proposed startups participate in the competition EUREKA and placed on the end screens video about this competition, But now the competition is finished and this video is irrelevant.

So, pay attention here and recheck your video settings one more time.

Interesting: use a customizable screenshot closer to the end of the video. These powerful visual cues add punch to your CTA. Here is an example:

9. Comments

Honesty, we have had some unanswered comments as Youtube was not our priority social media network and we did not track users’ activity there. We have fixed it and answered to users’ comments.

You also should not ignore comments and user engagement. Like users’ comments, give complete answers and ask questions to engage viewers to the discussion.

Above are the steps that we made to promote our Youtube channel and that brought us results. There are also many other ways to improve the channel:

Follow the link to learn more ways to improve your Youtube channel:

9 ways to promote Youtube channel tested by InnMind

This article is a tiny contribution that can help startups in the promotion in online space. More about marketing and advertising you can find in other articles:

⏩ Harmful marketing tips for startups and where they come from

⏩ 62 Top listings to promote your startup

⏩ How to Market Your Business — the core principles of successful marketing