10 effective tactics to grow your YouTube channel

Looking to use video marketing as a tool to grow your business? Use these 10 tips and strategies

By 2017, video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic, according to a study done by Cisco.

Video is the future of content marketing. That is, if it's not the here and now. YouTube currently receives more than 1 Billion unique visitors a month and is the second largest search engine after Google. Video can give you access to a huge audience but video marketing is frequently an afterthought while it's value demands top priority in your content marketing plan.

Online video is quickly becoming a key means for people to satisfy their information and entertainment needs, businesses that fail to include it in their online marketing strategy will do so at their peril.

In this article we'll dive into 10 actionable tips to increase your YouTube presence so you can get more views, subscribers, leads and or customers from online video marketing.

Optimizing your YouTube channel

By optimizing your YouTube profile your channel will be easier to find, will represent your brand better and make it easier for viewers to browse and watch your content.

1. Complete your profile

The first step may seem obvious but if you haven't done so already, make sure you have completed your profile on YouTube. Make sure all your social media accounts are added. Write an engaging channel description and add a way for viewers to contact you so they can learn more about your business and contact you if they want to.

2. Brand your channel

Once you have added all the information, links and other 'boring' stuff you can move on to the branding and appearance of your channel. The branding of your channel is very important since it visually represents your company and provides a great opportunity to add some personality to your channel and stand out from other YouTube channels.

There are a couple of graphics you can personalize:

• Channel Thumbnail
• Channel Banner (also referred to as channel art)
• Watermarks in your videos
• Intro and outro of your videos
• Custom thumbnail of your videos

3. Sort and optimize your content

When a new viewer lands on your channel it should be easy for them to understand what kind of videos you produce and find the videos they may want to watch. You can make this easier for new viewers by categorizing your videos, making playlists and giving them good titles. You can also choose to display the most watched categories on your channel's homepage by setting up channel sections. If you don't know how to set-up these channel sections you can use this YouTube Help guide.

If you have completed the previous steps you need to check if everything is set up correctly and organized like you want it. Go to your channel by browsing to my channel in the sidebar.

Preview it as a visitor by clicking View as public at the top of your channel banner

Creating interesting content

A YouTube channel without fun or interesting content to watch is like a car without gasoline. It won't go anywhere. To help you create better content you can use these tips:

4. Create unique and interesting content

This should be obvious but you should always produce high quality, interesting, entertaining or informative videos. If your videos are nothing more than sales pitches your YouTube channel will never grow because people don't want to watch advertisements. If you sell physical products: show viewers how to use it, how to maintain it, clean it, the advantage of having or using it or do a unboxing or review video. If you sell services: explain the benefits of the service, show case studies or give away free advice.

The cost of camera and microphone equipment has gone down while the image and sound quality has drastically improved so any business can start producing high quality videos with only a budget of a couple of hundred dollars. Start with a simple camera that is able to record in Full HD and upgrade as you go.

5. Make sure your video benefits your business

Just because your videos aren't sales pitches doesn't mean they shouldn't benefit your business. Quite the opposite, you can use your videos to direct potential customers to your funnel. End your videos with a call to action, this can be a call to action on YouTube such as subscribe, like the video or comment on the video but you can also ask viewers to visit your website or download an e-book.

6. Optimize your video listing

To get the most clicks on your videos you should optimize all the different aspects of your videos.

• Write an interesting title with your main keyword but keep it under 50 characters since that is the maximum amount that is displayed.
• Create a unique custom thumbnail for your video. People are very visual and scan images first when they land on a page. By creating an interesting thumbnail Youtube users are much more likely to click on your video instead of the video of a competitor. Both of the thumbnails on the right are of iPhone review videos. One has branding, shows you the type of video (review), the product both visually and in text. The other just displays the product. You don't know who created the video, what type of video it is or why you should watch it. Which thumbnail is a potential viewer more likely to click on?
• Write a 300-500 word description keyword rich description so YouTube better understands what your video is about and can rank it accordingly in search.

Promoting your YouTube channel

Once you have content on your channel you will still need to promote your videos.

7. Share your content with customers

The easiest way to promote your channel and your videos if you are new to YouTube is by sharing it with people that already know about your products or services. Since they know you they know you or your company their are much more likely to share your videos with others so you can get some momentum.

Once YouTube notices you are getting views and interaction (comments or likes) on your videos they will rank it higher in their own search tool and suggest it as a related video. Once this happens your channel will start to grow organically.

8. Social media and other platforms

Another popular way of promoting your videos is on social media. You can promote your videos in Facebook groups, on twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn and many more social media networks. Conduct research to establish where your target audience is and select the social networks you use accordingly.

9. Collaborate with other YouTubers or businesses

A good way of growing your channel is by collaborating with others. By collaborating with another YouTuber you can create one or multiple special videos together and you can both promote the other YouTuber to your own audience.

But don't limit yourself to collaborating only with other YouTubers. There are a lot of different people, local businesses, events or communities you can collaborate with. For example if you collaborate with an event the organizers are very likely to promote your collaboration video to all the events' attendees.

10. Interact with your audience

Of course, you shouldn't just dump some videos on YouTube, blast them on social media and walk away from them expecting they will automatically generate more business for you. Viewers will leave comments, ask questions or provide feedback in the comments of your YouTube videos. Help your audience, listen to their feedback to improve your videos and show them you value their opinion.

Some potential customers will have just one question they want answered before they order your product or service, pull them across the line.

Hopefully you've found these tips helpful. If you want more tips and strategies or want to read more in-depth tips and tricks you can check out VloggingPro's guide on getting more subscribers and viewers on YouTube.

Thanks to Jennifer Smith for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Jennifer Smith is Industry expert of VloggingPro. You can follow her on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn..