10000 Views On YouTube, 1,300,000,000 users. 5 billion videos watched daily. 3,3 billion hours of advertised video content. That’s right, these are the staggering numbers YouTube can brag about. With so many users, so many internet fame hungry people, it seems like an impossible task to rise to the top of the platform, but the good news is that you don’t have to be the best to be well-off. There is a user by the name of Dr Pimple Popper who’s gathered two million subscribers to her videos of… popping zits. If she has made it that far, surely you can do it too! There is an ever-growing fan base for pretty much anything on YouTube and with a bit of hard work and dedication on your part, no doubt you can become a famed youtuber.
Getting started may seem a bit overwhelming. Being on the uploading side of YouTube reveals all the technical toil that comes with what most think is banal. Unless you don’t mind sinking into the bottomless pit of useless, unseen videos, you might want to read these five tips to get the first thousand displays that will make all the difference. 10000 Views On YouTube.
1. KEYWORDS ARE THE KEY
Keywords. Even if you have zero activity in SEO, you must have bumped into this word in regards to search engines such as Google. A keyword is what you want to match against in a search, so most of Dr Pimple Popper videos would have the keywords such as zit or pimple, but also skin care and getting rid of zits. You want to include your keywords in the video title, description and script, if you have one, but be sure to place them in a sentence where they come off natural, since misplaced keywords do more harm than good. If you’re not positive as to what your keywords are, you can always use free keyword tools such as Google Trends or Google Ads Keyword Planner. Starting out, don’t focus on one keyword alone, as the competition for the most relevant one is beyond fierce. Rather than that, try to spread out and cover search entries that are close enough. 10000 Views On YouTube.
2. MAKE THE TITLE SHORT AND RELEVANT
You already know the video title has to include desired keywords, but there’s much more to it. Most importantly, stay below sixty characters, so your precious keywords don’t get lost in the text. Youtube search engine algorithm doesn’t appreciate titles consisting solely of keywords, the same way it deprecates lengthy, over-descriptive one. What you want is a sentence or two that embrace keywords, while being simple and to the point. Ideally, they indicate a solution to a problem, but only if that is what the video truly offers. Remember, Google doesn’t like clickbaits just as much as we all do. 10000 Views On YouTube.
3. 10000 VIEWS ON YOUTUBE, GET THE BEST OUT OF TAGS
Tags on Youtube are not dissimilar to those used in a blog or any informative website. They are words associated with a video’s content and even though they are often found in titles and descriptions, sometimes the most important ones are not. Imagine you have made a video about a soccer game. You don’t have to specify that Messi made an appearance in the title nor description, but you are aware of his popularity, so you include him in a tag. You should come up with about five generic single-word tags such as soccer, goals or highlights that are relevant to the video, but more importantly, add more specific multi-word tags such as Soccer World Cup or Argentina against France highlights. If you don’t know what tags fit your video best, just look up the videos that directly compete with your clip. Youtube itself doesn’t let you see what tags other users went for, but luckily there are tools such VidIQ or TubeBuddy that allow you to get more insight into videos metadata with tags being one of them. If you don’t want to install any software, you can also track down tags by right clicking the page and selecting View Source. Next, just hit the F key while holding down Control and search for keywords in the displayed source code.
4. LET THE WORLD KNOW.
Place links to your video wherever you can just like you would with any other URL you want to give a higher ranking on Google. Start with all your social media accounts: Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. If you are a people’s person, that might be a thousand views right there. Next, move on to a relevant subreddit, Quora Answers and any other come-together type of website, but stay relevant to a given page or thread, while sharing the link, otherwise it will be removed and your time wasted. Lastly, reach out to bloggers and influencers that dabble in your video’s topic. Most of them won’t reply to your messages, some will promote your content only with some monetary gain, but a few kind-hearted individuals will do it right away – that is, of course, if they actually enjoyed your work. 10000 Views On YouTube.
5. VIDEO ITSELF HAS TO BE GOOD.
Everything we’ve covered so far touched upon what to do with the video, now let’s bullet-point the most important characteristics of the content itself.
– Your video has to be either entertaining or solution-offering. Ideally, you tick out both boxes, but don’t be too demanding of yourself, especially in the funny department, as trying to hard will cringe the life out of your viewers.
– Stay under five minutes, if it’s applicable to your concept. Contrary to the popular belief, short videos tend to outrank longer ones. Why is that? Look at your own Youtube activity. I bet you prefer short and concise videos to the longer one. Youtube might have gone a long way evolving, but the fundamental principal still holds: it’s a user-to-user platform, where people share bits of their creativity or lifestyle and it’s not designed for major film productions.
– Utilize end screen. End screen is the unsaid invitation to watch more videos from your channel. Let the last couple of seconds neatly present thumbnails of your other videos. This way you can get the visitor to watch not one, but a bunch of your videos in a row!
– Custom an eye-catching thumbnail. Always, always create your own thumbnail for the video, instead of settling for the random one Youtube generates. If you are shown in the related portion of the page, it’s your title and thumbnail that drive traffic. If you neglect either one of them, your click-through rate will drop exponentially. A good thumbnail piques curiosity and entices to visit the link. They tend to show a a person rather than an object, but that varies greatly niche to niche. If you don’t know what frame to use, just use a relevant face expression with a bit of text. Whichever emotion the video seeks to elicit is the one that should be expressed. For example, how-to videos exude excitation of grasping an idea, while entertaining clips show either laughter or disbelief. Also, try avoiding white and red as they are predominant colors on Youtube and you can easily blend with the background. 10000 Views On YouTube. 10000 Views On YouTube.
That’s it! With this handful of information you should be good on your way to make your visit counter show four digits. Of course, there will be doubt and frustration, but don’t give in to that! Instead, always keep your goal mind!
Capturing 500,000 YouTube Views in 11 Months
The first 100,000
At the beginning of 2014, my business partner and I decided to attempt a different marketing method for our (slow) growing drumming education company, Flight Drummers.
We constantly used Facebook and Twitter as our prime marketing resources, but it was soon apparent that the dream wouldn’t last long if we didn’t pick up more traffic or make more sales.
That month, we studied our competition hard and realized that Youtube was a rare marketing commodity in the drumming industry. Sure, a majority of drumming education companies had Youtube channels, but the view count, subscriber count, and interaction was minimal.
Seeing as this was a difficult marketing strategy for competition in our niche, we decided to capitalize on their weakness by filming some Youtube videos.
The following month, we geared up, filmed, edited nearly 70 videos, and began harnessing the true power of Youtube.
Within three months, we had accumulated more than 100,000 Youtube views with 1,800 subscribers, and by month 10, had generated 500,000+ views, accumulated a Youtube subscriber base of more than 8,400 people, and established paid members in 14 countries—primarily through Youtube.
Despite our current success with Youtube marketing, it wasn’t until we began following these eight steps, that we began to experience 2,000-3,000 views per day (5,000-7,000 views on release days) and a highly interactive subscriber base.
Let’s get started
Here are the 8 steps to capturing 500,000 YouTube views in just 10 months.
1. Stalk your competition
Although this sounds slightly odd, it’s necessary. Subscribe to channels that will be competing with you for views, subscribers, and ultimately sales. The goal is to learn from their mistakes and generate success–quicker.
A few things to study include:
- Posting Days & Times. (Find what day of the week they’re posting and time of day they’re posting and try them yourself. Chances are, if they’ve been at the game long enough, they know what days and times generate the most views. This can save you boatloads of time trying to find the most effective days & times. We found the best days to post (in our industry) are Mondays and Wednesdays after 6pm EST. Most people are off work in our time zone and ready to be on their favorite social sites.)
- Posting Material. (Is their content generating positive comments or are people responding negatively to their videos? Find what they’re doing wrong, and do it right.)
- Posting Frequency. (We found that our competition was posting once per week on average, so we immediately jumped to 3 times per week. This positioned us as a more informative resource and skyrocketed our views. People like channels that generate fresh content consistently.)
Once you’ve done your research, you can begin developing a solid Youtube marketing plan.
2. Get your setup
This is probably the biggest ‘stopper’ for most people. (It was for me, too.)
Finding good cameras, editing software, and audio equipment can get quite expensive, especially if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
Depending on what you’re filming, you can get a setup relatively cheap, though. For simple setups (such as speaking presentations,) you could use the standard webcam on your computer, a blue microphone (for crisp audio,) and a free editing program like iMovie. (Less than $50)
For more complex and high-quality setups, I recommend a Canon T3i camera or later ($500+), Adobe Premiere Pro ($29.99/mo) for video editing, Logic Pro ($199) for audio editing, and an Audio Technica Wireless Mic ($101) for speaking.
3. Develop a theme
This step will make or break your Youtube success. It can be very easy to want to create a Youtube channel and post anything for views. Don’t do it.
The first channel I created was comprised of cover music videos, Facebook Marketing Tips, and investment tutorials. (What was I thinking?)
That immediately got me a plethora of comments regarding the irrelevancy my channel had as a whole and discouraged me from posting any more videos.
Think about it, what do all the top Youtube channels have in common? They stick to a theme.
Tyler Ward sticks to music, Jenna Marbles sticks to humor, Epic Rap Battles of History sticks to remixes; the list goes on.
So, before you begin creating videos, find your common them and stick to it.
4. Be consistent.
Just like content marketing, this is the step where most people goof up.
Consistency is hard. It takes time, energy and motivation–which is difficult to maintain when you have close to zero views and subscribers.
We tried Youtube Marketing on and off for about a year, but lacked consistency and averaged about 16-30 views per day. Once we established a consistency of releasing 2-3 videos per week, we hit 1,000 daily views within 1 month.
A great example of consistency is Ray William Johnson. He started his Youtube Video Blogging channel in 2007 and from his consistent posting of 3-4 videos per week, he has established one of the most well-known Youtube channels with more than 10.7 million subscribers and 2.6 billion views. 10000 Views On YouTube.
5. Add annotations to everything
Youtube has a great feature that allows you to have ‘annotations’ popup on a video while the viewer is watching. This is fantastic for building your subscriber base and letting people know of upcoming tours, product releases, free offers, etc.
When Flight Drummers went on tour, we added an annotation to every video that encouraged people to purchase tickets for our upcoming drum clinics and festival. When we decided to switch from paid memberships to free memberships, we did the same thing and added more than 1,000 people to our membership waiting list in the first 2 months–all from Youtube.
6. Host guests
If you’re looking to generate the maximum exposure possible, you absolutely need to host industry leaders as guests in videos.
When we first began our Youtube marketing, we were filming ourselves and growing steadily. Once we introduced guests, everything changed.
Our views doubled overnight when we released our first guest appearance and by time we had released all 11 of the guest’s videos, our views had quadrupled permanently. 10000 Views On YouTube.
Although guests can have an upfront cost, the ROI is incredible. Here are just a few reasons to have guest appearances on your channel:
- Their fanbase becomes yours. (Now, obviously they don’t hand over their entire fanbase to you, but when they promote the videos they were hosted in, the traffic is astronomical–which typically does increase your subscriber count.)
- Your daily view count is boosted. (Usually, the first released videos of them experiences a spike in views. Within a week, the hype usually whittles down, but the views don’t.)
- You become more credible. (After you’ve hosted some name brand guests, your credibility within your industry increases. Flight Drummers has hosted some of the largest drummers in the industry for interviews, performances, lessons, etc. and since doing so, the we have been able to easily get massive sponsorships for our tour.)
7. Create playlists
Let’s face it, viewers like to spend as little time as possible searching for videos and more time watching them.
That’s where playlists come in. Typically, when somebody finds your channel, they like to easily find material that interests them. If you have a large quantity of videos and no playlists, finding the right video is like finding a needle in a hay stack. Very difficult.. 10000 Views On YouTube.
Playlists allow you to categorize your videos into topics that act as a quick reference for viewers.
For example, if you had a channel that discussed business aspects and had 50 tutorials on marketing, social media, and blogging, then it would be beneficial to have playlists of relevant videos. (i.e. Content Marketing Tips, Social Media Marketing,