Fostering Collaborations: Building Partnerships to Promote Videos

How to Promote YouTube Videos (Without Paying)

Ollie Mattison

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Getting a unique idea for your YouTube video is great and implementing it is even greater. But what about promoting after creating the video? This is the biggest concern for many YouTubers especially those who are freshly entering the YouTube world. To work on marketing strategy is way too important than uploading video which many people don’t think of.

Since YouTube stands as one of the well-known video-sharing website and nearly 300 hours (estimated) of videos are uploaded every single minute, how would you make your video a storm of hype thereby reaching the essential target audience? Among the chain of YouTube channels, popularizing yours to let people know you; you need some smart tips to be a pro on this matter. And this is what today’s article stressed upon. Have a look and learn how to promote YouTube videos without paying to drive incredible traffic.

You may also like: YouTube to WAV File: 4 Best Free Convert Solutions >>

Part 1: How to Promote YouTube Videos Free

1. Come up compelling titles

To promote YouTube video the right way, focus firstly on the title of your video . As this is what viewers will notice first and your notable title will only encourage users to play the video further, try to keep it simple and on-point. Avoid providing long titles as Google automatically shortens it up to 66 characters on search results. Moreover, a great YouTube video promotion is nothing without keyword research. Make sure to go ahead for it to keep the video on top in search results.

2. Pay attention to description and Tags

While thinking how to promote YouTube videos, it is important to pay heed on the video description and tags . The motive of YouTube description is to expand on the main title and putting more detailed information to it. You need to make sure to keep the description long and incorporate the maximum keywords possible (don’t be stuffy) while writing the description. Besides, when you add a web address in the description, ensure to begin it with “http” to make it clickable. Viewers will then easily be redirected to it on clicking. A yet another tip to promote YouTube video is to add tags that can describe the video purpose.

3. Make high quality content

High-quality content is the key to have great and exceptional results out of your video. Make sure to keep the video highly informational and once you’re ready with the content, work on the YouTube SEO . Start looking for the relevant keywords and put these in the title, description, tags and wherever needed.

4. Connect with YouTube community

Connecting with the viewers and YouTube community is the next step for promoting YouTube videos without paying. You create video, upload it and now people like it and make time for commenting on it. How would your audience feel if you won’t respond them back? They will obviously feel ignored. Therefore, try to be actively involved with the audience by replying to their comments as this will keep your audience intact.

Furthermore, make time to find the similar niche community and get engage with them. Watch their videos and activities and drop comments on their videos. Also, try to share useful video links through comments section.

5. Run a contest in your video

Why don’t give your best shot on contest strategy to fascinate more audience? Well! This is an extremely interesting technique to engage the audience. You should try to motivate viewers to subscribe your channel and provide with giveaways and prizes in return. They will willingly go for it and spread the contest thing to their friends as well. After all, everyone on this planet cherishes free stuff. Hence, use this promotion strategy and run contest thereby cheering your audience to step ahead. Remember to follow YouTube’s contest rules .

6. Cross-promoting your video

Do you know that over 500 years of YouTube videos are successfully watched on Facebook on regular basis? Also, Twitter users are involved in sharing over 700 YouTube videos every minute, according to YouTube. Therefore, using the other social platforms and marketing your YouTube channel there stand a great chance for your success. Cross-promoting YouTube video are likely to get viral quickly with top ways to promote YouTube videos .

7. Thumbnails is a must

Thumbnail is equally important as the title and content of the video. And to promote YouTube Video and make it success-deserving, thumbnail plays as an important aspect. There is no rule to create thumbnail. If you like, you can customize thumbnail with Filmora. You should be creative and think out of the box to make it more appealing. Play with image, layouts, designs and add understandable text on your video thumbnail.

8. Add Calls To Action

Do work on CTAs if you want your video to be YouTube video promoted in a better way. While people watch your video, remin-d them or ask them to like the video and subscribe to your channel. In addition, tell them to share the video as maximum as possible to help others too. Popular YouTubers have embraced this Call-to-action approach and they experience increasing number of shares by just asking the existing subscribers for it.

Part 2: Bonus Tip: How to Promote YouTube Videos with Some Money

Don’t forget email marketing

Use video on email marketing is never an outdated idea and here you can use it too in order to promote YouTube videos. To get to the loyal audience through this strategy, you can follow multiple ways:

• Have an email subscriber list already? Then make use of it and spread the news about your creative YouTube channel to the people in the list. You can do this every time you publish a fresh video.
• Also, make sure to keep the intro and outro of the playlist appealing rather than working on each video and adding CTA. By palying with intro/outro, make your viewers acquaint with your email list and tell them to subscribe.
• Above all, it is always suggested whenever you think about promoting your YouTubr video to always add a CTA. Here, when you use email as marketing platform, ask your audience to subscribe to your email list in the last.

Advertise

One of the golden tips – “Advertise and make your views rise” that can be of great assistance. Also, make sure of the following tips if you are thinking about advertising of your video and channel.

• Firstly, you should know that the duration of the ad matters. Keep the advertisement small, 30 to 60 seconds to be precise.
• Secondly and importantly, don’t forget to provide clear call-to-action. Let your viewers know what to do next. You can add subscribe the channel or sign up for email or simply share the video etc. as effective CTAs.
• The third tip says you to take help of TrueView ad format. TrueView In-display ads are evident in watch pages of YouTube where the viewers have their recommended videos and other suggested videos (on the right side). These ads go with the “cost-per-view” concept i.e. when users opt to watch your video by clicking on it, you will be charged. Overall, TrueView stands as great way to get your video marketed.

Conclusion

We enlightened you how to promote YouTube videos without paying and even shared some tips on promotion through money. Now that you’ve got a fair idea, work on the aforementioned methods and make your video known worldwide. Make use of the strategies and we hope you will surely make a remarkable name of yours. Hope you liked the tips we shared and started promoting YouTube videos.

Ollie Mattison

Ollie Mattison is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Ollie Mattison

Charting Your Course in YouTubing: Dodge These Top 8 Common Missteps

8 Mistakes People Should Avoid as a New YouTuber

Richard Bennett

Nov 01, 2022• Proven solutions

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In the ten years that I’ve been a YouTuber, I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I learned from those mistakes and have helped many new YouTubers start their own channels. Here is a list of eight common mistakes that new YouTubers should avoid, along with tips to do things in a better way.

1. Failing to have a long-term vision

One common mistake that a lot of new YouTubers make is failing to have a long-term vision. Without a long-term vision, you’re more likely to poorly brand your YouTube channel, drop your YouTube channel activity in busier times, and, midway through, change the type of content you create and upload. None of these are good for your channel!

If you can think of the kind of content you’ll love to consistently create and share in the long-run, you’ll not only be able to narrow down your brand and effectively communicate to your audience who you are and what your channel is all about, but you’ll also have a better idea on what to put out next.

2. Choosing an ineffective custom URL

Another mistake I made with my first YouTube channel was choosing an ineffective custom URL. Because my last name is Kim, I wanted to make my custom URL “YouTube.com/kimagination.” But it wasn’t available. So, I took “kimaginati0n” with a zero where the “o” should be. I thought it was a good idea back then but it was a terrible idea.

Choose a custom URL with words that can’t be confused with other similar-sounding words. For consistency across all your different social media accounts, try to choose a custom URL that matches the usernames of all your other social media channels. If the username you want isn’t available, then keep on trying to come up with a good name that is available. When you’ve secured the same username across all your different social media channels, you can then very simply promote yourself and all your social media channels by displaying just the social media icons followed by your one username.

3. Coming up with titles that won’t get searched

Many new YouTubers make the mistake of titling their videos in an ineffective way. Rather than coming up with titles that more people might search, they either come up with titles that summarize what the video is about as a whole or title their videos the way big YouTubers do.

Big YouTubers can take advantage of non-searched, curiosity evoking titles like “You won’t believe what just happened…” because they already have a huge following. Their channels aren’t depending on getting discovered through search. But yours is. So come up with titles that people are actually searching.

As an example, let’s suppose you vlogged your time backpacking around Europe last summer. Don’t title your YouTube video “My Summer Backpacking Trip.” Instead, title it “Going Up The Eiffel Tower | Beautiful View of Paris!” This way, all the people who are curious about visiting Paris, the Eiffel Tower, and seeing what the view is like from the top of the Eiffel Tower might find your video.

4. Failing to have a thumbnail strategy

New YouTubers tend to think about their thumbnail images after they’ve finished editing their videos together. This is way too late in the process for something that is so incredibly important in getting views.

Even before filming, you should think about how you’re going to title your video to get the most views. After that, you should then try to picture, in your head, a thumbnail image that matches your title and creates curiosity and excitement. When you go into filming, you can then make sure to include some footage of you recreating that image.

5. Making weak intros

After you’ve managed to get someone to click on your video through your effective title and thumbnail image strategy, the next challenge is to keep that person watching your video without closing it too early. A typical viewer on YouTube decides within the first ten to fifteen seconds of landing on a video whether or not he or she will stay or leave. This short window of time is so important to set the tone of the rest of your video and build excitement and curiosity in your viewer with an effective, high-energy intro.

New YouTubers often make the mistake of having weak intros. Starting at the beginning of a story makes sense, right? The beginning, however, is not always the most exciting. Consequently, new YouTubers lose their audience’s attention too early on.

To read more on how some of the most successful YouTubers effectively do their intros, check out my blogpost on “How To Edit YouTube Videos Like a YouTuber .”

6. Forgetting to engage with subscribers

An important thing to do as a new YouTuber is engaging with your subscribers. Some new YouTubers, though, are so focused and busy with the production side of things that they forget to do the community side of things, including responding to comments. By not responding to comments as a new YouTuber, you hurt your potential to get more comments consistently from your subscribers. If your video’s comments section is very active, YouTube ranks your video higher in the videos it recommends to viewers.

Connecting with your audience shouldn’t just be limited to YouTube either. Use your other social media channels to connect with your audience as well.

7. Not promoting with social media

YouTube isn’t the only social media platform that people are spending their time on. People are spending their time on all kinds of different social media platforms, like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The more content in all of these platforms that you create to promote your video, the more potential your video has to be seen by their users.

New YouTubers sometimes forget to promote their videos and channel using other social media platforms. Consequently, they miss out on the opportunity to get views from multiple sources of social media.

8. Spamming comments

Commenting on other YouTube videos is another way to get your channel discovered from people reading over comments. If your profile picture and comment appears interesting enough, out of curiosity, people just might click your username to have a look at your channel.

But rather than leaving interesting comments that are related to the video, rather than adding to the conversation, some new YouTubers desperate to get more subscribers make the mistake of spamming videos with “check out my YouTube channel!” comments.

Spam comments annoy YouTubers. It would be much more beneficial to your channel to build good relationships with other YouTubers to possibly collaborate on a video together in the future.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett