How to Promote a YouTube Video? [2024 Guide]

YouTube is the Today. With its 122 million daily active users, it is a fertile market. However, there are over 37 million YouTube channels already, so if you want to make it big, you must follow proven tips and tactics.

Is it only my impression, or do social media and marketing experts say over and over that it’s a year of video?

As far as I remember, we’ve been having the year of video since 2015.

It’s beyond the shadow of a doubt that video content has been on the rise for some time. Indeed, there are a couple of good reasons to celebrate yet another video year since 2015:

• Video is engaging and attention-grabbing.
• Video is easy in reception.
• Video forms are more intimate relationships with your audience.
• Video increases the conversion rate.
• Video is simply more entertaining.

Whether you’re a YouTuber or a marketer making the first steps in video marketing, one of your tasks is to promote YouTube videos. Here are tips to boost your YouTube content.

Here’s what’s ahead of us today:

1. Start promotion before making content
2. Video SEO
3. Video branding
4. Monitoring your performance
5. Interacting with your audience
6. Cracking the algorithm
7. YouTube Shorts
8. Epic video titles & custom thumbnails
9. Live videos
10. Promotion of a video using your social channels
11. Scheduling
12. Leveraging YouTube community
13. Collaborations with other creators
14. Reminding the viewers to interact
15. Creating playlists

01 Start promotion before making content

This is something I learned from Sujan Patel, one of the most influential growth marketers and entrepreneurs out there. These slightly enigmatic words make perfect sense.

Promotion starts with finding out who your audience is and what their needs are. Only then you can create YouTube content that will resonate with them. 

No amount of money will make irrelevant content successful.

Thus, you really need to know what your audience is up to when creating content and optimizing existing video content.

One way to get to know your audience is to use a social media monitoring tool like Brand24. The tool collects real-time content, including predefined keywords from all over the Web.

By monitoring keywords and phrases relevant to your niche, you discover online sources across social media, blogs, discussion forums, etc., that talk about your keywords.

Going through the mentions lets you know current problems, trends, and novelties worth addressing within a given niche. Simple as that.

On this basis, you can create content circles around your niche. In other words, a list of relevant topics for your YouTube videos.

For example, in the case of media monitoring, we specified a couple of content circles around which we create content:

• Brand and reputation management.
• Social selling.
• Customer service.
• Social media analytics.

Plus, by going through the mentions, you will find user-generated content that will further inform you about your audience.

This way, you will know in which direction you should develop your YouTube channel and YouTube marketing strategy.

02 YouTube SEO

You have your content circles and an idea for a video.

If you want to promote your YouTube channel, you need to do keyword research. There’s an entire science of doing keyword research.

Use tools such as SEMRush or Wordtracker to find relevant keywords that are trending for your topic.

SEO is a competition. Many other creators already use the most popular keywords. Therefore, there’s a slight chance your content stands a chance against them.

You need to rank for keywords that are within your reach.

Below is the list of the most popular keywords containing keyword research phrase. We can see that keyword research or keyword research tool are extremely popular with high keyword density numbers.

Keyword density is an estimate of how hard it will be to rank for a particular keyword with your YouTube video. The lower the number, the bigger the chance you’ll successfully rank on this keyword. This increases the chance your content will be found organically through YouTube search.

As a beginner with no audience and video social presence, you need to find the middle ground. 

Keyword research checklist looks good: it’s less popular, and keyword density is relatively low. You have a good chance to rank well.

SEMRush has a feature called SEO Content Template. You can type in your target keyword there, and SEMRush will provide you with semantically related keywords you should use in YouTube tags and description.

Use these keywords also while promoting your YouTube video in other places online. Create a Google spreadsheet to list your keywords and maintain order.

Use long-tail keywords to make your videos specific and easy to find among other YouTube channels. Long-tail keywords are entire phrases or sentences users might type into a YouTube search engine:

You can put these keywords in the video tags, title, and video description.

YouTube’s algorithm takes into account a whole bunch of other factors when providing search engine results:

Watch time

Watch time is the amount of time a viewer has watched a video. It can give you a sense of what content viewers actually watch (as opposed to videos they click on and then abandon).

YouTube’s algorithm prioritizes videos with longer watch time or more view sessions. If viewers watch your videos beyond the first click, they are more likely to be suggested more frequently in the search results.

Metadata

Metadata is the description of your video: title, description, tags, and annotations. If optimized correctly, all of them increase the likelihood of your content ranking well.

Ensure that the description, title, and tags are rich in keywords and relevant hashtags you have previously researched.

03 Branding – make your YouTube channel stand out

Good branding makes it easier to promote a YouTube video and grow your YouTube audience. It proves an author’s consistency and builds trust among the audience, making them more likely to share your other videos.

Branding is an expression of devotion to the craft, which helps establish your position as a YouTube expert. Here’s how you can achieve it:

Add a watermark to all videos

Use your company logo as the watermark across all of your YouTube videos. That’s how you make the entire video branded, so if somebody makes a screenshot of it and shares it, your logo will be there as well.

Create thumbnails for all videos

Be consistent and design thumbnails for each video. It looks good and, again, shows you’re professional about your YouTube presence.

Plus, you immediately let people know it’s your video. If a person encountered your content in the past and liked it, there is a higher chance that they will consume more of your content when they recognize your thumbnail on their recommendation page.

Annotations

It’s an excellent way to promote other content. Annotations are hyperactive pop-ups you can add to your videos.

They can contain texts or links to other relevant videos, such as your company website, blog, or CTA button. If you already have some content to share, annotations are a surefire way to show your expertise in your niche.

04 Monitor your performance

Posting videos with excellent branding is not enough. You should also leverage a YouTube monitoring tool to assess their performance.

With Brand24, you can keep up with all the mentions of your keywords and critical metrics of your performance.

Here are the key features to monitor with Brand24:

• Sentiment Analysis
• Mentions monitoring
• Presence Score 
• Reputation Score
• Engagement metrics
• Trending hashtags
• Top public profiles
• Trending links
• Geo Analysis
• Topic Analysis
• AI Insights
• Emotion Analysis

You only need to choose a word or phrase you want to monitor. This can be your YouTube channel, industry, or product name. In just a few seconds, you’ll get the first results, including your keyword.

If you are interested only in results from YouTube, you can choose the platform icon on the right-hand side of the panel.

As you see, every mention has a sentiment score assigned to it. Brand24 uses AI to tag each mention as positive, neutral, or negative. This way, you can filter the mentions by sentiment and quickly find what you are looking for.

That’s also very useful for reputation management, as you can identify negative mentions quickly. With Brand24, you can detect and successfully prevent a PR crisis at its early stage. For measuring this parameter, you have the Reputation Score to track.

05 Interact with your audience

Creating a relationship with your audience is crucial. Respond to the comments you get under your YouTube videos. It may be time-consuming, especially when you grow a bigger audience, but it’ll be worth it. I swear.

You don’t need to say much. Sometimes, a thank you or a short explanation is enough to improve your audience’s reception of your video and YouTube channel.

06 Crack the algorithm

According to Increditools, over 70% of what people watch is based on the YouTube algorithm. Thus, make sure it works in your favor.

Combine strategically content quality, relevance, and audience engagement.

Conduct keyword research to optimize your title, description, and tags.

Consistency is key; maintain a regular upload schedule to signal to the algorithm that your channel is active. Encourage likes, comments, and shares by fostering a community around your content.

Pay attention to YouTube analytics, understand what works, and refine your approach.

The more algorithms see users enjoying your video content, the more it will promote your YouTube channel. YouTube suggests related videos helping you reach new audiences with your YouTube videos.

07 YouTube Shorts

As the name indicates, these are just short videos shot in portrait mode. The maximum length of a single video is 60 seconds.

YouTube and other social media platforms copied this feature from TikTok. Its prominent advantage is the option of creating a more personal connection with the audience.

What should you post through the Shorts?

Here are some ideas:

• Highlights of your most relevant content
• Behind the scenes of video-making
• Previews of your upcoming videos that are about to come out
• Announcements for your new videos
• Anecdotes and one-liners
• Snippets from your new video with a call to action to see the full video
• Compilations of bloopers
• Short guides

08 Epic video titles & custom thumbnails

A great video title can do wonders and promote the hell out of your video.

There are two things to remember:

Make it epic and keep it SEO-optimized.

The titles of YouTube videos should contain your target keyword and be catchy.

You need to remember one important thing.

Sure, you are aiming for an attention-grabbing design, but make sure your video titles and thumbnails reflect the video’s content.

Otherwise, if the algorithm realizes the video’s title is just clickbait, it may penalize it with a shadowban or demonetization. Take it seriously, as there have already been many cases like this.

You may ask what the consequences of a shadowban are.

The answer is that your video will be hidden from the related videos and suggested videos section.

09 Make lives

YouTube live videos are another way to create closer bonds with your audience.

To make a YouTube transmission successful, you can cross-promote it on different social platforms. Make sure you add captivating titles and video descriptions every time to make the video easily searchable.

What kind of videos can you live stream on YouTube?

Try Q&As, webinars, tutorials, presentations, walk-throughs, and more videos types.

The best property of lives that you can leverage is their interactivity. Remember to be peeking at the video chat and answer vocaly in real time.

10 Promote a video using your social channels

Cross-promote your YouTube channel to enhance reach and interactions. This way, you will drive channel traffic and ensure a better performance for your video.

Promote a YouTube video by posting it on your social media platforms. This, however, requires having an audience.

Do it on Facebook:

On Instagram:

In a newsletter:

You can also write a blog post featuring one of your videos.

11 Prepare a schedule & post videos regularly

Consistency is the backbone of a successful YouTube strategy.

Prepare a posting schedule that aligns with your audience’s habits, ensuring regular and predictable content drops. This not only keeps your subscribers engaged but also signals YouTube’s algorithm that your channel is active and worth promoting.

Plan your content calendar thoughtfully, balancing variety with relevance to maintain viewer interest. Regular, scheduled uploads build anticipation among your audience and contribute significantly to the discoverability and promotion of your YouTube channel and videos.

12 Leverage community on YouTube

The YouTube community tab is an underestimated area of your channel. That’s where you can connect to your site visitors, share updates, and promote your latest YouTube video.

You can use it in an interactive way by adding polls and responding to the comments you get under your updates.

13 Collaborate with other creators

Promote your YouTube channel through collaboration with other YouTubers. You leverage each other’s reach and engagement by making a video together.

If you choose a creator of a similar size, both of you will benefit and make each other a very effective YouTube promotion.

How to find the right person to collaborate with?

14 Remind the viewers to interact

Of course, you want to accumulate interactions on your YouTube channel. Sometimes, you just need to ask nicely.

Put a call to action at the beginning of your YouTube videos to encourage the viewers to hit the subscribe button.

As simple as that.

15 Create playlists

Another simple step that contributes towards YouTube channel growth. Group existing videos into playlists to encourage your target audience to see more of your own videos.

Playlist titles should reflect their video content and encourage the viewer.

Promote YouTube videos with Brand24 metrics!

Now, you are ready to embark on your YouTube journey!

Remember the key takeaways from this blog post:

1. Get to know your audience.
2. Discover trending topics & YouTube trends.
3. Monitor your performance.
4. Implement cohesive branding into your videos.
5. Curate all the aspects of your video: descriptions, title, thumbnail, and intro & end screen.

Apply these tips strategically to promote your YouTube channel page.

Keep Brand24 in mind in case you need to conduct YouTube analytics, identify YouTube trends or develop a new video’s topic.

Or, if you already feel that social media monitoring is something you need, give it a try. It’s absolutely free.