How to Drive Traffic to Your YouTube Channel

Should you drive traffic to your YouTube channel? 100 hours of video uploaded per minute to YouTube can’t be wrong.

It’s fairly easy for your video to get lost in the gigantic YouTube galaxy, but fortunately enough, there are some pretty simple and effective ways to create unique organic traffic for your videos.

Here are some tips to keep in mind to win some clicks

1. Choose carefully your thumbnail

The thumbnails you select for each video are more important than you think. It’s the first thing people will see when they search for your videos, so it needs to have the “click-worthy” value.

In other words, make it appealing. YouTube automatically gives you three thumbnail options to choose from when you upload a video, but if you feel you need something catchier, customize and upload your own. It goes a long way.

2. Think over your title and video description

Your title is clearly important for intriguing viewers, but it can also improve your search results and should definitively drive more traffic to your channel. To create keyword-rich video titles and rank for that keyword in YouTube search, search for ideas via an SEO keyword generator and study your niche to see which phrases competitors use in their videos.

The very first term should be relevant, such as a keyword and you should follow that with what is featured in the video, building a keyword phrase. Several SEO tools help you optimize for that. While your title should be clear and concise, the video description is where you can go a little more in-depth.

The description can include a keyword phrase, your URL, and a mini-post that briefly describes the content of your video.

3. Create a Custom Background Image

Compliment your content with a clean channel design. Your background image can also invite viewers, so apart from the theme and color options YouTube offers, you can also upload your own background image, helping you to stand out from the crowd.

4. Make Your Best Video “Featured”

YouTube automatically shows your most recent video in the main “Featured” window on your channel page. For users that post regularly, this is ideal, but for those that post less, sometimes a better option is selecting another video to occupy that slot.

Here’s how: Go to your “Creator Studio” settings and select “Featured Content” from the left menu under “Channel”. Then click the “Feature Content” button and choose if you want to use the most recent uploaded video or choose a new video or playlist.

If you already have a featured video, you need to click “remove” first to actually being able to change it.

5. Add Channel Tags

Tag away! This is as fundamental as tagging your videos with keywords. You’ll bring the viewers to you and can find this on your settings option on the My Channel menu.

6. Pay Attention to Comments

Engage with your audience. Take the time to read your channel comments as well as those posted on your videos and be sure to respond.

Remember; clean up if you have to. Delete or report spam comments, if not, it comes off as if you may be ignoring your channel.

7. Recent Activity is a win-win situation

Show what you’ve been up to on YouTube lately. If you like or favorite a video on YouTube, this action will show up in your “Recent Activity” as well as the “Recent Activity” box of the content creator.

It’s a simple way to make YouTube contacts, and it may bring viewers to your page.

Video owners who’ve been liked or favorited are more likely to click through to take a look at your content in return.

8. Users like playlists

Create playlists of your videos instead of having a series of separate videos. Start with your most popular or recent videos to get your fans interested, and then let them sift through new and old material.

9. Leverage cross-channel promotion

Cross-channel promotion can be a highly effective way to drive traffic to the target destination – in this case your YouTube Channel. You could create blogs posts about about the themes related to your YouTube Channel and embed and link your videos in them. The blog posts (and your new and old videos) in turn can also be shared with your opted-in subscribers of blog or YouTube channel or some other email list as a fortnightly or monthly newsletter as part of email marketing. The blog posts (and of course your videos too) can even be promoted on your social media. This cyclical sharing will help you find and lock in followers from a number of channels. If you don´t have enough followers yet, you can buy social media followers on sites like Twicsy that sell Instagram followers, to boost your online presence.

If you are short on time (considering managing a YouTube Channel) itself is a big task, you can consider outsourcing blog writing and social media content management to specialized writing agencies or marketplaces like Narrato.io

Conclusion

So you see here, a little goes a long way. And these tips work. Just try them out and check how you drive more traffic to your YouTube channel. If you are worried about video editing, try our marketing video maker, it’s easy to use and will give you the confidence to get started.

You may also want to read: How to SEO Optimize Your YouTube Videos.

Bonus

Have an aesthetic video intro. You can make an animated video to show at the beginning of your youtube video with WIdeo.

TRY IT!

Agus

Wideo Co-Founder & Head of UX/Design

How can I promote my YouTube channel for free?

Invest time on your YouTube SEO, promote your channel in other social media platforms, ask for help from your viewers, cross-promotion with other YouTube channels, mobilize your community with a giveaway or contest for your viewer and create content shareable and interesting.

How can I increase my YouTube subscribers?

Reply to every comment, focus on quality and not in quantity, use a cool channel icon and background image, create a killer channel trailer, end your videos with an effective CTA, promote your video in your end screen with cards, and add your brand logo watermark.

How do you get a lot of views on YouTube?

Be specific and clear in your title, write a proper description, tag your videos, use cards and most important of all, have good content creating something people want to see.