20 Free Ways To Grow Your YouTube Channel Subscribers And Views-2015

YouTube presents a huge opportunity to business owners who are willing to take the plunge into video marketing. Think about this recent stat from eMarketer: While 41% of US small businesses use Facebook, only 9% use YouTube. While video can provide a serious boon when it comes to engagement for your business, the competition – at least in terms of other commercial enterprises – isn’t as fierce as on some other major social networks.
This article outlines 50 free ways to grow your YouTube channel subscribers as well as increase video views and engagement.
1. Upload new videos regularly, and preferably on a schedule. If your audience comes to expect a new video every Tuesday, they’ll look forward to Tuesdays! When you upload a new video, those who have subscribed to your channel will receive a notification (which helps trigger new views).
2. Post each of your YouTube videos on Facebook using Facebook’s native video uploader (Fact: Facebook videos now get more engagement than shared YouTube video links). Include a call-to-action within the Facebook video post to “check out my other videos on YouTube” with a link to your YouTube channel.
3. Keep your video titles to 50 characters or less. Any longer, and your title will get cut off, decreasing the chances it will get clicked in search.
4. Embed your YouTube videos on your blog and promote them to your social media audience. This will not only increase video views, it will increase your site’s pageviews.
5. Try keeping your videos to around 3 minutes. Research by Buffer Social shows the ideal length of a YouTube video is 2 minutes and 54 seconds.
6. When choosing keywords for your videos, run a quick Google search to see if there are video results for those keywords. If there are, your video has a better chance of ranking in search.
7. Organize your videos in topical playlists. Use relevant keywords to give your playlists more potential for ranking in search.
8. Include an intro for all your videos. Your intro is where you have a captive audience. Use it to present the content of your video while also reminding viewers they can subscribe to your channel.
9. Use relevant keywords in your title and description so your video has the best chance of showing up in YouTube and Google search results.
10. Include your YouTube video URL when embedding it on your blog. Adding the URL manually may increase clicks to your YouTube channel….and may just lead to your visitors sticking around to check out your other videos.
11. Create a captivating channel trailer to introduce yourself and let viewers know what you’re all about. Your trailer will autoplay when a non-subscriber arrives at the homepage of your channel, so it could be your one chance to convince people to stick around and get to know you.
12. Use a strong call to action in your annotations. Near the end of your video, encourage viewers to subscribe to your channel.
13. Create evergreen video content as well as trending video content. Trending videos are great for getting short-term views, but your channel should also contain timeless, useful videos that your subscribers will find helpful over the long haul. These videos tend to rank well in Google search results over time, driving traffic and views over the long-haul.
14. Include subscribe buttons on your blog, especially next to your embedded videos.
15. Long-tail keyword search isn’t just important for your written content. Don’t be afraid to write long, detailed video descriptions so Google can find your video for relevant and highly-specific long-tail phrases.
16. Add a YouTube widget to your website or blog. A tool like Tint can help you easily display a variety of videos simply by pasting a snippet of code onto your site.
17. Ask viewers to like your videos. When your video gets a lot of likes, it signals to YouTube that your video is popular, helping bump it up in YouTube search results.
18. Reply to comments left under your videos (even negative ones). It shows you’re listening and that you care about what your viewers have to say.
19. Work with other YouTubers to promote each other’s content. Create co-branded videos or promote each other’s videos via your other marketing channels.
20. Engage your most loyal fans. Look through your Creator Dashboard and Analytics to identify users who are most engaged with your content. Consider reaching out to them and asking them to share your videos with their fans, friends or communities.