The popularity and quantity of YouTube content grows continually, with ever more users jumping on the “YouTuber” bandwagon. Some even professionalize that role and earn revenue from it. Although anybody can upload a video, if you follow a bit of advice you can expand the impact of your posts. To that end, here we offer 10 tips to boost your video views.
Customized thumbnail
When you upload a video, you’ll see the option to add a preview image that will appear next to the video in search results. By default, you can choose one of the three frames of the video itself, although you can also upload your own customized thumbnail. To make it more attention-grabbing, many users opt to add text or other visual tricks to their thumbnail to make it stand out from the rest. It’s recommended to upload them with a resolution of 1280×720 or lower, and maintain the aspect ratio of 16:9.
Insert superimposed hyperlinks in your video
During the track of the video itself you can stimulate user interaction by adding superimposed mini-banners to it, so that you can include extra information as well as links to other videos on your channel or any other content that interests you. To do so, you’ll need to access the “Notes” section within the video’s editing menu, where you’ll find a video editor from which you can add pop-up boxes or speech bubbles with customized text.
Upload your content in HD
YouTube can play your videos at different resolutions, and given the constant improvement in Internet connection speeds, it’s rather common to find clips in FullHD resolutions (1920×1080). Given the fact that YouTube search results highlight HD videos with a special tag, this has become a key feature users look out for when they choose which videos to play.
Transcriptions/subtitles
If your video has spoken audio, YouTube can transcribe it so you can view it superimposed over your video as subtitles. While the automatic tool is quite precise, there will inevitably be words or expressions that it can’t detect, so you’ll want to edit them as needed from the “Subtitles” section in the editing menu. You can also download these subtitles to translate them to different languages and re-upload them, enormously expanding the reach of your video by making it intelligible to more users.
Use descriptive tags
Any advice related to search engine optimization for web content is also applicable to the text that accompanies your videos. The main title should describe the content of your video as concisely and specificly as possible, and in the description you should include all the keywords you think will help people find your video during searches; these keywords will apply to both YouTube and Google searches. That text, sprinkled with tags recommended by YouTube itself, will make your videos much more visible.
Link your channel to other social networks
There are two way to take advantage of other social networks that you’re active on to stimulate traffic in both directions. On the one hand, you can add links to your Google +, Twitter, and Facebook pages on your channel’s main page. To do so, go to the editing button situated in the upper right side of your cover image, where you can add the URLs for your social networks as well as any other external page.
The other method is to set all your new content to automatically post on your networks. To do this, go to “YouTube Configuration” from the gear icon in the upper right corner and from there to the “Linked Accounts” section.
Improve your channel’s categorization
Although this information isn’t visible to users, it’s well known that YouTube categorizes user channels and gives them greater or lesser visibility based on a series of indicators: age of the channel, posting frequency, number of subscribers, number of external links, total number of uploads, and number of views. These values are to a large extent indirect and don’t depend on you, but there’s no doubt that continuity and perseverance, along with quality content, will make everything run more smoothly.
Personalize your channel
Besides the uploaded content itself, you want your channel to have a professional and simple look. You can personalize your global cover image that will be used on all viewing platforms, that is, web, smartphones, and TVs. To do so, from the same drop-down settings panel where you found the social network link options, you can access the “Edit channel design” option. There you’ll have to upload an image (ideally with a hefty 2560×1440 resolution) that you can crop to fit as needed.
The 15-second rule
We could go into a lot of detail here about the content of the video itself, but one thing is clear: the first seconds are the most important for hooking your viewers, and most of your viewers will stop watching at the 15-second mark. Thus, this section should condense everything that will be elaborated upon in the rest of your video, and also offer attractive content that gives the visitor a reason to keep watching.
And the most obvious: Quality content!
Just so nobody forgets: all these tips are just the cherry on top to improve the reach and visibility of your videos, not a magic formula to make them better. In the end, the content itself is the key to success. What you can do is maximize its performance and make it available to the widest possible audience. Good YouTubers should give it their everything if they want to be the best!
