9 Powerful Ways to Promote Your YouTube Channel

Whether you’re a business or an individual content creator, it’s no secret that YouTube is an insanely powerful channel to drive awareness, build an audience, and generate revenue.

That’s because YouTube has over 2.7 billion active users who watch over a billion hours of videos every day. Many of them say it’s their favorite platform for researching products and brands and making purchase decisions.

But how do you cut through that billion hours of video to make your videos stand out on a platform that is positively brimming with content?

That’s exactly what we’re here to discuss today. In this article, we will walk through nine of our favorite ways to promote your YouTube channel to drive more impressions, subscriptions, engagement, and revenue.

Contents

1. Use the right keywords in the right places
2. Boost CTR with engaging titles and thumbnails
3. Develop a consistent content schedule
4. Post content in advance and at the right times
5. Engage with your audience
6. Leave viewers with a question to encourage comments
7. Collaborate with like-minded creators
8. Host new guests and get featured on like-minded channels
9. Leverage email marketing

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How to promote your YouTube channel: 9 ingenious ideas

You’ve gone through all the trouble of creating killer content, so let’s get more eyes on it!

1. Use the right keywords in the right places

Optimizing your YouTube channel and videos for SEO is a non-negotiable tactic if you want viewers to find them. It’s free, completely scalable, and, if you do it effectively, can have massive implications for your visibility and reach.

Just like Google SEO, you want to start by conducting some thorough keyword research to find keywords relevant to your niche, products, and services. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, Moz, SEMrush, and WordStream’s own Free Keyword Tool are all great tools to help here.

Another tactic to consider here is entering some queries related to your topic into YouTube’s search bar. Autocomplete will give you a good idea of what people are searching for and how to optimize your video for relevant keywords.

Create a list of relevant keywords for your business. Then, identify the keywords on the list with high search volume.

From there, you’ll want to work these keywords strategically (and naturally!) into your videos’ titles, descriptions, and tags to improve your search rankings.

💡 Want more? Download The Big Easy Guide to Keyword Research for Businesses

2. Boost CTR with engaging titles and thumbnails

Click-through rate (CTR) will also have a huge impact on your search rankings. YouTube’s algorithm automatically gives preference to videos that users engage with more frequently. If you want to increase your CTR, you need to make sure your titles are engaging, informative, and clickable, and include your primary keyword.

Showing people how to bake a cake? Don’t make your title “How to Bake a Cake.” Make it “Here’s How to Bake the Most Delicious Chocolate Cake You’ve Ever Tasted.”

Finally, consider the impact that a super appealing thumbnail can have on CTR. Thumbnails are typically the first visual impression users have of your video. Don’t make them bland. Use bright colors, readable text, and compelling, high-definition images that accurately represent your content, and you’ll be sure to increase click-through rate and search rankings.

3. Develop a consistent content schedule

Like so many things in life, shooting for perfection when creating YouTube videos is the kiss of death. You never want to pump out mediocre content just for the sake of consistency, but you need to play the volume game.

Focus on quality above all, but once you’ve nailed down a formula for engaging content, you need to develop a consistent posting cadence. This will keep the flywheel of engagement spinning, keep your subscribers engaged, and keep your audience ever-growing.

Leveraging YouTube’s scheduling feature is a great way to keep the flywheel spinning.

Start by determining a realistic schedule you can adhere to (whether it’s multiple times per week, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly). Consistency is the name of the game, so choose a schedule that fits your capacity to create quality content without burnout. Communicate this schedule to your audience by mentioning it in your videos, channel description, and across your social platforms. This level of transparency sets expectations and builds anticipation.

4. Post content in advance and at the right times

Want to streamline? Try batch filming and scheduling your videos in advance to ensure you always have the content in reserve ready to deploy. Tools like YouTube’s scheduling feature, pictured above, can help you do just that.

Consistency is one thing, but what about timeliness? Like any social platform, the time of day and week you post to YouTube significantly impacts your video’s performance.

Here are some general insights:

1. Thursdays and Fridays: These are prime days to upload videos. Viewer engagement tends to increase towards the end of the workweek as people start looking for content to watch during their downtime.
2. Saturdays and Sundays: These days see high viewer activity. Posting in the morning (between 9 and 11 AM) can capture viewers who are relaxing and have more time to watch videos.
3. Weekday evenings (5 PM to 9 PM): During the week, viewers are more active during the evening after work or school. Posting during this time can increase the likelihood of your video being seen soon after it’s published.

When in doubt, leverage YouTube’s Analytics and reporting suite, specifically the “When your viewers are on YouTube” report, to understand when your specific audience is most active.

5. Engage with your audience

Alright, so now you’ve optimized your videos for SEO. You’ve developed a consistent and timely posting schedule. Job done, right?

Not quite. Because while compelling content is great, engaging with your audience is really the cornerstone of building a successful YouTube channel. Nothing creates community, fosters loyalty, and encourages repeat engagement among your subscribers better than showing them that you are actively invested in the culture you are building around your YouTube channel.

Start by responding to comments on your videos. Whether you answer questions, acknowledge feedback, or simply thank viewers for their input, engaging in the comment section shows that you value your audience’s opinions.

This will inevitably lead to higher engagement rates, as viewers are way more likely to comment when they know they will receive a response.

6. Leave viewers with a question to encourage comments

Want more comments? Encourage viewers to leave them by asking questions or prompting discussions at the end of your videos. You can also utilize YouTube’s Community Tab to post updates, polls, behind-the-scenes content, or even shout-outs to loyal subscribers. This is an excellent way to keep your channel active and engaging, even when you’re not posting new videos.

Finally, live streaming is a great tool for real-time interaction. Hosting Q&A sessions, live tutorials, or casual hangouts can significantly enhance your connection with viewers.

7. Collaborate with like-minded creators

We know how it is. You put so much effort into your YouTube videos that you’d like to believe they’ll gain traction on their own merit. You want to believe what you say or offer is unique and compelling enough to post and promote in a vacuum and get all the engagement you’ll ever need.

Listen: self-reliance isn’t a bad thing. But you’re severely handicapping your growth if you think you’ll max out your potential by going it alone.

Collaborating with other creators is a fundamental part of growing any YouTube channel. When you partner with fellow YouTubers in your niche or who serve a similar audience, you immediately gain access to a completely new set of qualified potential subscribers and customers.

Consider this partnership HelloFresh created with YouTube influencer Lee Williams.

Source

By soliciting Lee to do an unboxing of one of its subscription food deliveries, HelloFresh gained instantaneous access to her 155k+ subscriber base. They also gained credibility by being associated with Lee’s lifestyle, which her audience loves. You don’t necessarily have to partner with influencers; you can simply partner with another brand or creator. But creating this kind of partnership can give you a similar level of unprecedented access to audience growth.

8. Host new guests and get featured on like-minded channels

Want to increase your reach even more? Get featured on other channels! You need to expose yourself to new audiences as much as possible to buoy your growth, and making guest appearances on like-minded creators’ channels is a surefire way to do just that. The same goes for featuring that guest on your channel.

9. Leverage email marketing

We know what you’re thinking. What on earth does YouTube have to do with email? Aren’t my other social platforms the best avenue to promote my videos?

While you should absolutely be promoting your YouTube videos on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and the like, leveraging email marketing is an equally powerful strategy to get engagement. Here’s a five-step primer on using email marketing to boost your channel’s visibility:

1. Build your list: Build an email list of your subscribers and viewers who have opted in to receive updates from you. This list is super valuable, as it consists of people who are already interested in your content.
2. Engage with subscribers: Send regular updates about your latest videos or series launches. Use enticing subject lines and thumbnails to grab attention and encourage people to click on your content.

3. Personalize the emails: Personalize your emails to make them more relevant to each subscriber. Address them by their name and segment your list based on interests.
4. Give exclusive benefits: Use email to promote exclusive content or behind-the-scenes footage that is only accessible through that channel. This creates a sense of exclusivity and encourages subscribers to stay engaged with your updates via email.
5. Get people sharing: Include social sharing buttons and encourage subscribers to share your videos with friends and networks.

Integrate email marketing into your promotional strategy, and you’ll quickly build loyalty, drive traffic, and boost engagement.

Promote your YouTube channel to accelerate growth

Getting your YouTube channel online is a huge first step, but serious growth happens when you actively promote it.

You don’t need to spend hours doing it every day. Get started with 30 minutes per week using one or two of these YouTube promotion ideas:

1. Use the right keywords in the right places
2. Boost CTR with engaging titles and thumbnails
3. Develop a consistent content schedule
4. Post content in advance and at the right times
5. Engage with your audience
6. Leave viewers with a question to encourage comments
7. Collaborate with like-minded creators
8. Host new guests and get featured on like-minded channels
9. Leverage email marketing