When you do YouTube engagement right, you build an authentic relationship with your viewers through creating content that inspires comments and shares. Join us in this article, and we discuss effective and easy ways to increase your YouTube Channel engagement considerably.
YouTube Engagement
YouTube engagement is crucial to your channel’s success.
When you do it right, you build an authentic relationship with your viewers and community at large. They’ll know that they can rely on you for great content that informs and delights them—and they’ll reward you for it by returning and converting.
When you do it wrong, you’ll leave your audience frustrated and dissatisfied. You’ll also watch the ROI for any of your YouTube campaigns tank—something to avoid at all costs.
It is no secret that video content on the web has become a vital tool in both social and business interaction. Videos, viral or otherwise, are the most shared form of social content trumping infographics, curated posts and traditional blogs on a daily basis. Therefore, it is essential that one become good at engaging their potential audience with informative and shareable content.
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Some Notes about YouTube
The video marketing platform hosts a tremendous amount of online content on a wide range subjects, making it one of the most popular social media channels of modern day.
And, it reached 4 billion views/day, in 2012 (counting 30 seconds for a view, as compared to Facebook’s 3 seconds). Google favors YouTube results for certain types of queries in the SERPs. Did you know that YouTube is the second largest search engine?
The billion-user strong platform can be a source for tremendous business exposure, especially given the higher barrier of entry required for companies to publish great video content. YouTube video clips also have huge influence across the social networks and are great for your overall marketing strategy.
In his research, Mark Fidelman found that:
YouTube is the most affordable social network platform for conducting influencer marketing campaigns on a regular basis.
Some of the influencer campaigns launched by his company, three years ago, continue to pay him today.
What is YouTube engagement ?
YouTube engagement is when your audience takes an action on your YouTube page or on one of your YouTube videos.
The most important actions are:
- Comments. These can reveal when a video emotionally resonates with viewers, which can be good or bad depending on the sentiment of those comments.
- Likes and dislikes. Shows whether or not viewers enjoyed your video. It can also reveal whether a type of video or content direction is resonating with your audience (or not).
- Shares. This shows how often and where your viewers shared the video. Shares can occur across a variety of social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc) or via messenger platforms (email, WhatsApp, etc). They are arguably the most important metric for YouTube engagement because they show that your video was engaging enough for people to want to encourage others to watch it.
- Subscribers gained and lost. YouTube also allows creators to dive into whether a video resulted in attracting new followers, or turning off current followers (enough to unsubscribe). This metric is the clearest indicator of the quality of a video.
Creators should always keep an eye on their YouTube analytics to get the most out of their YouTube channel. All of the data can help inform your channel’s growth strategy.
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Higher Engagement Rate on YouTube ?
If you currently own a YouTube channel, then you might have found that the path to higher engagement with your target audience isn’t that linear. Views are pretty much a vanity metric that give immediate gratification.
The YouTube algorithm also doesn’t appear to give special preference to online videos with a high number of views which goes against what we know as a common media strategy. Rather, it takes the “session time” of a user into account (not available to the users). So, you need to hook the visitor, get him to spend more time on your online video and to interact with you in the comments.
Sounds like a lot to ask for from your target audience, doesn’t it?
In this post, let us help you leverage the media site platform more effectively. This will also help with increasing your YouTube engagement numbers and improve your social media marketing strategy.
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5 tips for increasing YouTube engagement
In this post we shall discuss the 5 easy ways to increase your YouTube Channel engagement considerably. Allowing you to not only attract a wider and more diverse viewership, but potentially retain customers and generate leads.
1. Use beautiful thumbnails to increase the engagement
Your video’s thumbnail is arguably the key determining factor in a viewer’s decision to watch your content, especially if they are on their phone.
Along with the title, it’s the first thing viewers see when they browse for videos.
And it’s not enough just to pick an interesting shot from your video and use it.
Unless it’s VERY interesting of course.
You should customize your thumbnails to make sure there’s a clear, strong image that tells potential viewers about your video while drawing them in.
In fact, 90% of YouTube’s best-performing videos have custom thumbnails.
A few tips to create great thumbnails and get More YouTube Subscribers:
- Add text
- Use the rule of thirds
- Use the right tools
2. Post Content Consistently
A sure and proven way to establish and maintain engagement is to be a dependable and consistent source of information. Once you have established a viewership, keep them coming back for more.
Post often and keep your content fresh, current and, most of all, invaluable.
Remember, there are literally thousands of other vloggers pursuing your core audience. You have to make sure that if you have secured a reputation for information, not to disappoint.
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3. Keep your videos short for higher engagement on YouTube
Video watch time is a key ranking factor for videos. The percentage of your video watched is more important than the number of minutes, but, it’s obviously great to improve the score of both.
With our decreasing attention spans, getting more people to stick around on your videos is a huge challenge. A user spends an average of 20 seconds on a web site.
Hence, it’s important to grab the attention of your viewers within the first 10 seconds, if not 5. Here are three ways to improve your retention:
- Remove your intro and outro sections. Get to the point and show your personality, to engage your viewers.
- Weave a good story in your content.
- The longer your video, the lower its retention. So, don’t drag out your videos to longer than 3 minutes.
- Optimizing your videos for the smaller screen is essential.
4. SEO principles also apply to YouTube
Here are 3 strategies that help in getting a top YouTube search results berth with your videos.
Actively promote your videos – YouTube has a large audience, but when you’re starting out, you won’t have many subscribers watching your great videos.
So, you need to get the ball rolling with your email subscribers – they will increase your email marketing engagement metrics as well.
You can also consider blogging and embedding a great video inside.
Keyword Research and YouTube Channel Optimization– This can be a starting point of your video marketing and content creation. Plugging keywords inside the keyword planner is helpful, for determining the search volume and competition and will help you reach potential customers.
Optimize the video before and after uploading – After conducting keyword research, it’s also important to keep SEO in mind while you upload it. While you upload, ensure that the keyword appears in the title of your video (it’s most beneficial to front load it).
And, ensure that you write a 250-word description.
5. Understand Your YouTube Audience
In this age of “fast-food information”, people want what they want, when they want it. Nothing is worst than tuning into a video only to leave feeling that you hadn’t gotten what you had expected. If you have broken the ice of establishing a rapport, make sure that you continue to give them what they crave.
Are your a source of information? continue in that vein. If you are a source of entertainment continue to entertain. Remember, people have tuned in for a reason and it’s up to you to pin-point what that is and leverage it in your favor.
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What Is Social Media Engagement ? Why is it so Important ?
Conclusion
YouTube is a great channel to build an audience for your business. And, the best part is that it still hasn’t gotten saturated by marketers (who tend to stick to the more straightforward social networks), due to the high barrier of entry.
If you’ve got a YouTube channel, then you can leverage the four tactics that I showed you in the article to increase your engagement. If you don’t have one, I encourage you to start a YouTube channel and start making great videos.
