Youtube Viral Video Ideas and Ways to Promote them
One viral video can drive millions of traffic to your website and increase your sales, so as a startup business, it is important that you start incorporating your business with this marketing strategy before you get left behind!
Video marketing is expected to dominate the digital marketing industry this year 2016. Several powerful sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat are getting serious in venturing on video marketing because of the remarkable benefits it can drive to one’s business.
Check out our Tiktok Marketing Tips and Instagram Marketing Tips.
In this blog post, we will cover 8 popular video ideas that you can incorporate to create a successful video marketing strategy.
Creating your YouTube Channel
Before you start creating and promoting your videos, the most important thing you need to do first is to create your video channel. Creating your own YouTube channel is easy. You just need to login to your Google Account or click YouTube’s create channel link.
The great thing about YouTube is that you have the option to choose whether you want to carry your personal name, business name, or any other name when setting up your YouTube channel. Just click your option, fill in the name, and click the blue button entitled “CREATE CHANNEL”.
1. Funny Videos or Parodies
Funny videos or parodies are on the top list because of how effective they are in driving traffic to your site. Most audience or viewers want to get entertained by what they’re watching, and one way of getting entertained is through watching funny videos.
Take note that funny videos are not only limited to the lines of famous movies, actors, or actresses. You can always feature your company’s most “hilarious and precious moments”, bloopers, or team building activities in your video.
Extend all the jive you shared in your company to your customers. This also allows you to establish a personal connection with your customers. Here is an example of a funny video.
2. Video Tutorials
Aside from entertainment, viewers love to watch videos in order to gain information. They love to find solutions to their problems and one way of addressing their problem is through video tutorials! Video tutorials enable us to gain more knowledge and learn something far quicker than reading online; a video done correctly is also easier to comprehend.
3. Product Reviews and Testimonials
Whether you’re a business organization that offers products or services, you can never go wrong with product reviews and testimonials. In fact, they are highly encouraged! Product reviews will let your customers (and potential customers too) know more about your product.
Potential customers love to hear testimonials from previous customers before deciding on purchasing a product. The testimonials given by your customers also establish your reputation and integrity as a genuine and legitimate company.
4. Product Unboxing
Product unboxing just became a huge trend recently. This is incredibly effective if you’re selling products. Purchasers wanted to see how the actual product would look like first before they decide to purchase something. This would be a great way to demonstrate and feature your product’s capabilities from an unbiased point of view!
5. Time-Lapse Videos
Time-lapse videos are gaining popularity nowadays because of its ability to look back to the important moments and milestones, either in your own personal life or business. Everyone will feel nostalgic while watching time-lapse videos as the customers will be able to grasp about the development of your business, coming from starting up until you reaching your success.
6. Live Video Streaming
Live video streaming has been on the rise even popular websites like Facebook and YouTube are venturing into it. Live Streaming is gaining popularity because it offers the customers the sense of authenticity, trust, and exclusivity.
With live streaming, you are able to get real-time interactions between you and your customers. Of course, it also spurs on real-time communication where your customers can be made to feel special.
7. Video on Demand
Did you have that moment where you are rushing off going home just to catch up on watching your favorite tv or movie series? And if you managed to miss one episode, you find yourself sulking in the corner? Moments like this certainly suck, isn’t it?
Good thing there’s Video on Demand right now! Video on demand lets you watch your favorite videos, movies, or tv series whenever you want it! You don’t have to wait for the airtime of your favorite series! Video on demand offers great flexibility and convenience not only to your customers but to you too. It is estimated that VOD’s market will skyrocket up to $61 billion by 2019.
8. Travel Logs
Whether you love traveling or your business is all about tourism, travel videos are a great way for you to feature your products or services. People love nature since it calms our mind and body. Those majestic views plus the smiling faces and positive reviews of the actors of your video will surely entice your customers to purchase your products or services.
Editing your Videos Professionally
Now that you know how to create a video channel and video ideas, it’s time to have it crafted and edited professionally. Having a professionally edited video is important to retain your audience’s attention and to keep them watching the video until the end. You can use popular NLE Software like Da Vinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere, and Sony Vegas to edit your videos.
If you don’t have time, you have the option to outsource freelance video editors to have your video edited. The good thing with outsourcing is that these editors are generally experts in the field, and they can grant any request or specific features you wanted to be included in your video project.
Sharing your Videos
When your video is ready, it is important that you promote and share it across social media platforms to maximize brand exposure. You can upload it to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, DailyMotion, and Vimeo. Also, take advantage of micro-video sharing sites like Snapchat, Vine, and Instagram as they are incredibly popular with mobile users and video lovers.
Now it’s your turn, let us know how you are going to use video marketing in your campaign or project.
Ways to Promote YouTube Videos
Do you want to promote YouTube videos? Well, YouTube recently took over Facebook as the second most visited site on the web and has 1.9+ billion active monthly users. With that being said, how are you making most out of this fast-growing platform?
These days, on average, an individual spends six hours a day consuming video. Thus, this is a great opportunity for you to appeal to your audience’s binge-watching habits. But that is not enough. You need to also take advantage of any promotional tactics possible.
This article lays down a step-by-step guide for you to promote YouTube videos and get higher views. So let’s dive right in.
30 Practical Ways to Promote YouTube Video
Do keyword research.
An important aspect to remember while starting keyword research is that there are no rules that define which keywords will help your YouTube channel and videos rank well. However, here are a few ways to help you find Google-friendly keywords for your video.
- Identify possible keywords using keyword research tools available online.
- Google the keyword you wish to use.
- Read through SERP (Search Engine Results Page) for each keyword – whether the high ranked results are for videos or written content.
- Tweak your keyword with prefixes and suffixes and look for more video results.
- Choose the keyword that suits your content the best.
Google prioritizes videos over other content in cases of searches. Therefore, if your video has the right keywords, you know what your audience is searching for.
Have a Catchy Title.
YouTube marketing is all about presentation. The title that you choose for your videos can either make or break your video’s performance. The key is to grab your audience’s attention without depending on clickbait headlines. Your audience is always looking for entertaining content. So you should invest a good amount of time in coming up with engaging headlines.
The ideal limit of a headline for your video should be between 41 and 70 characters (Tubular Insights). Additionally, also aim at including your keywords in the first hand of your title. If you are running out of ideas, simply have a look at YouTube’s autocomplete features and find popular keywords.
Curate interactive thumbnail.
Thumbnails make a huge difference to your video presentation. We, as humans, love visuals and are always attracted to it. We can easily process visuals in less than 13 milliseconds (MIT). Generally, YouTube creates automatic thumbnails for your videos. But these may or may not be exactly what you need and can also be blurry at times. So, it is best to create a custom thumbnail for every video you decide to post.
Here are a few things to keep in mind while creating thumbnails for your videos.
- The resolution must be 1280 x 720 px, and any 16:9 aspect ratio is good to go with.
- You must save your thumbnails in formats like JPG, GIF, BMP, or PNG. Formats other than these cannot be uploaded on YouTube.
- YouTube has set the thumbnail upload limit to 2 MB. So remember to keep your file within the limit.
- Add texts and colors to your thumbnails to make it attractive.
- Use stock images if required, but remember to keep it consistent with your branding.
Informative and optimized description.
Apart from the tags and categories, your video’s description also helps YouTube understand the content and the context of your video. Therefore, a well-defined and optimized description can help boost your video’s rank on the search page. So aim at a 200 character description with a focus on the first two sentences. This is important because these initial sentences are what your audience sees. Additionally, make it a point to add your keywords at least 2 to 3 times in these initial sentences. This is also important from the Click-through rate aspect (CTR).
Focus on YouTube SEO.
Studies have shown that in the top 100 Google search results, 70% of YouTube videos appear. So, if you want to increase the visibility of your video content, you need to focus on some of the best practices of YouTube SEO. Listed below are the top-recommended SEO tactics for you.
- You must include target keywords in your titles and descriptions.
- You can also mention keywords in your video. Studies have shown that mentioning keywords in your video helps YouTube have a better understanding of what your video is about.
- YouTube uses your video engagement – likes, dislikes, comments, and views – to determine your video’s ranks in its search pages.
- Use categories to help YouTube understand who to show your videos.
- Use tags in your videos to help YouTube understand the context of your video.
Create Playlist.
When you have a plethora of videos, it becomes difficult for your audience to navigate through your channel. This is why creating playlists is a must! Playlist lets you group your videos into categories and keep your channel organized. This also helps your audience to binge-watch your video related to a particular category.
Follow YouTube’s metadata guidelines.
YouTube’s metadata focuses on two aspects
- Honesty
- Quality over quantity
These clearly apply to features like tags and categories. So when you are applying tags to your videos, ensure that you are using it in the tag section of your upload and not the video description. Additionally, you must use at least two to three categories to help YouTube understand who to recommend.
Always create quality video content.
Creating quality content is the best way to have your viewers engaged. This, in turn, helps your video rank higher in the search pages. Since YouTube’s ranking system considers a viewer’s experience, work around these questions when you are creating content.
- What challenges will this video resolve?
- Is it entertaining for all ages?
- Will it add value to your audience’s lives in any way?
Creating content around such a question will help you add value and be rewarded with real, organic engagement.
Be active on Instagram.
Your activity on your Instagram account is important to make it look fresh. Instagram is a great platform to increase your followers easily. You can showcase glimpses of your videos and set up the link to your YouTube channel in your bio. This excites your followers to visit your YouTube channel and view your content.
Additionally, you can also find accounts similar to yours and view the kind of content that they are creating. You can also view their most liked posts and get inspired for the kind of content that people are looking for.
Learn Pinterest Marketing.
Pinterest is among the most fastest-growing social media websites. When you set up campaigns with Pinterest video marketing, you can reach out to a wider audience as your video ‘pin’ will stay on the website forever. In fact, you can get increased inbound traffic as your pins can link viewers to your profile.
And if you have your YouTube channel linked in your profile, you can easily expect higher viewers and subscribers. Pinterest video marketing offers a lot of opportunities and is a must if you wish to reach out to a wider audience.
Must Use the power of Email Marketing.
Invest in a good email marketing plan. You can easily create an email list of your YouTube subscribers and send them newsletters and email notifications every time you are publishing new video content.
This is a great way to increase your video’s view count and is a great way to jump-start YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. In fact, you can even add a link to your YouTube channel in your email signature.
Giveaway Periodically.
Having contests like giveaways boost your audience engagement and brand awareness. You can simply embed your videos in forms or blogs or even a landing page and circulate it amongst your audience. Remember that any kind of contest, giveaway, or announcement grabs a lot of attention. So you can also set up quizzes with prizes for the winners, and your answers could be included subtly in your video itself. This will increase your views as well as watch time. Using giveaways and other incentives help drive more traffic to your videos, increase views, and attract more viewers.
Engage in the comment section.
When you respond to your YouTube comments, you are increasing the visibility of your videos. This, in turn, gives your videos a higher rank in YouTube search and Google search results. The higher the comments and interactions your video has, the higher the value these search engine’s algorithms place on it. Additionally, the way you respond to the comment shows your authority and knowledge of your content, and you are creating a platform to voice valuable opinions. Try to use a personal tone when responding to comments, as your audience would feel a personal connection with you.
Go Live.
YouTube is the most popular when it comes to live to stream as compared to other platforms. You must make the most of this. So create content that really engages your audience. This can be in the form of Q&As, events, webinars, interviews, etc. Using the YouTube Live feature is a great way to get inspired.
Create Facebook group.
Facebook groups are all about creating communities. So create your Facebook group that encourages your audience to hang out in. Answer their questions with clips of your videos and a link to its location on your YouTube channel. This creates excitement in their curious minds and is encouraged to check out the complete video.
Additionally, you can share a clip of the winners of your contest in your Facebook group. This encourages your subscribers and participants to join your Facebook group. So make all your videos traceable to your YouTube videos and keep reaching out to new audiences.
Share on Twitter
Videos on Twitter are likely to be retweeted 6 times more than tweets with photos and texts. So make the most of it and upload your videos to twitter to gain higher engagement. You can either directly add videos to your tweet. Check our guide on Twitter marketing.
But make sure that you are following these guidelines:
- The duration of your video should be 2 min and 20 seconds or less.
- The minimum and maximum resolution for a Twitter video are 32 x 32 and 1920 x 1200 or 1200 x 1900
- The video formats supported on Twitter are MP4 and MOV on mobile, and the formats supported on the desktop are MP4 with H264 and AAC audio.
- The limit on the uploaded file size is 512 MB.
Create LinkedIn Page & Post Regularly
When you are uploading videos on LinkedIn, you can either share it directly as a link to your YouTube channel or share it as a LinkedIn article. However, it is important that you caption your video and follow the video guidelines, as stated by LinkedIn. When you post regularly on LinkedIn, you get steady traffic. And the higher the engagement, the higher it ranks in your audience’s pages.
Start Blogging
Do you also run a website? Or do you have a blog? Well, what are you waiting for then? Embedding videos, along with transcriptions in your blogs, will increase your video and blog views. You can, in fact, also use your blogs to create new content ideas for your YouTube channel. When you add videos to your blog, you add value and encourage readers to check out a YouTube channel. If you haven’t tried blogging yet, you can refer to this post.
Collaborate With Other Channels
A great way to get your following growing is by collaborating with other users. Each collaboration gives you visibility to a new audience. There is a high probability that your new viewers might subscribe to your channel. The key here is to find the right partner.
Ask the viewer to subscribe.
Subscriptions are important for a channel to be popular. When you ask viewers to subscribe, your view counts automatically increase, as new video updates will be shown in your subscriber’s home screen. This is another great way to promote your videos, and it helps you find different ways to engage with existing subscribers as well as new visitors.
Share on Social Bookmarking Sites.
Once you have uploaded your video on YouTube, you can easily post it on to other social bookmarking sites. Each bookmark that you add to your video acts as a backlink. The more the backlinks your video has, it more it is deemed important by search engines. We shall look into some of the social book marketing sites below.
Stay active on Q&A sites.
Q&As are some of the most effective ways to build a community. Join a few Q&A sites to see how the engagement is. In fact, you can even ask your subscribers to ask you questions in comments, emails, or tweets. And your next video content can be based on those answers. By doing this, you are essentially showing your audience that they matter to you and, in turn, increase views and engagement.
Collaborate with other creators and brands.
Brand partnerships are a great way to reach wider audiences. This is also helpful, especially when you are out of video ideas. Identify brands that resonate with your personality and answer your audience’s needs in some way or another.
Try Wimp.
Wimp is another great platform. Though it is not as big as YouTube, it keeps refreshing its feed with the most recently updated videos. It also seamlessly organizes archives based on months. You can also search for what you want directly, and if you like something, you can save it to view later. These videos can also be directly shared on Twitter, Facebook, and via email.
Be active on StumbleUpon.
This feature from YouTube enables users to view videos without looking or searching much for it. If you want to use this feature, you simply have to fill in certain details in settings and preferences along with the content required from the subscribers. If your Facebook and YouTube accounts are linked, you can access the videos that your friends are sharing on Facebook.
Share your YouTube Video on Tumblr.
Tumblr is another great platform that is dedicated to the visual representation of your content. You can easily reach out to a wider audience base. The more the social media you use, the larger is your potential audience. In addition to this, you also have a great opportunity to interact with your audience and inform them of your upcoming announcements and posts.
Share on Digg.
Digg is a free to use platform and a news aggregator site. It usually features articles that talk about topics like science, technology, current events, etc. You can like, share on social media, and bookmark these content. You can even publish your own content on Digg and share it with the community. In addition to this, Digg also curates content based on top stories so that you can find out what is trending.
Get Views from Reddit.
Reddit gives you access to a highly engaged community and instant feedback. You can also create custom communities around your content or brand and send across links to your YouTube videos, thereby gaining high traffic and high video usage rate. You will also find the right audience on Reddit for the solutions that you offer in your videos.
Run paid YouTube ad campaign.
You can always promote your YouTube channel through ad campaigns. There are a variety of ad forms to choose from
Display ads.
These kinds of ads are quite common and appear on the right-hand sidebar of videos. However, these are only available for desktop.
- Overlay ads
These are semi-transparent ads. They are usually displayed at the bottom of a video and are only available for desktop.
- Skip and non-skip video ads
These ads usually run before or during a video. Some ads can be skipped after 5 seconds, while some ads need to be watched through after which your videos will be accessible.
- Sponsored cards
These are the kind of cards that appear within relevant videos. You can use this kind of an ad campaign to promote your products on other content.
Another benefit of running ad campaigns is that if your video has great engagement, you can even have paid ads.
Conclusion
Growing a YouTube audience takes time. When you implement all of the above tips mentioned in this post on how to promote youtube videos, you will realize that some require more effort than the others. However, each of these can help you get more engagement and subscribers on YouTube. So go ahead and give it all a try!