Here are 10 reasons why you might want to use VidIQ:
Keyword Research
VidIQ offers a suite of powerful keyword research tools that can help you identify the best keywords to use in your video titles, descriptions, and tags.
VidIQ provides detailed optimization tips that can help you make the most of your video content.
From title and description recommendations to tag suggestions, VidIQ can help you optimize every aspect of your videos to improve their visibility and performance.
Analytics and Insights
VidIQ offers a range of analytics and insights that can help you understand how your videos are performing on YouTube.
From engagement metrics to audience demographics, VidIQ can help you track your progress and make data-driven decisions about your content strategy.
Competitor Analysis
With VidIQ, you can also keep an eye on your competitors and learn from their success. VidIQ’s competitor analysis tools can help you identify what’s working for other channels in your niche and apply those strategies to your own content.
Trend Alerts
VidIQ’s trend alerts feature can help you stay up-to-date with the latest trends in your niche. By identifying popular topics and keywords, you can create content that’s timely and relevant, and attract more views and engagement.
Thumbnail Generator
VidIQ’s thumbnail generator tool can help you create eye-catching and engaging thumbnails for your videos. By using VidIQ’s customizable templates and design tools, you can create thumbnails that stand out in search results and attract more clicks.
Best Time to Post
VidIQ can also help you determine the best time to post your videos for maximum engagement.
By analyzing your audience’s viewing habits and engagement patterns, VidIQ can help you schedule your content to reach the right people at the right time.
Comment Management
VidIQ’s comment management tools can help you keep track of comments on your videos and respond to your audience in a timely and efficient manner.
Finally, VidIQ offers excellent customer support to its users. Whether you have a question about a feature or need help troubleshooting an issue, VidIQ’s support team is always ready to help.
With its suite of keyword research tools, video optimization tips, analytics and insights, competitor analysis tools, and more, VidIQ can help you take your channel to the next level.
So if you’re serious about growing your channel and attracting more views and engagement, consider giving VidIQ a try.
Q: What is VidIQ?
A: VidIQ is a YouTube SEO and analytics tool that helps creators optimize their videos for search and grow their channel’s audience. It offers a range of features and insights that can help creators improve their content strategy, increase engagement, and attract more views.
Q: What features does VidIQ offer?
A: VidIQ offers a suite of features and tools, including:
Keyword research tools
Video optimization tips
Analytics and insights
Competitor analysis tools
Trend alerts
Thumbnail generator
Best time to post
Comment management tools
Channel audit
Customer support
Q: How does VidIQ help with keyword research?
A: VidIQ’s keyword research tools can help you identify the best keywords to use in your video titles, descriptions, and tags. By using the right keywords, you can increase your videos’ visibility in YouTube search results and attract more views.
Q: How can VidIQ help me optimize my videos?
A: VidIQ provides detailed optimization tips that can help you make the most of your video content. From title and description recommendations to tag suggestions, VidIQ can help you optimize every aspect of your videos to improve their visibility and performance.
Q: Can VidIQ help me analyze my audience and track my progress?
A: Yes, VidIQ offers a range of analytics and insights that can help you understand how your videos are performing on YouTube. From engagement metrics to audience demographics, VidIQ can help you track your progress and make data-driven decisions about your content strategy.
Q: How can VidIQ help me stay up-to-date with trends in my niche?
A: VidIQ’s trend alerts feature can help you stay up-to-date with the latest trends in your niche. By identifying popular topics and keywords, you can create content that’s timely and relevant, and attract more views and engagement.
Q: Can VidIQ help me create eye-catching thumbnails?
A: Yes, VidIQ’s thumbnail generator tool can help you create eye-catching and engaging thumbnails for your videos. By using VidIQ’s customizable templates and design tools, you can create thumbnails that stand out in search results and attract more clicks.
Q: How can VidIQ help me determine the best time to post my videos?
A: VidIQ can help you determine the best time to post your videos for maximum engagement. By analyzing your audience’s viewing habits and engagement patterns, VidIQ can help you schedule your content to reach the right people at the right time.
Q: Does VidIQ offer comment management tools?
A: Yes, VidIQ’s comment management tools can help you keep track of comments on your videos and respond to your audience in a timely and efficient manner. By staying on top of your comments, you can build stronger relationships with your audience and improve your channel’s overall performance.
Q: What is VidIQ’s channel audit feature?
A: VidIQ’s channel audit feature can help you identify areas for improvement on your channel. By analyzing your channel’s performance and suggesting ways to optimize your content, VidIQ can help you take your channel to the next level.
Q: How can I get support from VidIQ?
A: VidIQ offers excellent customer support to its users. You can reach out to VidIQ’s support team via email or social media for assistance with any questions or issues you may have.
Q: How much does VidIQ cost?
A: VidIQ offers both a free version and a paid version with additional features. The paid version starts at $7.50 per month and offers more advanced tools and analytics.
YouTube might not be the first name that enters your mind when you try and guess who is the world’s second-biggest search engine.
But, when you learn that Youtube is owned by Google – the world’s biggest search engine – you won’t be surprised that keywords play a role in how videos rank on YouTube.
YouTube is so popular that 300 hours of video is uploaded the site every minute; way too much content for humans to watch and categorise. So, instead, YouTube uses the keywords in the video title and associated tags to help understand a video’s topic and rank it accordingly.
Keywords Are Important.
For SEO purposes then, you should choose the keywords you put in your title and tags carefully. Keywords could be the difference between success and failure for your video. It makes even more sense to perform keyword research first, before you plan and shoot your videos.
Understanding the content YouTube’s audience is searching for prevents you from wasting time making videos that no one wants to see.
But how do you find the hot keywords users are hunting for on YouTube?
There is no official keyword tool for YouTube like there is for Google Adwords with its Google Keyword Planner. But there are several third-party tools you can use to determine what is popular, and what topics should be left alone.
This post gives you five of the best YouTube keyword tools you can use to analyse the most searched youtube keywords. Some are free, and for some, you have to buy a subscription to access full functionality. Let’s jump into the list.
vidIQ
vidIQ is a free chrome extension which adds additional keyword analysis information directly on the page on the YouTube site. Search for any term, and the plugin displays keyword data on the right of the results, as shown below.
You can also toggle the plugin to display the tags used by the top ranking videos underneath each result.
You can use the data to determine if a keyword has potential for using in a video title and if it’s worthy of a topic to add to your content planner.
vidIQ provides an ‘overall score’ for each keyword, rating them out of 100 and declaring how hard it will be to rank for them.
But you’ll have to take them on their word for this metric, as we don’t know the scoring system they use. It’s best if you use the score as an indication, then make your final keyword choice after further research.
Ideally, you will want to find keywords with high-volume and low-competition. But in reality, most of the high-volume keywords will already have lots of videos competing for the traffic, and should only be attempted by well-established channels.
Newer channels will have to seek out medium to low competition keywords, with correspondingly low search volume.
vidIQ also shows you the top-performing channels for the keyword, so you can dig into their content to see what’s working for them. Also displayed, is a selection of related keywords, which may contain ones that may be more suitable for you to target.
Only three ‘related opportunities’ display with the free version of the plugin; if you take out a subscription, you get to access hundreds more.
Video Tags
Underneath each video, you can toggle the display of the tags used by a video. You can use them for inspiration for other keywords, or steal them outright to use in your video with a one-click copy to clipboard.
Once you select a video from the results, vidIQ provides further information about the video and channel; daily views, country of origin and even displays the channel’s tags. So you can reverse-engineer a whole channel if you wish.
viqIQ provides plenty of helpful keyword suggestions for free, but so much more with a paid subscription. A monthly subscription of $7.50 gets you access to their full keyword research tool.
Google Trends
Google Trends is a free Google tool that shows the popularity of a topic over time. While it doesn’t show keyword volume, it is nevertheless helpful in narrowing down subjects for your video ideas.
Enter in any keyword, and the tool displays a graph showing the popularity of the keyword over the last 12 months. Here is an example using the keyword ‘selfie stick’.
A scale between 0 and 100 is used to rate the search term, so you can see at which times of the year a topic peaks in popularity. Knowing when a subject is most searched for can help you time the release of your content.
You can see in the result above that interest in selfie sticks peaks just before Christmas. So if you were to review the top selfie sticks, it might be a good idea to plan your video for release in late September.
Before you commit to any topic, look at more than 12 months of data. From the drop-down menu, select ‘Past 5 years’.
Oh no! It looks like the selfie stick craze peaked in 2016 – perhaps this is not such a good content idea for a video.
Google Trends also allows you to compare keywords to see which one is more popular. If you have two keywords that you are considering making a video for but can’t decide which one to go with, enter both terms.
The resulting graph shows you which is the most popular, and the peaks can help you time the video release.
You can also change the filter to show data from YouTube.
Google Trends also provides other related topics and keyword ideas for your seed keyword at the foot of the page.
Avoid using Google Trends as the only tool you use for keyword research – there is no indication of the number of people searching for the keyword. So it’s best used to compare topic ideas and time you release of content.
YouTube Autocomplete / Keyword.io
An excellent way to analyse keywords and identify content topics is by using the autocomplete results from YouTube itself. Start typing any words in the YouTube search bar, and a pop-down menu appears containing helpful suggestions.
It’s a typical search engine feature, designed to speed up the browsing process by ‘guessing’ what the viewer is searching for. It’s not a bad way to harvest keyword suggestions for video creators either!
In the example below, you can see the autocomplete keywords displayed in a pop-down menu for the broad term ‘pancakes’. Because YouTube wants to be a useful site, it only shows keywords that are relevant and will answer the searcher’s query.
YouTube is giving you keyword ideas that users are actively searching for.
I’ve underlined some long-tail keywords in the example below, which could easily be the topic of a video.
While a free method of performing keyword analysis for YouTube, it can be a lengthy process to harvest a bunch of ideas. Also, once you have your keyword list, you then need to check them individually using another tool like vidIQ.
Keyword.io is a tool that automates the process of harvesting keyword ideas from autocomplete search boxes. It covers more than just YouTube and Google, and scrapes autocomplete keyword data from other major search engines, as shown below.
Typing the same seed keyword of ‘pancakes’ into keyword.io and selecting the YouTube option returns 939 keyword ideas to analyse further.
The free version of keyword.io only gives you keyword suggestions. To find out more information on the keywords, like average monthly search, you need to take out a subscription to their pro account. Alternatively, you can run them through another keyword tool that you have access to.
Understanding the average monthly search volumes can help you pick popular keywords and topics for your YouTube video content plan. Here is the sort of information the pro account grants access to.
Current pricing is $29 per month for a personal account. You could signup and do a mammoth keyword research session for your channel, so you’d only need to pay for a single month.
Morning Fame
Morning Fame is a Youtubers tool that links directly with your YouTube account. It provides enhanced analytics of your existing videos and suggests keywords it thinks you have a chance to rank for.
As we’re talking about keywords here today, I’ll skip the analytics part of Morning Fame and focus only on the keyword research capabilities.
Like most keyword tools, you can start by entering a seed keyword to work from. But Morning Fame has an alternative possibility as well. You can paste in any video URL from YouTube, and it will suggest keywords based on the topic of that video.
On the next screen Morning Fame presents it’s keyword suggestions in a unique and helpful way. It divides them into two lists based on the competitiveness of the keywords; one list it considers suitable for larger established channels; the other more appropriate for smaller channels.
If you are just getting started with your YouTube channel, then trying to rank for ultra-competitive keywords is likely to end in frustration. It’s unusual for a new channel to rank for popular keywords quickly, because of the way the YouTube ranking algorithm works. Your channel simply won’t have the sufficient authority that YouTube demands.
So a list for small channels, where you can compete for initial views and start to grow your channel, is a great feature.
When you select a keyword from the list, it goes to the next screen and displays a further analysis of the term. You can see in the screen below, that while the keyword scores an ‘A’ for relevance, it rates an ‘E’ for views, which means its a low-traffic keyword – probably best to try another suggestion.
At the time of writing, Morning Fame is still in the early days post-launch. Access to the tool is by invite-only, but if you hunt around on Google, you should be able to find an invite. Look for reviews of Morning Fame on blogs and on YouTube itself.
Ahrefs Keyword Explorer
If you want to really get under the hood of YouTube and perform detailed keyword analysis for your channel, then you need to pay for one of the professional-grade keyword tools like Ahrefs. Used by many content creators, it is frequently rated in the top 5 of all SEO tools.
Ahrefs has a database of 841 million YouTube keywords. So whatever your channel niche, you are likely to find many keywords you can target.
To get started, enter your seed keyword, select ‘YouTube’, and choose target country.
The tool returns the total search volume for the keyword, indicates how often people click a video after using the keyword, and provides suggestions for alternative keywords.
So far, so good. But Ahrefs true capabilities are shown in the variety of additional keywords it provides using the phrase match option. This feature returns all the keywords from their database, which include your seed word.
The phrase-match results page for the seed word ‘pancakes’ has nearly 13,000 results. Along with the search volume for each keyword, you also get the number of resulting clicks after entering that keyword.
This helps you to target keywords which attract a higher percentage of clicks. Click-thru rate is a crucial metric in YouTube analytics, and also plays a part in how YouTube ranks videos. So it makes sense for you to target keywords which have the best chance of getting a click.
You can also use filters to narrow down large lists quickly.
Ahrefs is one of the best keyword tools on the market, but it comes with a hefty price tag. Plans start at $99 per month. However, you can stop your subscription at any time and restart it when you need it. Additionally, there is a one-off trial where you have access to the software for seven days for $7. Use it wisely.
Conclusion.
Well, that wraps up this overview of tools you can use to analyse keywords for your YouTube channel. It’s worth reminding yourself when you plan your videos that YouTube is a search engine, just like Google.
The keywords you choose for your video title and tags can be easy or extremely difficult to rank for, and all the stops in-between.
Give your channel the best chance you can, by performing keyword analysis first with some of the above tools. If you want a helping hand, then contact me to arrange a consultancy call to help find the best keywords for your YouTube channel.
You can paint pictures using only your fingers, but it’s doubtful you’d be any good at it unless you are Iris Scott.
All accomplished artists use tools to help them express their creativity; one tool helps them draw perspective; another helps mix colour.
As a YouTube creator, if you’re only shooting a video quickly, then uploading it after basic editing, in your own way, you are painting with your fingers.
The top YouTubers use a range of tools to help create and promote their work. Some help to make the videos more entertaining, while others allow their videos to rank well.
This article looks at ten products you could add to your YouTube video creation toolbox. Five help the visual/production process, and the other five help you with SEO/ranking.
Let’s jump right in.
Visual / Production Tools For YouTube
These five tools help you to transform your videos from dull talk-to-the-camera sermons into more expert productions.
There are tools for graphics and editing, libraries of sound and b-roll footage, and tools for captioning your content.
Adobe Creative Cloud – YouTube Video Production Tool
Occasionally you want a tool to edit photos, sometimes you need a tool to polish audio, and you always have to edit your content.
Adobe Creative Cloud is a suite of tools that help you to produce professional-quality content. For one monthly price, you get access to over 20 applications that are used by many of the top creators in the business.
You could hunt around for individual alternatives from other providers. Some you’ll be able to find free of charge, others you’ll be able to hack together using free trials, but you should want to use the best. And the best thing about Adobe Creative Cloud is that all the tools in the suite work happily together. So you’ll never have to hunt down file convertors, and you’ll be able to use tools that you hadn’t consider trying before.
For YouTubers, the centrepiece of Adobe Creative Cloud is Premier Pro, the industry-leading video editing software. You’ll need a decent computer to run it on as it’s quite resource intensive.
While there is no free trial for the Creative Cloud collection of tools, you can trial some of the individual ones for 30 days. Adobe Creative Cloud works on both Windows and Mac.
Website: adobe.com
Price: $49.94 per month for access to all tools.
Storyblocks – Youtube B-Roll and Audio Library
Give your videos extra flair with B-roll footage and sound effects. These types of assets are available free of charge on some stock-footage websites, but the choice of clips is small, and many are overused.
Storyblocks is a paid stock-footage website with 1.5 million videos, images, and sounds you can edit into your content.
All media is copyright-free and easy to find using categories and tags.
Want to cut to a person crying to emphasise a point? Storyblocks has a choice of over 1000 videos.
Video is available in a variety of resolutions including 4K, and most clips are under 35 seconds long. The audio clips include sound effects, short tracks, and shorter loops which you can, well, loop to get the length you desire. If you need the sound of a hammer bashing on stone or an ambient backing track, you’ll find it on Storyblocks.
You can buy a lower-priced subscription to access only video or sounds, but these are quite restrictive.
Much better to buy a pass for unlimited access which is $65 per month. Plans are flexible, and you can sign up for only a month if you like.
You can also link your YouTube account to Storyblocks and let their automated software handle copyright infringement claims too.
Placeit – YouTube Intro/Outro Tool, Channel Banners, Logos and End Screen Templates
Becoming successful on YouTube is very difficult to do without branding yourself. The immense volume of videos means you must build a recognisable image so that users can spot you in the search results and suggestions.
Of course, your branding needs to look good too. Crummy photoshop skills can make your videos stand out – but for all the wrong reasons. So use a service like Placeit to help you design and build a professional brand image.
Placeit has dedicated tool to help you design and produce YouTube intros and outros and has hundreds of templates to pick from. You can also design custom logos and animate them too.
It’s likely as a Youtuber that you will want to cross-promote content on social media as well. Placeit has tools for creating Instagram stories and videos, and templates for Facebook covers.
Placeit is cloud-based, so you use all the tools via your browser. One price of $14.95 per month allows you to access all the functionality, and you can make a small saving paying upfront for an annual subscription.
Not all the people watching your content will view it in the same environment. Some will view your content in comfort sat on the sofa, where they can hear your voice clearly. Others will be on the move, on a bus or in a cafe, where listening can be difficult.
For some viewers, the location doesn’t matter at all: you exclude the hard of hearing when you don’t make your content accessible to all.
Rev doesn’t charge a fixed fee for its service; you instead pay based on the length of your video. Prices start at $1.25 per minute, so you always know exactly how much it will cost you upfront.
If you want to use music by real artists in your videos, but worry about copyright issues, then you should try out the music licensing service from Lickd.
Designed expressly for YouTube content creators, Lickd has thousands of real songs to choose from by genuine artists.
You have to license each track individually, and Lickd set the cost dependent on your YouTube audience size. If you have under 50 thousand views on average for your videos, then prices start at $8 per track.
You’re not allowed to remix or change the music in any way, though you can edit for length. And while there aren’t too many well-established artists on the site yet, it’s early days. The more creators that use the service, the more artists Lickd are likely to attract.
You might create the best content around, but if you don’t choose the right keywords, or make the most of your metadata, then your channel may as well be invisible.
The following five tools help give you the best chance of your content being seen.
Google Trends
Google Trends gauges the popularity of any topic over time. It’s a way to discover which subjects are hot or not.
Google Trends can also help you plan the release of content for annual events. For example, if you want to know the best time to upload Halloween-themed content, the chart below shows you that interest starts to climb in mid-September. Maybe a bit earlier than you might have thought?
You can also use Google Trends to compare subjects, which can help you to narrow your focus when brainstorming ideas.
Google Trends is free to use and has lists of daily trends and real-time search trends, so you can see what’s creating a buzz online today. You also can view trend data by country, so you can find out what’s popular in your corner of the globe.
VidIQ is a tool that aims to help you grow your channel in two broad ways.
First, vidIQ helps to maximise organic reach by helping you select the best tags, and choose the right keywords for your title and description. VidIQ works as a chrome plugin that displays extra data directly on the YouTube website.
Once your videos have gone live, vidIQ keeps you on track by letting you know which of your videos performs well. The software also audits your content and can highlight issues, like which videos aren’t part of a playlist, for example.
There is a free option for the software, though this is restricted in functionality. To make the best use of the tool, you need to buy a subscription. The ‘Boost’ level is the best option as it allows you access to vidIQ’s keyword engine and permits you to track 20 competitors.
VidIQ is popular with many large and successful channels.
Website: vidiq.com
Price: From free, though you need a subscription to get the most from the tool. Starting at $7.50 per month.
TubeBuddy
TubeBuddy is a competitor of VidIQ and offers similar features, and uses a chrome extension to display keyword and video information on the page of YouTube’s website.
TubeBuddy also offers ideas for tags and other metadata when you upload a video. It advises on best practices to have your video rank as high as possible. It reminds you to add cards, end screens, and other essential parts that add up to make a successful YouTube video.
There is a limited free option to give you an idea of what the software can do, but to get lasting benefits, you need to take out a monthly subscription. Pricing starts at $9 per month for the ‘Pro’ level, though you can save 50% if you have less than 1000 subscribers.
Of course, you will only need to use either TubeBuddy or vidIQ to manage your channel, while they are both excellent, vidIQ has the slight edge.
Website: tubebuddy.com
Price: From $9 ($4.50 if you have less than 1000 subscribers.)
YouTube Autosuggest
Sometimes thinking up new content ideas is hard. But it can be time wasted, too, if you don’t perform keyword research first to see if your ideas are even popular.
Fortunately, there is a free way to check if people have an interest in your idea, and that is on YouTube itself.
You may have noticed when you begin typing in the YouTube search bar a dropdown box appears with a list of options. These show a list of search terms that users are already using on YouTube to find content.
Use the auto-suggest feature to find and validate your content ideas.
When you are compiling ideas from YouTube Autosuggest, also make use of the underscore character ‘_’. It acts as a wildcard when placed between two words. Here is an example.
YouTube is giving you content ideas free of charge! Take this method a step further and combine the autosuggest search terms with the free version of vidIQ. You can see which of the ideas are popular and which you have a chance to rank with.
Morning Fame is a website rather than the chrome plugin functionality of vidIQ and TubeBuddy. Morning Fame provides analytics for uploaded videos and a keyword tool to plan future content.
The analytics section gives a good historical overview of your channel’s performance. And offers suggestions on which of your videos perform best for your audience, and recommends which type of videos you should try to replicate.
Morning Fame also benchmarks your channel against to similar ones.
The keyword research tool suggests content ideas, and rates your chance of ranking for them considering your channel size.
Once you pick a target keyword, Morning Fame rates your channel’s chance of ranking for the keyword.
Morning Fame offers two levels of subscription. While both have full access to analytics reporting, if you want more than occasional access to the keyword research tool, you’ll need to choose the Plus plan at $12.90 per month.
Website: morningfa.me
Price: From $4.90 per month.
Conclusion
You’re unlikely to establish a channel on YouTube without using tools. Some tools help to make your videos compelling, and others help find best keywords to rank. There are 500 hours worth of videos uploaded to YouTube every minute, and you need to work hard to make yours stand out.
You need to add intros/outros to brand your videos, use B-roll and sound clips to enhance your content, and then make sure to edit your content well so that it engages viewers.
Finally, if you don’t take advantage of tools to help you plan and promote content, you will fall behind your competitors who will surely be using them.
If you need more help with equipment, software, artwork and other YouTube things then I have a list of EVERYTHING I use on my resources page.
Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube
Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.
1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search
I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.
When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.
Big mistake!
I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.
That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.
Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.
3. Rev.com helps people read my videos
You can’t always listen to a video.
Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.
This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.
A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.
4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube
I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.
I have every intention in the world to make something that looks cool but im about as artistic as a dropped ice-cream cone on the web windy day.
That is why I could not live on YouTube without someone like PlaceIT. They offer custom YouTube Banners, Avatars, YouTube Video Intros and YouTube End Screen Templates that are easy to edit with simple click, upload wizard to help you make amazing professional graphics in minutes.
5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways
I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.
And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.
I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.
I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.
A/B Split Testing – How To To A/B Thumbnail Testing – Step-by-Step YouTube Tutorial with A/B Testing with TubeBuddy // AB Test YouTube Thumbnails to improve Click Through Rate, Improve your video rankings boosting your views. Get more subscribers, get more views, and rank better with TubeBuddy.
What drives impressions?
As soon as you have uploaded a video, YouTube starts surfacing it to relevant audiences. Based on hundreds of signals, our systems determine which viewers are most likely to watch your video and continue to surface the video to audiences as long as it remains on YouTube.
Why do I have fewer impressions than subscribers?
Keep in mind that notifications and traffic from external websites or end screens are not currently included in impressions data. It’s important to understand that not every instance in which a viewer sees a video thumbnail will count as an impression, and that not all views come from thumbnail impressions.Learn what counts as a registered impression. You can also look at your traffic sources to fully understand where views and watch time are coming from.
How can I get more impressions or higher Click-through-rate (CTR)?
Higher click-through rate alone isn’t a strong indicator of success. To get a full picture of what attracts and engages viewers on your channel or videos, follow our tips on using impressions and click-through rate data. In general, the best way to get more impressions is to consistently make great quality content that viewers love.
Why are my impressions and CTR really low?
If it seems like your impressions are lower than they should be, here are some things to keep in mind when looking at your impressions data:
Not every instance in which a viewer sees a video thumbnail will count as an impression, and not all views come from thumbnail impressions. Learn what counts as a registered impression.
Older videos may have more impressions, as they’ll continue to be surfaced to audiences as long as they’re on YouTube. To get a more defined view of how your videos are currently doing, look at the first 7 days after uploading to compare impressions data for different videos.
As your videos become more popular, they may be shown to a wider audience beyond your core viewers. This can result in a lower click-through rate (even if you see an increase in overall views and watch time).
Use the traffic sources report to see click-through rate by traffic source. This can give you an indication of how your thumbnails and titles are doing in converting impressions to views in different contexts.
Avoid trying to increase your CTR by using thumbnails or titles that are clickbait. YouTube will recommend a video to viewers if the video is relevant to the viewer and if other viewers find the video interesting, as reflected by the video’s average view duration. Clickbait videos tend to have low average view duration and therefore are less likely to get recommended by YouTube. You can tell if your thumbnail is clickbait if it is getting high CTR but low average view duration and lower than expected impressions.
How To Install TubeBuddy on YouTube for FREE 2019 // Tube Buddy is a powerful tool that helps you rank better in YouTube Search, pick great titles, makes custom thumbnails, bulk edit content, add end screens, add info cards, share to Facebook, A/B thumbnail test and more. But did you know you can get TubeBuddy for FREE?
How To Bulk Edit Info Cards on YouTube with TubeBuddy 2019 // Save time with TubeBuddy and bulk edit info cards to videos on YouTube, edit info cards, update info cards, remove info cards in the matter of minutes. TubeBuddy is a FREE browser based plugin that helps you bulk edit many things and help you rank better in search.
How To Bulk End Screen Cards on YouTube with TubeBuddy 2019 // Save time with TubeBuddy and bulk edit end screens to videos on YouTube, edit end cards, update end screens cards, remove end screens in the matter of minutes. TubeBuddy is a FREE browser based plugin that helps you bulk edit many things and help you rank better in search.
TubeBuddy — 5 POWERFUL Features To Grow A Small YouTube Channel // Tube Buddy is one of the best free YouTube Tools for anyone to download. Boost your views, get more subscribers with these 5 powerful features — tags, overlays, rankings, optimization and more.
Get More Views on YouTube FAST — Boost Views with TubeBuddy, VidIQ & Morning Fame // Small YouTubers can rank better in youtube, get more views, subscribers, and grow their youtube channel with these free youtube tools.
We can grow together, We can learn together… Start Creating!
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As you may know, YouTube can be a fickle beast! I started YouTube in July 2013 (Channel – MrHairyBrit) as an experiment to try to understand how YouTube worked and how it could help me in my day job as a web developer. I soon found out that YouTube was a very engaging, friendly social media platform that rapidly become my new hobby and passion. I started to make 3 videos a week, a mixture of movie reviews, video replies (when they still existed), rants and funny news – slowly gaining YouTube Subscribers. Each time I would look at my videos and slowly work to improve on my camera framing, audio quality, and practiced on talking to a camera – all while on a tiny budget.
Roll forward to October 2016 – I had been on YouTube for 3.5 Years, made 600+ videos and kicked, punched, scratched my way to nearly 8000 YouTube Subscribers. Its a number I am proud of because during this time I had many successes and many failures, some great videos and some horrifically cringe worthy videos… but then I did something that helped my channel EXPLODED!
I gained 10K YouTube Subscribers in just 7 months!
Gaining 2000+ YouTube Subscribers a Month!!
After months and months of making 3 videos a week, not seeing any major changes to my monthly views, I felt I needed to shake up a few things. I started thinking “if a website had 600+ pages of content surely some of those should get traffic?!” So with that in mind I started researching YouTube Video SEO and here are….
4 Tips To Boost An Existing YouTube Channel – Gain YouTube Subscribers
Revive Old Videos – Redo Video SEO
After 3.5 years I had over 600 videos but many of them failed in the Video SEO game. I looked back over my old videos and was horrified to see how badly I had tagged them. I updated them with new more accurate Video Titles, Descriptions, Video Tags and added a new EYE CATCHING thumbnail. Using TubeBuddy, I would update 5-10 videos a day and over time some (not all) would be reindexed by YouTube and spring back to life again!
End Screens & Info Cards – Use The Tools YouTube Gives You
I personally find that 80%+ of my viewing audience now views me on Mobile devices, smartphones, iPad and other iDevices. This was something I had not optimised for when I started making videos in 2013. The old annotation system allowed you to add helpful links but mobile users couldn’t use them…. but they CAN use End Screens and Info Cards! Using TubeBuddy, I bulk added End Screens and Info Cards to all my videos helping to boost interaction with my mobile viewers, making it easier for them to watch more videos and subscribe to me!
The Power Of Playlists – Keep People Watching For Longer
I noted that some of my videos would get regular traffic. I collected my to 10-20 videos and built playlists around them. Each playlist would have theme that matched the top video and I placed that video at the top of the playlist, making the playlist a SERIES. This mean YouTube can then associate those videos to each other and suggests them more as the next video in the related auto-play video section. This also meant that I could use the video that was getting traffic to feed the other videos in the playlist with traffic, increasing overall watch time and views!
ASK – Make It Easy For Them To Become Subscribers
One thing that I was always shy of doing was ASKING my viewers to do something. I would hide it away at the end of the video in a rushed sentence just as the video was ending … “Please like, comment, share, subscribe and ill see you soon, goodbye!” – What this did was numb people to the Call To Action (CTA). Your CTA should be clear and direct! I have now moved my CTA to the WITHIN THE FIRST 30 SECONDS of the video and making it clear how to – “Hello Hairy Family and welcome back to another video. If you want to see more funny news remember to CLICK SUBSCRIBE for 3 Videos every week….” – This tells them WHAT to do and WHY, and this and rapidly increased my subscriber click through rate. Just goes to show, if you ASK, you will receive
YouTube for most people is the the aggregator of fail compilations, the disseminator of cat related humour and a beacon for everything viral. Killing time on YouTube is the most productive way to be unproductive, but there’s so much more to it than salacious thumbnails and unrelated debates about political theory in the comments section, there is also hidden unknown youtube tips and tricks
Aside from a few easter eggs to please medium-core trekkies and Star Wars fans, there are some genuinely useful hacks that can enhance your YouTube viewing experience ten-fold. I mean, if you’re prepared to sign away three hours of your life by watching late-nineties wrestling videos, then you should do it in style, right?
Ever heard of YouTube Leanback? Or how about turning any video into a GIF? No? Then there’s so much more to show you. Here’s a run-down of my top five YouTube hacks:
1. Make any YouTube Video into a GIF
You can turn any video into a GIF by simply adding “gif” just after the “www.” in the URL. For example “www.gifyoutube.com/watchx”
Once you type that in, you’ll be taken to a simple gif making tool page that lets you cut out a section of the video and export it.
Select the point at which you want to start the gif and then select how long it lasts, and you’re done. You’ve made a gif in a matter of minutes.
2. YouTube Disco Your YouTube Videos
You already knew that you can use YouTube to stream music, but did you know it can be a DJ too? YouTube Disco automatically puts together a playlist of songs from your prefered genre or artist.
Go to www.youtube.com/disco and enter any artist, song, or genre and YouTube will populate a playlist of the most watched/popular videos from your search.
You can also set it to play the current top hits and it will tell what videos are most popular at the moment.
3. Slow Motion YouTube Videos
There are a couple of ways to slow down a YouTube video, with the simplest way being to hold down the spacebar during a video. This cause the video to rapidly play and pause, which creates a budget slow motion effect.
If, however, you want some more advanced controls, head to www.youtubeslow.com and enter your video’s URL into the specified field. You can then either speed up, slow down, play on repeat or set a loop.
Wesley Snipe’s “always bet on black” moment in Passenger 57 in slow motion.
4. YouTube Leanback – YouTube and Chill
YouTube Leanback is the friendlier version of YouTube on the big screen. If you’ve ever tried to watch videos on the normal desktop version of YouTube on your TV, you’ll know it’s a pain. Entering characters into the search field with your TV is just not practical, and you need to get right up close to the screen to see what’s going on.
This is where YouTube Leanback comes in. It’s a simplified YouTube UI that only requires use of the arrow keys to control. Also, if you have a smart TV, you can connect your phone or tablet to control what’s on the screen – and you don’t even have to be on the same Wi-Fi connection to do it.
Anyone in the room, providing they’ve gone through the verification process, can connect to the YouTube page and chuck videos into the communal playlist.
All you need to do is go to www.youtube.com/leanback and begin flicking through the availble sub sections of videos. To pair up your phone or tablet, go to www.youtube.com/pair on your mobile device and follow the instructions.
5. Google Video Quality Report
Buffering. Endless, rage inducing, buffering. But whose fault is it? Well, it’s your throttling, lacklustre ISP, according to Google.
Google’s YouTube Video Quality Report was launched earlier this year to help consumers understand why their videos take so long to load and can’t be streamed in the best quality. Some childlike illustrations show you how video makes its way to your screen, but don’t let the welcoming graphics fool you. This is video report is a shaming exercise, designed to embarrass ISPs for providing little bandwidth.
The report, which isn’t available everywhere, will tell you how good your connection is in the area and which ISPs are offering the most YouTube friendly internet speeds. This is done via a verification system, which labels each ISP as either ‘HD verified’ or not.
Check it out here (as I said, it may not be available in your area) and see if your connection can sustain 20 minutes of 1080p footage.
YouTube has 1+ billion users. While not all are content creators, it’s safe to say that several million are uploading consistently, with thousands of new creators joining every day – Here are 5 Tips For New YouTubers to help them get started.
If you’re just starting out as a video creator, your first few videos will be buried among the millions of videos uploaded each week. So how can you increase your chances of being discovered amid the massive haystack that is YouTube?
Say two people follow you on Twitter. One has the default ‘egg’ as their profile picture; one has a well-designed image. Which are you more inclined to check out and follow back?
One of the most important first steps you can complete as a new YouTuber is your branding. Attractive channel art can drastically increase the chances that a viewer will check out your other videos and subscribe.
2. Create a regular schedule
Just like popular TV shows, releasing your YouTube videos on a schedule can ensure that they get in front of the maximum amount of viewers. To start, aim to release one video per week, and be sure to tell your subscribers when to expect new content!
Mention your schedule at the end of each video
Include your schedule as part of your channel art
Remind fans on social media
3. Strive for originality
Creating truly original content will be your biggest advantage when starting out—and no one can do that but you. At this very moment, there are more than 60 million Minecraft videos on YouTube. So if you’re set on creating gaming videos, for instance, spend time thinking about how you can make them stand out from the very large crowd!
Here are some more tips for new youtubers in our blogs!
4. Be patient about income
Everyone likes extra money. But when you first start out as a creator, it should be strictly to have fun and grow your audience. Most creators who are making a living from their content have spent years building up their channel and are seeing more than a million video views per month. So try to be patient and focus on creating amazing content, and it’s more likely that the money will eventually come.
5. Be yourself
It may be tempting to model your content after another successful creator verbatim. But that strategy can sometimes come off as fake—and audiences can tell. Whether you’re quiet, loud, or awkward, be yourself! No matter what type of personality you have, there will be people out there who will enjoy your content.
Finally, there’ll be plenty of time to refine. As you grow on YouTube, your style will grow as well. Listen to feedback from your viewers, and most of all, have fun. Good luck with your videos!
Want more help? Need more hands on assistance? Get in touch we do YouTube Coaching >>
YouTubers are sometimes called the most well a paid people, when you see YouTubers like PewDiePie raking in millions as reported by mainstream media from making videos in his bedroom somewhere. What the mainstream media dont get is that its a passionbut its also a full-time job based on views and CPM to generate ideas, record and edit the video – So how to you Increase YouTube CPM?
Its a dream of many YouTubers to one day become a full time YouTuber and to achieve that they need to be making enough money from YouTube to sustain themselves.
CPM stands for Cost per mille which means cost per 1000 views on a video and YouTubers can see their CPM in their adsense earnings reports. When an advertiser starts advertising campaign they can pay per 1000 views of the ad or cost per click on the advert. Therefore if the advertisers CPM was set to a max of $1 per 1000 views, and 900 of your viewers saw the advert they would pay $0.9 theoretically.
Introducing eCPM
eCPM is the effective cost per mille basically the same as CPM but is the cost for every 1000th ad view or impression regardless of what buying method of advertisements is being used for example Fixed, Cost per click, cost per action or CPM.
For example you run a CPC campaign with a cost of $1 per click, you get 200 clicks on the advert but 2000 impressions on the advert. the eCPM is $100 dollars because you made $200 from 2000 impressions. If it was a CPM advertisement and the price you paid was $5 per 1000 views the eCPM would be $10.
How to Improve CPM – Increase YouTube CPM
There are a few ways to improve your CPM (Increase YouTube CPM) on YouTube from targeting high CPC keywords, increasing engagement and watch time and making more videos which I will explain a bit more below.
1. Target strong CPC keywords – Focus your content to Increase YouTube CPM
This is a great way to increase your eCPM rates, Increase YouTube CPM. Since you are paid with a mixture of CPM and CPC adverts on YouTube This is a sure way to increase your income. So each keyword has a value which is assigned by advertisers that ‘bid’ on that keyword with the price they want to pay per click or per impression. If you make a video on Favourite Dog Collars for example, and the cpc of a dogs advertisement is 0.5 cent, you will earn 0.5 cent per click or have a cpm of $1.20 per thousand views then you will earn $1.20.
You can find the CPM of keywords that are related to your video on the google keyword tool. You will need a google account and signed up for Adwords, Googles Advertising platform which is free to sign up to.
If you’re solely focused on making money you may want to research keywords before you make a video. Eg. Looking up video ideas on Insurance, finding the highest keyword such as “Bluewater insurance which has a CPC value of 4.50” You might make a video on Bluewater Insurance – My Experience/Review. Now this may not get a ton of views but the CPC/CPM will be quite high due to advertisers paying high amounts for insurance keywords.
I would not recommend switching from your niche area to accommodate CPC. You cant go from being an established beauty blogger with a ton of subscribers to becoming an insurance reviewer as you will lose your audience and will get negative feedback. So try and stay within your niche area as much as possible, although you can deviate if it relates someway to the niche or just a “Storytime/experience” video which have gotten very common.
2. Increase your watch time and user engagement rates – Quality = Increase YouTube CPM
Watch Time. I’ve mentioned this in a previous post, watch time and engagement rates are vital for CPM. The better the engagement, the more likely google is to serve higher paying ads to your video as they see that your video has a good active audience who are paying attention.
3. Create more content – More videos = Increase YouTube CPM
Now this is a no brainer, the more content you have the more views you will bring in cumulatively. This will Increase YouTube CPM without a doubt. Create a content schedule of daily videos or a video every 2-3 days. This will allow your channel and your revenue to grow effectively. Don’t post a flood of videos as it looks spammy and may not get the attention it needs from your subscribers.
My CPM Is going down, whats happening? Seasonal Boosts to Increase YouTube CPM
CPM is determined purely by advertisers and which ads are being served to your video. Ad budgets are usually a lot lower at the start of the year, don’t worry about this.Ad budgets pick up around the summer time and towards Christmas you will see the highest CPM/CPC rates due to holiday advertising.
Want more help? Need more hands on assistance? Get in touch we do YouTube Coaching >>
Everyone Needs A YouTube Growth Strategy to Grow A YouTube Channel
Gaining YouTube Subscribers is getting harder and harder with an abundance of YouTubers entering the scene and people nowadays are pickier when choosing to subscribe to channels, as they don’t want to be bombarded with content they’re not interested in. The following YouTube Growth Strategy will allow you to gain subscribers more effectively and quicker than you have before. So get reading and start gaining a bunch of loyal subscribers!
Make use of YouTube Customisations – Branding YouTube Growth Strategy
Like any website you may visit, one of the few things you critique is the design, name/branding and the content on the page. The same can be said for a YouTube Channel. In a Branding YouTube Growth Strategy you have to establish credibility by having a completed channel which includes channel art such as Banners and Channel Icons, amount of videos and a completed bio. YouTube has a ton of customisation options to truly make the channel yours and brand yourself using the a Trailer Video, Icons and Headers, you can truly communicate who you are and what your videos are about with your Trailer Video and channel art.
Diversifying Content – YouTube Growth Strategy
One of the main factors of subscribers is views. Views are vital to gain subscribers without views how can people find and subscribe to your videos? There are two types of content fleeting and Evergreen. To Increase views you will need to have diverse content that pulls in viewers for a phase in time (fleeting) and indefinitely (evergreen)
Fleeting content describes videos that are only relevant for a certain time period that people will watch. For example Ice Bucket Challenge.
The Ice Bucket Challenge was fleeting, it was popular for a limited time frame of a few months and it was all people were watching. Lets say if you made a video about the ice bucket challenge that was humorous and contained compelling content it would have been watched a lot during that time frame but views would have fallen off towards the end of its popularity. In the process gaining you a lot of subscribers if Call to Actions were implemented correctly.
Evergreen content decribes videos that people are consistently viewing throughout the year. For evergreen content you have to put a lot of research into trends for example on Googles Trend Tool. If there is a niche or category that consistently brings in views you should do a video on the topic. For example, “How to clean make up brushes” People are always trying to clean their make up brushes throughout the year and its a problem a lot of people have. Should the video become an authority for this term it will gain views throughout the year for many years, no matter what happens.
It is not a fad. By using CTA (Call to Actions) and having compelling & related content these videos should pull in a lot of subscribers.
Call to Action (CTA) – Ask for engagement
A call to action is a vital part of a YouTube Growth Strategy and is basically asking the viewer to do something. For us, we want them to subscribe to our YouTube Channel. Call to actions are an absolute godsend to YouTubers and can be used to increase subscribers exponentially if used correctly.
There a few ways to place a call to action in a video such as Annotation, which are those small subscribe pop up text or buttons that show up at the bottom of the page. In these annotations you put a button with a link to subscribe to your channel. You can also ask in a more personal way by asking during the video, usually during the start and end is the best time to ask as users are most engaged at the start and gives a reminder at the end, with a mixture of both you can increase your subscribers by implementing this simple feature within your videos.
Distribution of Content – Share Your Video, Get Seen!
As said above without views your content is nothing. The more you get people watching videos, the more people can subscribe. Distribution is an important part of a YouTube Growth Strategy and you should share videos at any moment you can. You cannot simply place content and expect people to come find it, you have to show them where it is. There are many ways to do this.
Facebook – On Facebook you can post your content on your page so your friends and extended network can find it. You can also place the video in Facebook groups, when placing in facebook groups make sure the facebook group’s interests align with the content in your video. Therefore they will find it interesting and be more likely to subscribe.
Twitter – With the use of Hashtags you can post a link to your video so your followers and audience can see it, as well as hashtag the tweet with a relevant area for example #Kyshadow and @kyliejenner for a KyShadow review to increase exposure.
Reddit – Reddit is an interesting source of views, as described above it is fleeting but if you post in the relevant section on reddit with compelling content it has the opportunity to bring in a large audience to your video if it gets upvoted by the community. In some cases, Small and Medium youtubers have gone viral with the use of reddit which really built up their audiences.
Forums/Blogs – Blogs and forums are also a great way to bring in views, by guest posting or commenting with a link to your video on a topic that is related to your video you can also bring in some new viewers who may subscribe.
Collaborations – Make Friends
Collaborations are an excellent source of new subscribers that is beneficial for both YouTubers. When collaborating you gain access to another YouTubers audience and they gain access to yours. When doing collaborations as part of a YouTube Growth Strategy, do them with people who have a similar sized audience, lets say you have 4000 subscribers, try and do collaborations with those who have an audience of 3000-5000 subscribers as they are more likely to accept collaboration requests. You should also make sure that the videos your making and that their making are related in some way. For example You’re both gaming youtubers, you should do a collab with another gaming YouTuber as their audience is also interested in gaming, it would not be effective to do a Gaming & Beauty Channel collab as gaming subscribers may not be interested in beauty and vice versa.
Intro, Outro and Channel Trailer
These are vital elements of any YouTube Channel. They show viewers who you are and what you make videos about. The channel trailer is the first thing a newcomer to your channel will see and this is the moment you have to impress them, and gain them as a subscriber. A good trailer is one that’s informative and under one minute. The use of intro’s is always important as it re-enforces your branding, as well as a video outro which you can link to other youtube videos so they can keep watching or give them the option to subscribe and like the video (Call to Action).
Consistency – Everyone Loves A Regular TV Show
Consistency is key as the saying goes and YouTube is no different. Viewers want to see a consistent stream of videos. If you really want to be a youtuber you should enjoy making videos and it should have to be a task. Therefore uploading videos on a regular schedule should be no problem and with more videos = more reach for views = more subscribers. By uploading frequently on a regular YouTube Growth Strategy schedule you are building a good relationship with your existing subscribers and developing new subscribers through new videos which will expand your reach.
Interaction & Personality
If you’re a growing youtuber you should interact with your audience wherever you can, if they ask questions in the comment or compliment your video, interact and thank them. This will let your audience know you’re there for them and they will become loyal subscribers. Even seeing a YouTuber respond in the comments makes me like them and makes me want to subscribe as it shows me that they care for their audience and their work.
YouTube Video Optimisation – Video SEO
Video optimisation is absolutely essential for subscribers. Video optimisation allows you to rank well in YouTubes Search and Related videos section. This includes Title, Description and Tags. You should have a relevant and stand out title. For Fleeting videos make the title snappy and out there, for Evergreen Videos make it out there you should do some keyword research. Keyword research entails finding out what people are searching for using Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Type in a few terms and suggestions and related terms will come up. For example “5 Best MakeUp Brush”. You should try to target medium and high search volume keywords.
YouTube Giveaways
Giveaways are the incentivized way of getting new subscribers. When doing giveaways as part of a YouTube Growth Strategy try and make the giveaway item as relevant to your topic area as possible for example if you’re a gamer maybe give away a controller, this will ensure any potential subscriber who subscribes to win the giveaway item has a real interest in the topic you’re making videos about. When doing a giveaway you should ask the audience to subscribe and share the content on social media such as Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. This will also gain you new viewers from their bunch of followers too!
Want more help? Need more hands on assistance? Get in touch we do YouTube Coaching >>
Overall YouTube Watch Time Is The Secret To Growth
Overall video watch time or audience retention rate is vital factor of ranking when it comes to YouTube. YouTube watch time is how long viewers watch your videos before they drop off or leave a video, having a video watched for the full duration or more than half the video can improve your ranking in YouTube Search as well as improve ad CPM’s, therefore it is important that we can improve this metric in our videos. With Programmes like YouTube RED programme, if your content has a low retention rate (YouTube Watch Time) it correlates to a low payout from the RED programme.
Optimize Entry Points – Increase YouTube Watch Time
Your thumbnail and title are the first thing that a viewer will see and will get them to click through into your video. You must have a compelling and interesting title and thumbnail, but they must be accurate to the content and not be deceptive clickbait titles or thumbnails. If you use misleading titles or thumbnails, it will negatively affect YouTube watch time as the viewer will immediately feel mislead which will result in them leaving the video early and leaving a thumbs down.
Use YouTube Analytics – Investigate YouTube Watch Time
YouTube Analytics is a great tool for finding out why your audience is dropping off and lowering their watch time of the videos. If you check the audience retention report on YouTube Analytics you can find out which videos have low view times. If you find a trend in low view times in videos you can see what each have in common, for example if they’re dropping off within the first 15-30 seconds you should follow the 15 second rule to optimize the content, but if they’re dropping off halfway in each video you should see if there is any relation between the video eg. the video gets slower or has less energy which are the most common reasons for drop off, to combat this you can use annotations to prompt users to keep watching or simply telling them to stick around to see whats coming up.
Create Quality Video Content – Quality = Better YouTube Watch Time
Creating quality video content is an obvious one, but it is one of the most important factors. Why would you watch a video that didnt have interesting content? The higher the quality of your content and originality the higher the youtube watch time generally is. The user will be engrossed in the video and more likely to watch if it is something they haven’t seen before. You can achieve this by using your own style in videos and not blatantly copying other youtubers styles. Voice your opinions, spark interest, and interact with your audience by posing questions and call to actions.
Editing is also a big part of creating quality video content. You should edit your video effectively by creating interesting openings, use of cuts to edit out the boring or unrelated parts that aren’t interesting and only keeping in the compelling parts to maintain interest throughout the video. Make sure to test the video out on your friends or fellow youtubers before uploading to get an honest opinion and feedback on the video.
The 15 Second Rule – Hook Them Quickly and Gain YouTube Watch Time
When creating a video you need to grab the viewer’s attention within the first 15 seconds. If using an intro limit it to less than 5 seconds as if its longer it takes too long to get to the actual content. In order to capture the attention in the first 15 seconds you must place compelling content first with the information that the user is expecting or a build up to it. Don’t start off with boring information that is irrelevant to the video content. At the start of the video you need to channel all of your energy, be completely outgoing, energetic and fast paced and try keep it up throughout the video as this style of behaviour is highly engaging.
Video Linking and Annotations – Keep Them Watching!
The use of video linking and use of annotations in older videos, can help build YouTube watch time as users to continue watching your other videos by linking them to newer videos or continue to stay watching the current videos by asking them to stick around to find out more in areas that they usually drop off (eg. mid video) .This will increase your overall watch time since they are watching more of your video content.
Want more help? Need more hands on assistance? Get in touch we do YouTube Coaching >>
