How NOT To Boost Your YouTube Videos

If you ask any YouTuber what their number one priority is when it comes to their channel, they’ll probably tell you right off the bat - it’s to boost their views and get more subscribers!

That’s a great goal to have! You want your channel to get consistent growth and wider influence, so it’s understandable to try every possible way to achieve that. 

But did you know bad ways of boosting your YouTube videos? You might be thinking, “Well, any way to get your content out there is probably good, right?” 

That’s not true. Some methods actually do more harm than good, even when you think you’re getting people to see more of your content. 

They won’t just waste your time, energy, and resources; they’ll even hurt your channel in the long run! 

It’s true that things are constantly changing on YouTube. But with my experience and expertise in this site, I have a pretty good grasp on what gives you the results you want - and how to get that the right way. 

I’ve come up with two things you should absolutely not do when promoting your videos.I’ll talk about why they don’t work, how they can be harmful to your channel and your content, and what you can do instead to better promote your YouTube videos. 

Let’s jump in:

1) Don’t use Fiverr.

What is Fiverr? It’s basically an online marketplace where you can hire people from all around the world to do all kinds of tasks for five bucks or any amount in multiples of five. 

For example, I can hire someone to play me a piano piece on a beautiful Yamaha grand piano for about thirty-five bucks. Or pay someone else to Photoshop me at the top of Mount Everest (well, I won’t do that, but you get the gist). Whatever gig you have in mind - whether it’s digital art, social media management, virtual assistance, writing, research - they’re all there. 

Now, what does this have to do with YouTube? If you do a quick search on Fiverr, you’ll find several offers to do “organic YouTube promotion” and “viral YouTube promotion and marketing” for ten to fifteen dollars. 

This honestly sounds like an unbelievable deal for just a couple of bucks, but it’s a huge promise to deliver - which is why most of them don’t. Here’s what’s going to happen. 

You will get results, meaning you really will get more views. The “hack” here is that the person you hired will watch your video over and over again and use bots to spike up your views.

But the problem is that YouTube is getting smarter and smarter with every update. While you’re getting those numbers racked up, it will automatically be on alert for whether that person watching your video is a real person or a bot. 

How does YouTube do this? It looks into that person’s account and tries to figure out if they’ve watched any videos like yours recently. 

So if you’re doing makeup videos, YouTube will comb through their history and subscriptions to see if it matches up. It’ll look at whether they actually favorite or comment on other makeup artists. YouTube knows the average activity on a user’s account, so it can immediately detect if something’s up.

When it does flag your video as spam, it’ll be taken down instantly. It can even shut down your channel. All your effort and hard work towards making your content will just go down the drain. 

The point is, using these spammy tactics hurts your channel by not bringing in real traffic. What do I mean by that? 

If I were to pay Will Smith to tell people on every social media platform he’s on, “Hey, you guys, Nate has this really cool YouTube channel you should check out!” That wouldn’t just be awesome, it would also get a lot of real people to look at and subscribe to my channel. 

And those people might even recommend my channel to their friends or anyone they know who’s interested in my content, so my views and subscriptions go up because real people are tuning in. 

But when someone on Fiverr tells you, “I’ve got a huge Twitter following and I can get more people to watch your videos,” they’re most likely using bots to get you those views. Be wary of anyone who tells you they can make your videos go viral, even if they claim to do it 

Don’t get me wrong; Fiverr is actually a great site for other gigs like those I mentioned before. It’s the YouTube promotion services that people offer on it that are ineffective at and even damaging to getting the results you actually want.

2) Don’t promote your videos on mature social media sites like Facebook. 

No, I don’t mean that kind of “mature”! When I say mature social media sites, they’ve been around for the longest time - and they’re really, really big. This puts them in direct competition with YouTube. Here’s how it can affect your YouTube promotion.

So let’s say you have a huge following on Facebook and you want to promote your new YouTube channel which only has a handful of subscribers. It might seem like a no-brainer to promote it on Facebook, but this actually works to your disadvantage. 

Facebook wants to keep its users inside Facebook, which means they don’t want you linking people to websites like YouTube that will make them leave. This takes traffic away from them, and Facebook really doesn’t like that. 

When you post a YouTube video on your Facebook page, Facebook’s algorithm will detect that and penalize you for that by hiding your future posts. So people are less likely to see your content, and that would suck especially if that’s where you have a wide audience. 

This is actually a great segue into another reason why this doesn’t work: your audience from different social media platforms have different wants and expectations from you. Your content has to be tailor-made for them, so you have to give them a good experience on that particular platform before you encourage them to check you out on YouTube. 

For instance, Facebook users probably want less time watching videos because it’s a more text and image-based platform. So you’ll have to make or edit down to a shorter video with that viewership in mind.

Remember not to post links or teaser videos! Again, not only does taking people out of Facebook penalize you, it also discourages people from visiting your channel. When they’re using one social media app, they want to stay there as much as possible. 

This also applies the other way around! YouTube will also penalize you for linking people to your content on other sites because like Facebook, they don’t want people leaving to go somewhere else. 

The same goes for all your pages on other mature sites like Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You can get away with it on platforms like Quora, though, so you can look into that and see if your content is a good fit for that site. 

The bottom line is, don’t use mature sites to get traffic for your YouTube channel and vice versa. It will hurt your YouTube viewership and your following on those other sites. You can do this only when the benefits outweigh the penalties.

What You Can Do Instead

There’s nothing wrong with using your following on Facebook to promote your YouTube channel: you just have to do it the right way!

One of the best strategies to do this is to post a video on Facebook that you know your audience there will enjoy, then plant seeds in it about your YouTube channel. 

A good way to do this is to bring up your channel at the end of your video or somewhere in conversation and say something like, “Hey, we also do a lot of these on my YouTube channel!” Of course, you can’t post a link to it, but it will generate enough interest that when they do leave Facebook and go on YouTube, they’ll be encouraged to follow you there.

When The Penalties Are Worth It

Your priority as a content creator on any platform is not to get penalized when you’re promoting your work!

There’s an exception, though: those penalties are worth it if the benefits you’ll get outweigh them. One of those exceptions is your website. 

If you have your own website and you get it approved on YouTube, you’ll get significantly reduced penalties for linking to it. Plus, once they’re up on your site, you can get their name and email address - so you’ll be gaining a new lead! 

Keep in mind that your main goal is to reach out to as many of your tribe or community as you can! The right way to do it might not always be easy: it’ll definitely require more of your smarts, time, and effort when it comes to strategizing and putting yourself out there. 

But when you achieve your goal, I promise you - it’ll be really worth it! 

Was this helpful for you? Have you done either one of these and paid the price for it? Do you know any other mistakes YouTubers often make when they’re promoting their videos? Let me know!