YouTube Cheat Sheet

1. Build Your Videos Around a Single Keyword/Topic

Building your video around a single topic or keyword is the best way to drive traffic and grow your YouTube audience. Use a keyword tool like Vidiq.com, which is specific to YouTube, to look for the most searched keywords in the niche you want to target. It’s important to pick your keyword before you craft your video content as it helps you construct the best information around that specific topic. Once you choose a keyword, check out the videos that currently rank for that topic to make sure you’re on the right track in terms of intent and always optimize your title and descriptions.

2. Reuse Existing Top Performing Content

Many people go to YouTube to find answers and how-to tutorials especially during the COVID-19 pandemic where people binge-watched 4 billion hours of ‘how to’ videos in just one year. So content that solves problems for your audience is a great way to drive traffic. Perform a content audit to discover the blogs, guides, and other high-performing pieces you currently have and think about how to repurpose them to create relevant and engaging videos. Bear in mind that the most successful videos on YouTube are typically between one to five minutes long. Keep it short and sweet.

3. Engage with Your Audience

If you’re just posting videos without encouraging comments and discussion, you’re missing a trick. YouTube rewards channels with great engagement, including overall time spent on channel, watch time, likes and dislikes, and most importantly, comments. So try to respond to every comment you receive (if possible!) and encourage users to engage with audio/visual prompts. You can also take the time to visit other channels and engage, this could be a brand similar to your own or simply one you admire. Post questions or comments that can drive engagement by asking questions relevant to the content or even just asking what content they like to see on your channel or would like to see more of. Plus, make sure to thank people for sharing on YouTube and other channels.

4. Get Branded

In addition to visual branding, don’t forget to add custom URLs to your channel header - and write an interesting bio about who you are and what your videos are about.

5. Promote Your YouTube Videos on Other Social Channels

One of the wonderful things about social media is that you can cross-promote content on different channels. Promoting your YouTube videos on your other social channels is the easiest way to grow your audience.

6. Show Up & Stand Out

If you’re running YouTube by yourself or as part of a small organization, it can be extremely beneficial to personalize the channel by participating in videos. When you put a face to a brand, your audience can more easily connect with you as an individual. This is especially important for vloggers; fitness, life, or business coaches; and solopreneurs. Every video you make doesn’t need to include your face, but you should feature regularly enough to engage your audience. Additionally, if you are this type of YouTuber, use a photo of yourself on your channel (not your logo).

7. Post Great Thumbnails & Leverage YouTube Cards

They may seem like a small thing (well, they are), but thumbnails can have a big impact. YouTube advertises other videos via thumbnails in its sidebar, so you want yours to stand out among the pack. The same goes for YouTube search. Videos with a catchy title and appealing thumbnail usually rank higher, even if the content itself isn’t as valuable because they have a higher click-through rate (CTR). To get your CTR where it needs to be, try using tactics such as highlighted areas, arrows, large text, and unexpected or eye-catching images. We know that YouTube rewards channels that keep viewers on their pages longer. These longer average watch times mean people are engaged with your content. (You can see how long people stay on your videos by using YouTube analytics). By adding YouTube cards, you can include links to other videos or relevant content at the exact point where users drop off. There are a variety of card types to choose from such as a playlist, poll or donation and you can feature 5 cards per video that appear as a rectangular box or teaser in the right-hand corner of the video. Although users may abandon the video they are watching, they will be directed to your other content and remain on your channel, increasing your ranking.

8. Push for Subscriptions

One of the ways you know for sure that viewers are engaged with your channel is when they ‘subscribe’ to see any new videos that are posted. Ask viewers to subscribe to your channel in each video that you upload, and keep engaged with your existing subscribed users. Never pay for subscribers. This will only bring down your engagement and hurt the authenticity of your account in the long run. Remember, if you don’t ask your viewers to subscribe, you may be missing out on a lot of potential followers. After all, the more subscribers you get, the more chance you have of increasing watch time on YouTube.

9. Increase Your Uploading Frequency

This may sound intimidating at first, but to grow your audience, you need to increase your posting frequency to at least one video a week. Don’t worry; you don’t need a design firm or big advertising company to get this done. Today’s smartphones offer excellent video recording ability, and tools such as Animoto make editing videos easy to create video content on a budget. Consistency is of the utmost importance. Try to post at the same time each day or week (depending on your frequency), and keep your subscribers updated about when new videos will arrive. Then stick to your schedule.

10. Become a Social Video (& YouTube) Expert

Video as a content format keeps going from strength to strength. According to ‘The State of Video Marketing’ report, 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool and 87% of marketers report positive ROI in its performance. As audiences become more visual and platforms such as TikTok grow in popularity, marketers should understand the role of video and how to use it effectively across all social media channels.

11. Link to a Specific Time in Video

Also, viewers can simply click on the time and the video will automatically jump to the point you are referencing. All you have to do is add a code to the back of the URL and you can jump to interesting moments of your video.

12. Research your Keywords

When you choose relevant keywords, it can help you get your video content highlighted in front of the interested users. ‘YouTube keyword tool’ is one of the best SEO tools to gather SEO related keyword ideas. Also, you can surely get the best keyword options with which you can try out a few descriptive words or long tail phrases, or you can type in a YouTube video’s ID or watch page URL.

13. Put Keywords in the Description

Metadata refers to the information about a video, and one should be succinct with their video’s metadata. Viewers or users search for topics related to what entertains them; we can choose your keywords accordingly and write out a thorough description that will help YouTube and Google rank our video for the keywords we’re targeting.

14. Pick the Right Title

Title – the first thing the viewer sees when evaluating whether or not to watch your video whether that’s from a search result, or via your social network. A good title can make all the difference and show great results. It’s worth it to brainstorm the best possible title for your video. Also, it’s important that a title works on search, but also it should speak to the potential viewers and compel them to view your video, which will ultimately help you with the video rankings.

15. Make Playlists

A playlist is an ordered list of videos that you create, often with a specific theme, which showcase your channel’s personality and ultimately, your creativity. YouTube’s playlists allow you to string a group of videos together in a sequence that plays one after the next. Apart from this, playlists also offer additional benefits:

1. Show up separately in YouTube searches.

2. Each new playlist acts as an opportunity to show up on the front page of every search result.