Once your video is uploaded, it's time to spread the word so people will watch it. Some people will find your video by searching on Google or YouTube. Since you prepared your information before uploading, much of this work is done. However, it’s worth keeping the following things in mind so that your videos can achieve maximum visibility.
1. Are your title, description, and tags optimized with your keywords?
With the melding of traditional television with live streaming, movies, and streaming channels, how we watch videos, TV shows, and movies is in flux. Because of these factors, YouTube has continued to gain in popularity as a way to watch video content. But the platform is so saturated with content that you have to make sure your title, description, and tags are optimized so that your videos will appear in response to relevant searches.
2. Add new videos to a playlist
To stay relevant, YouTube is letting you create playlists so that a viewer can click on a playlist, and then sit back and relax like you would with a traditional TV station. Encouraging this behavior can boost your YouTube videos because it increases total watch time. If you have a relevant playlist, you can add the new video when you upload it.
3. Add cards and end screens
You can add YouTube cards to your video. YouTube cards are notifications that you can add to your video that viewers can see and click on. They appear on the top right corner of your video, and you can add up to five cards to each video. You can use the cards as CTAs to direct viewers to another video or landing page.
End screens appear at the end of a video to tell you what to do next, and you can add CTAs to them. These actions can:
Direct the viewer to another video
Refer the viewer to playlists and channels
Invite the viewer to subscribe to your channel
Feature your website, merchandise, or a worthy charity
4. Increase your audience
There are several ways you can increase the audience who watches your video.
Include accurate closed captions - While YouTube automatically transcribes all videos, the automatic captions are only 70% correct. That leaves a lot of room for error. Incorrect captions can potentially harm your video's SEO. Correct captions help promote higher search ranking, better user experience and engagement, and improve video accessibility.
Add a transcript to your description - The YouTube description field has space for 5,000 characters, which generally is enough for a transcript. If not, you can shorten the transcript and link to the complete version elsewhere. You can also use the transcript to create other content later.
Offer subtitles in more than one language - Implementing multiple language subtitles allows non-English-speaking viewers to watch your video, and the translated files add your video to search engines in those languages.
5. Improve and track user experience
When users engage with your video and enjoy that engagement, they like, share, comment, and subscribe to your channel. These actions improve your video's SEO. Other factors also affect UX, including:
YouTube watch time - The actual time spent watching a video (not the percent it is watched).
Session watch time - This is the total time spent on YouTube before leaving the site.
User intent (UI) - Matching your video title to answer a question helps YouTube deliver better results to searchers.
Increasing subscriber base - Growing the number of subscribers to your channel helps improve watch time and session watch time. Regular posts help your viewers know when you'll post.
Creating playlists using subcategories - Short playlists of 4 to 6 videos helps improve your user experience and engagement, and makes it easy to share multiple videos.
Other Ways to Use Your YouTube Video
There are multiple other ways to share your video and increase the number of viewers. Simply embedding your video on your website or blog, linking to it on your social media channels, or showing it on TikTok or Instagram will send curious followers to YouTube to view your latest video.
Blogging is a good way to share the video and transcript to your audience, but you can also link it to questions customers ask if it's relevant. Every time your video is shared it helps boost your watch time and session time.
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