In this article I want to share my spontaneous experiment of promoting videos on YouTube. It shows that YouTube has quite clear and understandable rules, following which each author can find their audience.
I will describe the whole process in sufficient detail, and every detail will be very important for the final result. Therefore, I advise you not to be lazy and read this article to the end.
As a result of the experiment, 3 videos were posted on YouTube:
- 1 video – 6,400 views
- 2 videos – 143,000 views
- 3 video– 35,000 views
The number of views is indicated at the time of writing.
What is the essence of the experiment?
In mid-December, we suddenly wanted to write our own New Year’s song. After recording the song, we shot a New Year’s video for it. It turned out to be of sufficient quality, so we wanted to upload it to YouTube and try to meaningfully promote it and analyze the results.
Here is the video:
This video has 6,400 views at the time of writing, which is already a decent result, especially for an original song by an unknown artist. But still, during the analysis, reasons were identified that prevented a larger number of views, but more on that later.
First, let’s take a closer look at the main elements that do not concern the video itself, but without them it is impossible to successfully promote your video.
UPD: By 09/16/24, there were already 4.4 million views.
YouTube video title
Before creating a video, it is advisable to figure out in advance what title can be used for your video. Understand how relevant it is and how many views it can potentially bring.
To do this, simply enter your title in the YouTube search. In our case, it will be “New Year’s song”.
See which videos have more views and possibly add additional keywords that you consider necessary. You may also notice that the title is often highlighted in capital letters. This technique makes the video a little more noticeable. The goal of your title is to make people choose your video among many competitors.
YouTube video icon
The icon is no less important than the name. The icon should be no worse than your competitors and at the same time stand out from their background. You should add a name or additional phrases to the icon that will motivate your target audience to click on it.
YouTube’s personal account is equipped with powerful tools for video analysis. In particular, it shows the CTR parameter – this is the share of clicks in relation to the total amount of impressions.
We tried several icons. The first icon had a CTR of about 0.6%. This icon depicted the lead singer of the song. From which it was concluded that YouTube users are reluctant to click on videos with people they don’t know.
As a result, this contrasting New Year’s icon was chosen. Its CTR was 4.8%, which is almost 10 times higher.
The higher the CTR, the more likely it is that your video will be recommended to YouTube users who are interested in similar topics.
Tags on YouTube
It is also very important to choose when uploading a video suitable tags so that YouTube algorithms understand which alternative queries can display your video and which videos can recommend you next to.
The easiest way to get tags is to analyze competitors. For example, using such online service, you can easily extract tags from any video
What should a YouTube video be like?
The video should have a high viewing depth. The higher it is, the better. In our example, the average viewing depth was about 2 minutes. This is a low figure, and because of it, the algorithms think that the video should be offered less often than the competitors’ videos, hence the low final number of views. You might think that 2 out of 4 minutes is a whole half, but the analysis of other videos shows that the algorithms do not take into account the proportion of the entire video. Therefore, you should not be afraid to upload long videos. If the video is 30 minutes long and the average view depth is 7 minutes, then it is better than a 4 minute video with a 2 minute view depth.
Another very important point: your video should not violate copyright. The general idea is this: for some music tracks your video will be automatically deleted, for others they can complain and delete the video some time after publication. You also can’t use videos from other YouTube authors.
Comments and likes are also very important, but if the viewing depth is low, then nothing will help to start the process of getting natural views.
Is this really enough for a popular video?
Let’s imagine an ideal situation. We drew a bright and clickable icon, composed a good title, selected tags and made a high-quality video that is interesting to watch for a certain category of users. After some time, it turns out that no one has watched your video except you.
The whole point is that YouTube algorithms could not recognize the coolness of your video. In order for this to happen, the video statistics must be filled with views and data. And then, if these results demonstrate good indicators, then the process of recommending your video is launched, and it begins to receive a lot of organic views.
How to start the promotion process?
There are several ways:
- If you are a popular blogger or star, then you just need to invite your audience to watch the video. Then the process will start by itself.
- Launching native advertising on YouTube. This method, unfortunately, disappeared this year due to sanctions.
- Motivated traffic. We chose this method due to its cost-effectiveness and flexibility.
Launching promotion through motivated traffic
You should start promoting immediately after publishing the video. Because in the first hours, due to its novelty, the video will rank better.
We used our own service to promote the video. The essence of the service is that you can create any task, and performers perform it using Android phones for a material reward. This method is the most secure and effective for our task.
Created two universal orders:
First order
- For 1264 views with a direct link to the video. Performers will also be able to like, comment and subscribe if they wish.
- The price of one execution is 3 rubles, and each performer will watch the 4-minute video in full.
Second order
- After 475 views, performers should be able to find the video in search results themselves. Such an order has a positive effect on the algorithms, because YouTube collects statistics on where and how the video was found.
- The price of one execution is also 3 rubles, and each performer will have to continue the phrase from the video. It would be possible to choose the type of control by time, but the chosen approach will guarantee that the performer was able to find the right video.
We recommend creating two such orders in parallel, they will complement each other. The total budget for promotion was 5,217 rubles.
YouTube video analytics
Now let’s take a look at YouTube analytics to analyze in more detail how the created orders affected the indicators of this video and how many organic users were ultimately attracted.
- General picture of views over time: at first there was a strong growth at the time of promotion, and then the views slowed down.
- Audience retention — only 36% reach the end
- YouTube search (CTR) — 16.5% – this parameter is overstated by our order, so you shouldn’t draw conclusions about the quality of the icon based on this value. We ordered 475 views through search, and in the end we got 3621. It turns out 3,000 organic installations came from search.
- Recommended videos (CTR) — 4.8% – this is the source by which you can already judge objectively the quality of your icon and title. We initially had this parameter equal to 0.6%, so having increased it to 4.8 I calmed down, but in theory it could have been made even higher.
- Recommended videos (average viewing time) – 0:44. Here is another objective information saying that our video is not so much liked by random users from YouTube. That is, the weak point in our promotion chain is the video itself.
Now let’s try to test the theory on new videos
A brief overview of the second and third videos
It was decided to try to create a playlist of popular New Year’s tracks. Call the video “BEST NEW YEAR’S SONGS 2023? NEW YEAR’S PLAYLIST?” and “THE BEST NEW YEAR’S SONGS? HAPPY NEW 2023 ❄ COMPILATION?”
Our track was added to the second video as the 3rd one. To popularize it.
The videos were uploaded on December 23 and 26, but on January 2 the video was blocked due to Malikov’s song “Snezhinka”. After the blocking, the detailed picture of the analytics disappeared, but I will tell you the main points from memory
- These videos were much more successful. Here we used exactly the same approach as with the first video.
- The search task was a little different. Here we had a control time of 15 minutes and the task price was 7.5 rubles.
- But the most important thing that made the video move forward was the average viewing depth.
- Recommended videos (average viewing duration) — was about 6-7 minutes. Apparently this is the indicator to strive for.
- Finally, the general dynamics of views on the channel. As we can see, there was a peak on the 31st, which is not surprising.
- A nice bonus is the increase in the number of channel subscribers (+ 1,200 people)
Checklist for promotion
- Create an interesting video
- Draw an icon. If during the promotion it turns out that the CTR is low, then try other icon options.
- Create the most interesting name that your target audience will want to click on.
- Create a list of suitable tags.
- Create a universal order
- Monitor the indicators in analytics and make timely conclusions regarding the icon and name. If everything is fine with the icon and name, then monitor the viewing depth and think of how it could be increased in the future.
I hope the article was useful. For consultations on promotion, write to the messages VK group.