September 29, 2016

20 Free Ways To Promote YouTube Videos

free ways to promote youtube videos
Here at Grin, we pride ourselves on providing YouTube content creators with everything they need to succeed. Today, we’re going to extend that to free ways to promote YouTube videos- twenty of them to be precise. Each way to promote a video will be organized into its own section, too.

Post On A Social Media Outlet

  • Reddit. Reddit hosts a wide variety of sub-reddits, forums devoted to particular artists, games, TV shows, music, you name it. By finding relevant subreddits to post your video on, you’ve found one of the best free ways to promote YouTube videos- just make sure you participate in these communities too.
  • Facebook. Facebook is great for sharing content due to its ubiquity as a social media platform. Instead of sharing from your personal profile, though, you want to use a Creator Page on Facebook to post your videos and share them around the site. This will get them the most exposure.
  • Tumblr. Tumblr offers a tagging system that you can use alongside posting your videos to make sure it gets to the right people. Plus, thanks to reblogging, a video’s spread on this platform is typically viral.
  • Twitter. Tagging system inspired Tumblr’s, and you can see similar results, since both are endless feeds of content that people enjoy scrolling through.
  • Share With Your Own Friends. You can always, of course, share your videos with your own friends and family via social media, IM or whatever platform you choose. Friends and family are great among the free ways to promote YouTube videos.

YouTube SEO

  • Use Custom Thumbnails. Custom thumbnails are an extra mile, but a must for any serious YouTuber.
  • Properly Title Your Videos. You want your title to be attention-grabbing so that users know what to expect and want to watch your content.
  • Properly Describe Your Videos. Have a short two-sentence description at the start of your description. After that, you can put a more in-depth description with social media links further down. Be sure to plug a few keywords in your description, too.
  • Tag Your Videos. YouTube uses a tagging system, like many social media outlets. These are what YouTube will use for people searching for your video, so its important that you have plenty of detailed tags related to your video.
  • Like Your Own Videos. It may be vanity, but liking your own video actually starts giving it a small boost that can go a long way in the long term.
  • Polish Your Channel’s Appearance. Make sure you have top-notch channel art and an avatar/logo design.
  • Organize Your Videos Properly. Organize your content into playlists for easy browsing. Make sure your main channel page is organized using these playlists, too.
  • Create A Channel Ad. Make a video that can be used to promote your channel, then head to this page to enable the feature. If your channel ad gets accepted, this is by far one of the best free ways to promote YouTube videos, since you’ll be promoted around the site as well.

Promote With Other Platforms

  • Embed With Blog Posts. Having your videos embedded on prominent blog posts can help drive traffic to your content.
  • Promote On LinkedIn. Is the video related to your professional work? If it is, post it on LinkedIn and see if it can’t pick up any steam.
  • Post Snippets On Vine, Instagram and Snapchat. Are there any short, memorable parts of your video? Posting these on the short-video platforms may help your video get noticed and send people to watch the full content.
  • Send The Video To Relevant Clients/Platforms. Some platforms may be looking for particular sorts of videos. If you find one that’s looking for what you’re making, don’t hesitate to submit it. Working with other, bigger sites is among the ways to promote YouTube videos.

Other Creators

  • Comment On Their Videos. One of the best free ways to promote YouTube videos is to engage in the comments of other content creators. This is a subtle way of encouraging people to check you out.
  • Make Responses To Other Videos. Did a YouTuber make an opinion video open to responses? Feel free to make your own video responding to theirs. If many people agree/disagree with you, you’ll likely get some traffic in the debate!
  • Contact Them For Collaborations/Shoutouts. Last but not least, directly contacting other content creators for collaborations and shoutouts is a great way to promote your channel. More on that in a moment.
The last point of advice in our list is particularly relevant to us. Here at Grin, we run an a Grin Platform that is driven by creators, for creators, to allow them to work with each other and provide one another the services they need. Check those out if you want to utilize power in numbers. Additionally, you can keep reading our blog for more informative posts like this one.