Need More Time? Read These Tips to Boost YouTube Views

Love it or hate it, but there is no denying that YouTube is the world’s second most popular search engine after Google. YouTube caters to all types of audience with its vast collection of videos featuring cooking shows, entertainment videos, music tracks and video tutorials in the language of your choice. The more views a video gets on YouTube, the more popular it is. There is no point in spending time and money on a YouTube video if no will get to see it, is there? Similarly there is no secret recipe for making a YouTube video go ‘viral’ overnight. However, there are a few carefully thought out moves which can boost YouTube views for your videos:

1. Promote:

Be vocal, be social, be a nuisance and tell everyone about your new video. Ask them to check it out. Email all the people in your contact list whenever you put up a new video and add a link to the video in it as well. Everyone has busy lives and we normally forget to cater to small requests our friends make. So be persistent and remind people to watch your video if they forget. Also don’t be afraid to invest a little money to get your video a top spot on YouTube’s featured videos.

2. Use Social Media:

Put your video up on all the social media sites you use. Tag people on Facebook, praise it on twitter. Share it with relevant groups on Linked-in. Keep updating the video and make sure you comment on it so it shows up in people’s newsfeeds and they check it out.

3. Blogging:

Are you a blogger? If yes, then simply write a blog post and embed your video in it. If not, then it’s a good idea to start one! Maintain a blog, embed your videos in it. Put in carefully selected keywords. This is also great for SEO purposes and if done correctly, your video can end up being one of the top results on Google as well as YouTube! Another thing to do is be a guest blogger and embed your video in a post, in the comment section and on forums.

How important is this? Very! Annotations are instrumental in boosting YouTube views. But take care that they should be helpful and not overwhelming or annoying for the viewer. Place them where they would get the most attention without hindering the viewer’s vision. It is a good idea to have them in the beginning, middle and end of the video on the corners of the screen. Let them be big enough to be clearly read but not too large. Make sure the font is readable and the notification vanishes after displaying for a few seconds.

5. Titles and Keywords:

What are the key words people would be using to search for your video? Brainstorm and use those! Also never underestimate the importance of a snappy title. For example does a video named Mov000345.mp4 have more appeal or a video titled Easy Sketch up Tutorial- Learn Interior rendering in 5 minutes! capture immediate interest? It obviously has to be the video with the keywords which are most easily comprehensible to the user. You are not doing yourself any favours with titles like ‘Test Video’ or ‘My First Video’. Those names might have some sentimental significance to yourself but none what-so-ever to the other 1 billion viewers which YouTube has. So take the time to choose the correct keyword phrase which YouTube users actually search for.

6. Watching Entire Videos:

You Tube has a rating system based on how long the video has been viewed. So make sure to watch the whole video and ask other people you know to view the entire video as well. It would be a good idea to mention that in the description. Which brings us to the next point.

7. Video Descriptions!

Every YouTube video has a video description box. Leaving that box blank is not an option if you aim to boost YouTube views. The correct way to add a video description is to take care of three basic parts:

1. At the start, put a carefully selected keyword phrase.

2. Then add the URL of your video

3. A short description of the contents of the video

8. Social Bookmarking Sites:

Social book marking websites like StumbleUpon and Pinterest work wonders in increasing the number of YouTube Views for a given video. In fact it would be a great idea to add the entire YouTube channel to social bookmarking sites so that not just one but all of your videos get higher views.

9. Snazzy Thumbnails:

Use thumbnails that make the video pop. Don’t settle for the default templates which are provided. The combination of a well matched picture and text has the potential to attract viewers who are online to watch other videos and make them stop in their tracks, select your video over the competition and boost YouTube views.

10. Momentum:
Try and make sure that in the earlier stages your video is viewed and embedded a lot. YouTube favours those videos which get a large number of views in a short window of time.

11. Video Time and Content

Statistics shows that with instructional videos, viewers prefer play times which are lesser than 5 minutes; whereas with narrative videos or other entertainment videos, longer viewer time is preferred. We live in fast paced times and everyone wants the shortest solution to every issue they might face. For instance if a cooking video is to be made, it would be preferable to keep the narrative lively, engaging and humorous. The instructions should be clear, step by step and to the point. The opening or closing credits should be minimal as YouTube views are known to diminish dramatically during those.