A lot of good basic advice has been given already. Once you have implemented this advice, there are additional steps you need to consider in order to maximize your potential to gain a larger audience.
I have a saying.
"A diamond is still a diamond, even if it is buried and nobody can find it."
The sad truth is, it is not always the best quality video with the best SEO that gets the most attention. It should be, but it is not. The truth is, it is the video with the best PROMOTION that wins. Have you ever heard of a boy's band music group named "NSYNC"? Well, one thing that not everyone knows about them is that they were formed as a result of a bet. A producer/promoter named, Louis Jay Pearlman, made a bet with a friend that he could create a famous boy's band out of a random group of strangers with okay singing abilities, using nothing but his skill as a promoter. And he did exactly that. And, it was not the first time this has been done, where regular people with not that great of talent, become famous as a result of great promotion. Take the show, "Duck Dynasty" for another example. They had their own show called the Duck Commander for a long time before Duck Dynasty came along. But have you ever heard of or watched Duck Commander? Nope! It was Willie's wife Kori, who had connections with a producer in the A&E network that got them on the map. Another example is Meat Eater with Steve Renella. Steve was just a regular guy that loved to hunt. It was a friend of his who was a professional producer and promoter that came up with the show and got him on the map. If it was not for his friend, Steve would still be completely unknown to the world.
So what am I saying? I am saying that there is a ton of "View Worthy" content in the world that you may never see or hear about because it is buried under bad content with better promotion. Creating View Worthy content and doing good SEO is only going to get you so far. Here are a couple of reasons why, those things alone, are not the full package of what it takes to gain more audience.
1. There is more competition for viewers than ever before. The number of online content creators has exploded as a result of Covid and the lockdowns. Even many Hollywood stars are now creating online content because the movie industry was almost completely shut down for about a year. This means you are now competing with trained professional actors, Hollywood-level studio productions and their professional promotions experts.
2. A lot more people are using TubeBuddy or similar tools. Great SEO is great, but if everyone has great SEO because they are using the same tools like TubeBudy, then the scales become balanced once again and nobody has the edge anymore.
So, once you have View Worthy content and you have done the best SEO you can, and are still not getting the exposure you desire, what is the next step? Here are three ideas to go beyond Content and SEO.
1. The Personal Network. If you have kids in school or know people that have kids in school, what are you going to face at least a few times a year? School Fund Raisers! Your kids, or your family, or friends kids, are gonna hit you up to buy some sort of product to "Support Their School." This is the oldest type of marketing and promotion in the book, and it is HIGHLY effective. Asking your friends and family to promote your content is one of the easiest and fastest ways to grow an audience. No one is going to support you as much as your own Personal Network.
2. Organic Self-Promotion. Due to irresponsible YouTubers with no self-control, or respect for others, abusing every social media platform spam posting links to promote their channel, people posting links to their YT videos has become a very TABOO thing to do. Even on this very forum (that is made up of only people trying to promote their YouTube channel} nothing will get you banned faster than spamming the boards with links to your videos. This has made it very hard to respectfully self-promote. You can self-promote anything else and people are okay with it, but if you dare post a link to your YT video or channel and it is "OFF WITH THEIR HEAD!", even by other YouTubers. So, the only way to self-promote these days is Organically. This means that, you posting a link to your videos, must appear completely natural within the context of the conversation. Here is a good example. I participate in several Facebook groups about different topics that I produce videos about. I keep active on these groups just about every day, so people know me and are familiar with me. Every now and then, opportunities will arise where me offering a link to one of my videos just fits like a glove within the context of the conversation. For example, today, a person asked a question on an air gun group about hunting coyotes with a certain caliber of air rifle. They wanted to know if the caliber was big enough to use for coyote hunting. I have a video of me taking a coyote with a very small air rifle in an almost impossible shot. This video is quite popular around the web and has even landed in media articles and blogs. This post by the other FB group member was a perfectly organic place to post this video. The person was asking a question about coyote hunting with an air rifle and what caliber it could be done with, and the video answered that question. This is Organic Self-promotion. It takes a lot of work because you have to stay active all over the place on a lot of forums, but it is very effective if you can control yourself and only use it in a limited and helpful context.
3. Paid Promotion: Up until now, I have talked about methods of FREE promotion. For people with more time than money, this is what we have to do. But, there always exists the opportunity for paid promotion where you pay money to promote your product. Google Ads and Facebook ads work and if you have a product that you want to promote and get it out there right now, paying these platforms to promote your product is a very effective way to grow your audience quickly. You are essentially buying fame, but if you have the money to spend......... Just to be clear, I am not talking about buying views and subs from phone farms, as that is against the YT ToS. I am talking about paying for legitimate ads to promote your channel. There are various forms that this paid promotion that could take. You could pay a popular YouTuber to give you a shoutout in a video for example. I did this for a leather crafter who made me a custom pistol holster and he has received tons of traffic orders from that video. He did not pay me and I did it of my own volition during the covid lockdown to help him survive, but the point is, this is one form of paid promotion that could be an option.
I hope these ideas help.
I have a saying.
"A diamond is still a diamond, even if it is buried and nobody can find it."
The sad truth is, it is not always the best quality video with the best SEO that gets the most attention. It should be, but it is not. The truth is, it is the video with the best PROMOTION that wins. Have you ever heard of a boy's band music group named "NSYNC"? Well, one thing that not everyone knows about them is that they were formed as a result of a bet. A producer/promoter named, Louis Jay Pearlman, made a bet with a friend that he could create a famous boy's band out of a random group of strangers with okay singing abilities, using nothing but his skill as a promoter. And he did exactly that. And, it was not the first time this has been done, where regular people with not that great of talent, become famous as a result of great promotion. Take the show, "Duck Dynasty" for another example. They had their own show called the Duck Commander for a long time before Duck Dynasty came along. But have you ever heard of or watched Duck Commander? Nope! It was Willie's wife Kori, who had connections with a producer in the A&E network that got them on the map. Another example is Meat Eater with Steve Renella. Steve was just a regular guy that loved to hunt. It was a friend of his who was a professional producer and promoter that came up with the show and got him on the map. If it was not for his friend, Steve would still be completely unknown to the world.
So what am I saying? I am saying that there is a ton of "View Worthy" content in the world that you may never see or hear about because it is buried under bad content with better promotion. Creating View Worthy content and doing good SEO is only going to get you so far. Here are a couple of reasons why, those things alone, are not the full package of what it takes to gain more audience.
1. There is more competition for viewers than ever before. The number of online content creators has exploded as a result of Covid and the lockdowns. Even many Hollywood stars are now creating online content because the movie industry was almost completely shut down for about a year. This means you are now competing with trained professional actors, Hollywood-level studio productions and their professional promotions experts.
2. A lot more people are using TubeBuddy or similar tools. Great SEO is great, but if everyone has great SEO because they are using the same tools like TubeBudy, then the scales become balanced once again and nobody has the edge anymore.
So, once you have View Worthy content and you have done the best SEO you can, and are still not getting the exposure you desire, what is the next step? Here are three ideas to go beyond Content and SEO.
1. The Personal Network. If you have kids in school or know people that have kids in school, what are you going to face at least a few times a year? School Fund Raisers! Your kids, or your family, or friends kids, are gonna hit you up to buy some sort of product to "Support Their School." This is the oldest type of marketing and promotion in the book, and it is HIGHLY effective. Asking your friends and family to promote your content is one of the easiest and fastest ways to grow an audience. No one is going to support you as much as your own Personal Network.
2. Organic Self-Promotion. Due to irresponsible YouTubers with no self-control, or respect for others, abusing every social media platform spam posting links to promote their channel, people posting links to their YT videos has become a very TABOO thing to do. Even on this very forum (that is made up of only people trying to promote their YouTube channel} nothing will get you banned faster than spamming the boards with links to your videos. This has made it very hard to respectfully self-promote. You can self-promote anything else and people are okay with it, but if you dare post a link to your YT video or channel and it is "OFF WITH THEIR HEAD!", even by other YouTubers. So, the only way to self-promote these days is Organically. This means that, you posting a link to your videos, must appear completely natural within the context of the conversation. Here is a good example. I participate in several Facebook groups about different topics that I produce videos about. I keep active on these groups just about every day, so people know me and are familiar with me. Every now and then, opportunities will arise where me offering a link to one of my videos just fits like a glove within the context of the conversation. For example, today, a person asked a question on an air gun group about hunting coyotes with a certain caliber of air rifle. They wanted to know if the caliber was big enough to use for coyote hunting. I have a video of me taking a coyote with a very small air rifle in an almost impossible shot. This video is quite popular around the web and has even landed in media articles and blogs. This post by the other FB group member was a perfectly organic place to post this video. The person was asking a question about coyote hunting with an air rifle and what caliber it could be done with, and the video answered that question. This is Organic Self-promotion. It takes a lot of work because you have to stay active all over the place on a lot of forums, but it is very effective if you can control yourself and only use it in a limited and helpful context.
3. Paid Promotion: Up until now, I have talked about methods of FREE promotion. For people with more time than money, this is what we have to do. But, there always exists the opportunity for paid promotion where you pay money to promote your product. Google Ads and Facebook ads work and if you have a product that you want to promote and get it out there right now, paying these platforms to promote your product is a very effective way to grow your audience quickly. You are essentially buying fame, but if you have the money to spend......... Just to be clear, I am not talking about buying views and subs from phone farms, as that is against the YT ToS. I am talking about paying for legitimate ads to promote your channel. There are various forms that this paid promotion that could take. You could pay a popular YouTuber to give you a shoutout in a video for example. I did this for a leather crafter who made me a custom pistol holster and he has received tons of traffic orders from that video. He did not pay me and I did it of my own volition during the covid lockdown to help him survive, but the point is, this is one form of paid promotion that could be an option.
I hope these ideas help.
Last edited:
