I am super excited to have Meredith Marsh on the podcast with me this week to help us figure out how to get YouTube views. Meredith is a Youtube expert and you guys know I have been focusing heavily on video in my own business for several months now. I can’t wait to hear everything Meredith will share with us today. Be sure to listen to the entire episode to get all the great tips she shares, especially what she says about using tags.
IE 78: How to Get YouTube Views with Meredith Marsh
Meredith’s home base is at VidProMom where she helps people figure out video. She offers tutorials for video editing, creating hobby videos and family videos, as well as helping bloggers learn how to use Youtube to grow their blogs. Be sure to check out her podcast, Video Pursuit Podcast, for even more tips.
I have to admit right up front that Youtube and I are not besties. Not by a long shot. I don’t feel comfortable with it and I don’t know how to best leverage it for my business. I used to feel that way about Instagram and now I adore that platform so I hope you’ll jump in with me and let Meredith teach us how to take Youtube by the horns and use it to grow our businesses. Let’s start where we always start…with the why.
Why Youtube as a blogger?
It sounds cliche to say it, but video is the big thing right now. It’s big everywhere; on Facebook, on Instagram, on Youtube, and it has even invaded Pinterest. To say that video is important would be an understatement.
As huge as video is, you need to have your videos hosted where the most people can see it. Youtube is owned by Google, so when you have video content on Youtube, you have the best shot at getting it seen in search results.
Youtube is not a social media network; it’s a platform. And it works great with blogs because you can share the same material but in a completely different way and still have it show up when people are searching for content.
“Not everybody reads so if you only publish written content, you’re leaving a lot of potential audience on the table…some people go straight to Youtube when they have a problem and need a solution.”
Brands are also becoming more interested in having video content as part of sponsored campaigns and if you can show that you already have a Youtube audience, you are that much further ahead for pitching them and winning campaigns.
Using Youtube to Build Your List
We all know the importance of building our email lists. I use live video to help build my list because I can link to my lead magnets in the video description.
While Meredith does push her lead magnets on her Youtube channel, it isn’t a constant thing. Youtube wants its audience to remain on the platform so if you are constantly trying to redirect people to your blog, the Youtube algorithms may not work in your favor. The better thing to do is redirect your audience to more videos so that they stay on the platform as long as possible.
The people who go to Youtube are an entirely different audience than the people in your Facebook group or following you on IG. The purpose of growing an audience on Youtube is to further establish yourself as an expert in your niche. The point isn’t to drive traffic to your blog or to your lead magnet but to build an audience so that brands can see that you have that audience and that your audience comes to you for solutions to their specific problems.
How to Get YouTube Views
If you’re trying to build an audience on Youtube, you want to get YouTube views that build engagement. The more you get seen, the more your audience will know to look for you and the more your videos will come up in search.
In order to get YouTube views it is simple but not necessarily easy. You have to do your research just like with anything you do. Think about blogging: you find keywords and you write about topics that are within your niche and that people want to know about. It’s the same with Youtube.
You need to create content that you already know people are searching for and you want to choose content that doesn’t already have a lot of competition.
When Meredith first began to get Youtube views, she did a series on editing GoPro videos. There were other videos on Youtube for this topic but there were none as a step-by-step series, there were none done by a mom or done by a woman at all, and there were none focusing on creating family/hobby videos.
Meredith saw the gap and she chose to fill it. Find your gap. Niche down until you find a topic that people are searching for but there isn’t enough, or the right kind, of information to provide solutions for the people searching for it. Even if there are a million videos on your topic, look at some of them to see how old they are, how accurate they are, and whether they address a specific crowd or a specific piece of the puzzle. If not, you’ve found your spot.
Keywords, Links, and Tags to get YouTube Views
If you’ve been blogging for a while, you know how important SEO is to your blog traffic. If you want to get found in Google, you have to be doing keyword research. The same is true for Youtube. We already mentioned that it is owned by Google so the same rules for SEO apply to Youtube as do to Google.
Your title is the most important part of the SEO for your videos. Whatever search term or keyword you are wanting to be found in search for should be the first words in your title. After the title, give your “hook”. The hook is what you use to get people to click on your video.
Moving on to the description, you can put a ton of words in there and you can include affiliate links as well. The thing to remember is that Google will take the first paragraph, just like with your blog posts, and that will show up in the search results. That first paragraph should be keyword rich and should entice people to click.
Tags can be confusing for a lot of people. Let’s think of them like this- they don’t necessarily help your rank; they help Youtube connect your video with other videos like it. This can help your videos show up as a recommended video for someone who is watching something on the same topic as one of your videos.
How Consistent Do You Need to Be to Get YouTube Views?
When it comes to blogging and all of the social media platforms, you have to be consistent in order to grow. Youtube is the same. Consistency is key for growing your Youtube audience.
When you’re just getting started, Meredith suggests pushing out some very valuable content and see what happens before you decide to be the most prolific Youtuber out there. If you are thinking about starting a Youtube channel, Meredith offers a free training to help you walk through the steps of figuring out what kind of videos might work for you and how to get started.
Take a few weeks to see if you actually enjoy the process of creating the videos. Watch to see how many views your videos get. When you’re starting with zero subscribers and you get views, those views are coming from search results or recommended videos unless you’re sharing with your audience and they’re all coming over and subscribing when they get there.
You’ve Got a Leg Up as a Blogger to Get YouTube Views!
If you are a blogger, you have a leg up on Youtube before you even start. Why?
- You already have content. If you’ve written a blog post on a topic, you have already done the research necessary for SEO purposes. You’ve already thought through the content and while you can’t just read your post for the video, you have the content created so you aren’t starting from scratch.
- You already know what works. You can tell by looking at your Google analytics what is working with your audience. You know what Google thinks you are known for. Go into those top-performing posts or pages and create videos on those topics.
- You already have an audience. If you have blog traffic, social media followers, or email subscribers to your blog, you’ve got an audience. Ask them what they want! Poll your audience and ask them what types of videos they would like to see. Create that video and push it out to them wherever they are and hopefully they will come over and subscribe to your channel.
If you’re struggling to figure out video and how to use it to your best advantage, be sure to grab Meredith’s free training. As a blogger, you have everything you need to get started on Youtube so don’t wait any longer to get the training you need to grow your audience. I want to close this post with a profound quote from Meredith-
“You can create lots of amazing content that never gets seen by anybody simply because you didn’t title it the right way. If you had done just a little bit of research ahead of time…your goal should be to be a search result. You want to be the answer.”
