How To Promote Your Videos

When I first started on YouTube, I posted on several sailing Facebook groups. At first, I posted across all of them at one time, then I posted on different groups on different days, and then I just stopped posting on Facebook altogether. In fact, I stopped promoting my videos altogether. It’s only with this new channel that I have re-started promoting my videos, but way more strategically.

Technically, you don’t need to promote your channel at all for it to be successful. If a small group of people click on your videos and watch them all the way through, then your channel should organically grow over time. But for a lot of us, we want to grow faster, so that’s where promotion of your videos comes in.

Most of the strategies I will talk about below should be used early on in your journey and will be much less effective as you grow. Once you’re bigger, the algorithm will do most of the work. If you’ve been going for a while and the algorithm isn’t kicking in, promoting your videos will not help. It’s your video quality that’s the issue, and you need to go back to the basics, such as pacing, filming, and editing.

Mindset Matters

A lot of people feel uncomfortable about promotion or advertising. The word “marketing” feels slimy. I know I felt that way. And then I attended a marketing workshop with Marie Forleo where she completely reframed it for me.

“It’s selfish not to market your content.”

If your videos are truly adding value to someone, don’t you owe it to them to make your work as accessible and easy to find as possible? Marie had a guy at a conference say, “If my product is good, then people should just be able to find me?” She responded, “Isn’t that selfish? You want people’s money AND you want them to have to search for your content/product/etc.”

To promote is to serve your audience. It’s about making it easy for those who can benefit from your content and making it all about them. A SERVICE MINDSET is how you grow a thriving business.

In that regard, keep in mind this easy formula for how often you should promote:

• entertain, educate, inform (80%),
• sell (20%).

Create a Community

When you promote your channel, try to think beyond the views. There’s a popular article in The Technium which talks about how you only need 1,000 true followers to be financially sustainable as an influencer. In Sara McCorquodale’s book Influence, her data also shows that the biggest audiences often don’t have the influence to convince their audience to buy products. In fact, often times, smaller audiences are more profitable.

You want to aim for a committed audience that is aligned with your goals, not high views. You can see if they are committed by how many of them are returning, how many are commenting, how much watch time you have. And of course, use all the strategies to build a community that I mentioned in the last newsletter.

A rule of thumb: your topic idea is what will bring your audience in. It’s your community that will keep them there.

Pick One Platform

A few months ago, I did an interview with social media guru, Marissa from Sailing Avocet where we talked all things channel promotion. When I asked her, “Which social media platforms should you be on?” she replied, “All of them!” However, when pried, she retracted her responses and said that if you are a beginner or have limited time, PICK ONE. This same advice is repeated by Jay Clouse of Creator Science.

The premise of each social media platform is pretty much the same: niche down and provide value. But the RULES are different, and if you spread yourself too thin, then you can’t master the rules. You’ll just be floundering and creating a bad reputation for yourself on the platforms you’re not performing well on.

Part of what makes some channels successful is their ratio of posts to subscribers. So if you end up with too many posts and not a lot of subscribers, this signals to a new audience that your content isn’t valuable. It’s one of the reasons I don’t encourage newbies to use shorts on YouTube early on: you’re not going to have time to master two video types AND it makes your video count high.

There’s a better way: master one platform (YouTube) and then leverage that knowledge and exchange viewers with someone on the platform you want to expand into. They get your knowledge and access to your audience, and you get their knowledge and access to their audience. You’ll see this come up again and again: collaborations are the most effective way to grow (hence the community I am building).

Social Media Groups

Posting on Facebook, Reddit, and other social media groups can be an effective way to grow. It can also be really annoying for users and moderators. I know, I moderate the Sailing For Beginners FB group. Here are some rules to follow if you want to keep on good terms and have your posts be well received:

• Find niche groups with a few thousand members, rather than big groups.
• Don’t have self-promotion be your first contribution. In fact, you should be contributing in many other ways to the group before ever posting your content.
• Ask permission. When I first posted my podcast to the Adventure YouTubers Australia group on Facebook, I told them the value I thought my podcast could add and asked if it would be okay to post it and asked how often. I did not post my link. I got a quick response that yes, I could post, but try to not post more than once a month.
• Don’t post to similar group types on the same day. Spread it out.
• Be clear about how your content is adding value to the group.
• Keep an eye out for opportunities to post your videos as a response to someone else’s post, but only if it is relevant & useful. For example, I saw in an Adventure group that someone was asking about YouTube courses, so I posted a link to my interview with Sailing Ripple Effect about their thoughts on two popular courses they took. This comment was well received in the group because it was actually relevant and helpful.

Website

I wholeheartedly believe you shouldn’t make a website until you have conviction on your future product or focus. Some people say that create your website early so Google can start categorising it and building up authority. The problems with that are:

• It’s one more place stealing your time away from mastering YouTube;
• If you don’t have conviction, you may end up changing your website focus and google will have to recategorize it anyway; and
• You’ll have to rebuild authority.

My biggest takeaway from previous businesses I’ve started it to find CLARITY and FOCUS. Until you have consistent growth on YouTube, until you have 20-50% of your subscribers consistently watching your videos, until you have a process in place that supports that growth, don’t start a website. Until you know exactly what value your audience gets from your channel, until you know what product, service, or feeling your audience is purchasing, until you truly have clarity and focus, don’t start a website.

Newsletter

In the creator economy, there’s a distinction between discovery platforms versus relationship platforms. Any platform where an algorithm decides if you audience views your content is considered a discovery platform (YouTube, Instagram) and platforms where you always have access to them is considered a relationship building platform (email lists, newsletters). Get a relationship platform going as soon as possible.

Similar to a website though: only as soon as you have conviction on a product and focus. When I say conviction, do you understand? I mean you have to be all in, committed, excited, but not just for a few days. It has to be something that you will feel committed to YEARS down the line. Something you TRULY believe in!

The problem with starting a newsletter any sooner is that you end up building a close relationship with a bunch of people who may have no interest in the topic/product you end up later having conviction on. Maybe now you start out talking about getting into your adventure, boat life, vanlife, etc, but as you niche down, you realise cooking on the move is your focus. Well damn: now your open rate goes from 70% to 10%, and no one wants to sponsor you because your stats look bad.

Hold up on a newsletter until you have clarity and focus.

Paid Ads

There’s a theme here: assess the quality of your content and your conviction about your product before investing in paid ads. Do you really want to be dumping money into building an audience that might not be profitable later?

That said, ads can work. According to Marissa and the creator community I am in, this is an area where it is worth hiring a professional, especially if you are doing ads on Facebook. If you have a compelling product, proven conversion to paid customers on whatever you’re advertising, then you should see returns on your investment immediately.

Articles

Articles is definitely an area that is worth your time and one which I have had a lot of luck in. For one, if you are a good writer, you can bring in some cash this way too. I used to write articles all the time, and I’d get around $500 a pop and bring in a few hundred followers.

The key here is to contact small or local publications that are aligned with your audience. When you pitch them, have the story outline ready, or even a draft article. Also be prepared with some high quality photos that are relevant to the article.

The key to success here is to make sure that whatever topic you write about is relevant to your focus so that it brings in the right audience.

Backlinking

Backlinking is when other media sites to point towards your channel or a specific video. One way I have done this is through a collaborative exchange with another channel. I promote them and they promote me. You can do this will all sorts of mediums though, not just video. You share my newsletter, I’ll share yours. You link to my website, I’ll link to yours.

Backlinking is a great way to build authority within Google Search.

Collaborations

A lot of the strategies above mentioned collaborations, which is THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO GROW. Every big creator says this. Collaborate collaborate collaborate. It’s one of the reasons there is an entire space for exchanging collaborations in my community.

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A good collaboration starts with a long-term relationship and honestly wanting to help someone else grow. You don’t have to be in the same city or even continent. A good majority of the people I support live on the other side of the world. Something as simple as promising to always comment on each other’s posts can have a big impact. My biggest advice in this regard, and the same advice that I once got: If you want to up your game, join a community of creators that are taking their growth seriously. I know I know. I’m obviously offering a community so it sounds like a bunch of self-promo, but it’s also something I wholeheartedly believe in. I’ve been told this in every course/workshop/mastermind/etc in which I’ve participated.

Where would I focus?

If I were to start over, this is how I would prioritise my growth.

• Master one platform & then leverage that growth;
• Build long term relationships with other creators;
• Post strategically in social media groups;
• Start a newsletter as soon as I have conviction.