A Beginner’s Guide: How Video Creators Reach a Larger Audience

You’ve posted your first video to YouTube and now you sit back and wait for the views to roll in. Right? Unfortunately, it’s not that easy to reach your audience and you’ll need to put in a little extra effort to give your video the boost it deserves. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways that you can get more eyes on your video that don’t require a ton of time, such as:

1. Branding your YouTube channel
2. Promoting your videos off of YouTube
3. Building videos around a keyword
4. Optimizing your videos
5. Partnering with other creators
    

In our Beginner’s Guide, we’ll explore each of these in a little more detail.
 

Branding Your YouTube Channel
Don’t just stick with the default settings - you can use your YouTube channel page to showcase your personality and what viewers can expect from your videos. Start by creating a custom banner (you don’t need epic design skills to do this - there are plenty of sites, like Canva, that offer templates specifically for YouTube banners) and adding a profile image. Optimize your channel page by filling out your “About” section with as much detail as you can, and be sure to make use of relevant hashtags so viewers can find you.

Using a .tube domain name is a great way to shorten your YouTube URL to something easy-to-remember and easy-to-promote. A .tube domain provides an unprecedent opportunity to brand yourself and makes it easy for people to find your videos on the internet, search for your perfect .tube domain today.

Promoting Your Videos Off of YouTube
While YouTube is one of the world’s most popular websites, you can reach an even bigger audience by showcasing your videos on other sites, too. While it’s tempting to simply share a link to your YouTube video and be done with it, you’ll get more traffic to your videos if you share teasers instead. These are short, bite-sized snippets of your video that are meant to entice viewers to click through to your channel to watch the whole thing. 

You’ll also want to create a website if you haven’t already done so. You can either embed your YouTube videos in strategic places on your site, like your About page, or you can use the site as an extension of your YouTube channel itself, like Dynadot customer how2.tube did. Their site functions as a searchable database of how-to videos that are sourced directly from YouTube.
 

Building Videos Around a Keyword
To really focus on a target audience, build each video you create around a specific keyword or theme. Search engine optimization (SEO) might not seem like something that you need to worry about for a platform like YouTube, but it does, in fact, function just like a search engine. Viewers type in specific keywords hoping to find the video they need (how many times have you used YouTube to find instructions on how to cook a specific vegetable, or how to ride a horse, or...well, anything, really?). Create your videos with this in mind to ensure viewers will actually find you.
 

Optimizing Your Videos
To reach the widest audience possible, you’ll want to make use of some of YouTube’s built-in tools to optimize your video content.  First and foremost, turn on the captioning feature so those who are deaf or hard of hearing will be able to consume the content you are putting out - you can either allow the YouTube algorithm to auto-generate captions for you (note that it won’t always be 100% accurate) or, better yet, you can upload your own captions. Next, make use of the thumbnail feature so you can give viewers an idea of what your video is about before they even click on it. Finally, be sure to optimize the description of each video to include a Call-to-Action (CTA) to give your viewers instructions on what you want them to do after watching the video, such as subscribing to your channel.
 

Partnering with Other Creators
A cross-over is a great way to reach an audience that you might not have had access to before. What other video creators or influencers are there that you admire and would like to work with? What can you offer their audience - and what can they offer yours? Don’t be afraid to reach out to other video content creators with a pitch on how you can collaborate together and grow both of your audiences. Your collaboration can be a guest video on each other’s channels or you could interview them and host it on your channel, encouraging their audience to give you a chance, too.
 

Build your own brand
To reach a larger audience you could even set up your own website, it’s easy to do on our website builder, just click and drag and you’re on your way to creating the perfect website. Find out more about it here. On your own website you could incorporate your vlogs, blogs, behind the scenes content and you could even sell personalized swag and have links out to your social media handles.

To keep your brand looking professional and cohesive you can (and should) use a custom email that matches your .tube domain. No longer do you have to use a boring gmail or yahoo email, with a .tube web address you can make your YouTube channel, personal branded email and website with one seamless brand. Check out the range of offers here.

No matter how many subscribers you have right now, there is always room for growth. Try one or all of our tips and you’ll be on your way to building a YouTube channel that you can really be proud of.