Whether you are running your personal or company’s brand, you should be using YouTube for marketing purposes. Nowadays, visual content marketing is everything! People prefer watching videos better than reading long texts as videos are more entertaining.
Unfortunately, creating and uploading a video on YouTube is not enough. You need to do go “extra mile” in order to get more views and as much engagement as possible. Engagement directly correlates with your video’s ranking position. YouTube’s ranking algorithm prefers videos that get users to engage. The more engagement your video gets, the higher it will be placed in YouTube search rankings. Consequently, you will get more views.
Actually, increasing YouTube video engagement is simple, you just need to know a few tricks. So, here are 5 tips on how you can get more engagement on your YouTube videos!
1. Use a Call-to-action
YouTube video comments and likes are most significant metrics which are used in measuring engagement level. To get more engagement, you need to know the most important rule – it all starts with you. It is your obligation to start interacting with your audience.
If you want something, you need to ask for it. Same with engagement, you need to ask your audience to take particular action. So, start from asking them to like or comment on your video.
In marketing, asking to take particular action is called call-to-action (CTA). It’s those phrases like “Buy now”, “Click here”, “Learn more”.
Most YouTubers include call-to-action in the first or last seconds of their video and ask viewers to like, comment and share the video.
You can use call-to-action feature either by writing a text on your video or just simply adding a few extra lines to your script. For example, you can include “Like this video if you haven’t already” after the intro of your video. This one sentence will increase your video engagement rate by at least 2x.
Also, consider using annotations on your YouTube videos. Annotation is that text bubble which can be included over your video anywhere in the screen. For example, you can add annotation at the end of your video stating “If you would like more videos like this, press Thumbs up button!”.
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2. Consistency
You should post videos as consistent as possible. You probably heard saying that “Content quality is king”. Well, if that’s true then consistency is queen! Without consistency you will not go too far. People expect to see new content on your channel regularly, so you need to provide just that. You need to provide consistent source of information for your viewers.
Once your audience gets used to your posting frequency, they will be coming back for more and will be more engaged with your content. So, post regularly and consistently, and try to upload only fresh, high quality and valuable content.
Also, YouTube’s algorithm tracks your video uploading schedule. More consistent you are, more viewers and engagement you’ll get. To be favored by YouTube’s algorithm, you need to build your track record, only then your channel will get boosted up in rankings.
3. Custom thumbnails
When you start uploading your video on YouTube, it automatically suggests 3 automatically generated thumbnails to choose from. But you shouldn’t choose any of those!
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Social media marketing research suggests that using thumbnails that stand out can increase clicks in search results by 154%! So that you know – those automatically generated thumbnails do not stand out in any way.
Note that 90% of the best performing videos on YouTube have custom thumbnails. That should tell you something about thumbnails, right? Better don’t be lazy and give it a try. Try to do your best customizing video thumbnail and making it more attractive.
4. Engage
As I have said earlier, engagement starts from you. You need to take action first! To increase engagement, you need to inspire your audience to engage with you.
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You can start doing it just by appreciating your viewers current actions. For example, if your viewer left a comment under your video, respond to that comment. If someone replied to your comment, like his comment! If your audience know that they will get response from you, then they will be more willing to leave their comments and engage with in general.
Understand one simple thing, viewer that left a comment or liked your video didn’t have to necessary do it, but he still did it. He took action that he was not required to take. Appreciate his actions and reply to him, don’t leave him hanging. It doesn’t cost you anything!
5. Keep your videos short
Likes and comments are one of the most significant video engagement metrics. But you shouldn’t forget about video retention metric, which is constantly tracked by YouTube’s algorithm. The better video retention, the stronger your video appears to YouTube’s algorithm. Consequently, video gets better rankings.
Percentage of your video viewed (retention rate) is more significant than total minutes of video viewed.
Social marketing researches state, that shorter videos tend to get better viewer retention rates. It’s considered best practice to keep your videos under 3 minutes. That’s a golden spot to get the best retention and much of watch-time.
Also, if you see that you can explain your topic within 2 minutes, don’t stretch it to 3 minutes. You don’t want your viewer to be bored, as he would just click away from your video. Keep your viewer entertained for every second of your video. As I mentioned earlier, retention rate is more important than total watch-time.
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Here were 5 tips to get more engagement on your YouTube videos. If you have any more suggestions, share them with us in the comments’ section below.
