YouTube is that the second-largest program within the world after Google itself and caters to 2 billion monthly users. This makes it the second most-preferred platform for watching among 18-34-year-olds, with 70% of views determined by YouTube’s own recommendation algorithm. Sure, not everyone has the necessity to start out a YouTube channel, but the numbers are pretty compelling if you would like to urge your brand ahead of that audience.

While search priorities are often divided into two basic factors, engagement and SEO, there are tons that go into the YouTube algorithm to push videos ahead of viewers. Understanding these needs can put into place a robust strategy for your channel, and help determine what videos should be created and shared for max return.

Your audience & competition

One of the primary things for any advertising platform is to define your audience. Although YouTube is not any different during this aspect, because it’s a social platform the landscape of competition can vary.

Take for example a food brand. While they’ll be competing against other food brands during a TV commercial or magazine ad, on YouTube their videos are competing against thousands of professional cooks and at-home makers who are all vying for more viewers and subscribers. Researching and understanding every sort of competitor for your business can assist you to understand what content is already out there, and what a part of that engages your audience the simplest.

Analyzing ranking & engagement

As we mentioned earlier, ranking can really come right down to two things: engagement and SEO. YouTube wants to offer fresh, exciting content to viewers that they’ll want to observe, and employing a complex algorithm is how it’s determined. While views are that the top determination for his or her algorithm, followed by likes and subscribers, every element can play a neighborhood. Here may be a breakdown of things to consider:

Engagement

• Individual videos: While video views are the number one factor, YouTube also takes into account likes/dislikes, comments, video duration and estimated watch time.
• Full channel: Other factors include overall channel views, average views per day (channel and video), subscribers, and channel comments.

SEO/Technical

• Keywords: Research should be done to ensure the best keyword match and the amount for titles, descriptions, and tags.
• Length: Length of any copy areas, including descriptions, tags, and titles for channels and videos can also play a role in determining to rank.
• Power in numbers: The number of domain links, embedded links, channel videos, and days since publication are all accounted for in YouTube’s algorithm.

Increasing subscribers & views

While video views are the foremost important factor for YouTube, for brand spanking new players within the game other things got to stay focused to urge that viewership up.

Things like paid media, contests, website embeds, links from other social platforms, or partnerships can all help push viewers to your videos without YouTube’s algorithm helping out. Once on your channel or video, it’s good to crosslink to your other content with end cards and thumbnails; or just asking viewers to comment, like, and subscribe can increase viewership organically.

Another important aspect is to remain engaged as a brand, to actually build a community together with your viewers. Viewers and subscribers will notice if you’re always posing for comments but never giving responses reciprocally.

Here are some questions to ask to keep engagement top of mind:

• Do we have a face for these videos?
• Are we communicating with our audience/asking for feedback in comments?
• Do we ask viewers to like/subscribe?
• Are we talking about future content to get subscribers coming back?
• Have we found partnerships with other channels/influencers?
• Are we consistent with content/showing things subscribers want?

Nurturing engagement requires developing a community of loyal return visitors, meaning that strategy and questioning should be constantly reassessed. Top YouTubers don’t stay at the top without keeping attune to their audience needs, analyzing their channel and video analytics, and making changes as needed. Keeping on top of these things will help your brand presence grow on YouTube, keep subscribers engaged, and help the platform share your content with new audience members.