In this article, I will mention five tips for increasing your YouTube views. Here’s how I managed to get my own channel to reach 11 million views in just 9 months by following these YouTube optimizations. Before we get started, I’ll give you a quick guide on how YouTube views come first.
When you’re done reading, you will have a good understanding of the YouTube algorithm and how to tweak your content to match it.
Basics of YouTube Algorithm
There may be hundreds, if not thousands, of factors that help increase your YouTube video views, but there are two that are far more important than any other in 2019. These are click through rate and average audience retention rate.
CTR is the percentage of people who click on your video when they see it on their screen. Average audience retention rate is the percentage of videos that your audience watches over all viewing sessions.
If you can improve these values, your videos will be more recommended. This means more impressions, more clicks, and more views.
Make a Good Thumbnail
The YouTube thumbnail is what gets the most attention and gets the most clicks. So how do you create an eye-catching sketch? First, choose to include text. Your text should take up two thirds of the image and engage your audience with relevant buzzwords.
Don’t use clickbait because people will simply leave your video and it will hurt audience retention. More on that in a minute. Instead, choose a topic that you think will grab people’s attention and include it in your text.
Let’s say you want to give advice on golf. Here’s a good example for this. So to summarize this image, we did a number of things.
- Choose a bright background color (blue or green works best).
- Choose a contrasting color for text
- Use two thirds for text, one third for facial expressions or topic context.
By creating these icons, you will dramatically increase your click-through rate. Increasing your CTR is great because it means that every time your video is shown, you’ll get more views.
For example, a video that gets 100,000 impressions and a 5% CTR would get 5,000 views, and a 12% CTR of 12,000, which means a huge 140% increase in views.
For more tips, first try A / B testing with each video to test different colors and backgrounds. Once you’ve picked the option that works, stick with it – viewers love the sequence.
Instantly pull people away
For your videos to be recommended to more people, the average viewing time of your audience should be as long as possible. Videos 5 to 12 minutes in length will perform better than videos less than 5 minutes in length.
However, the length of the video doesn’t matter as long as more viewers leave earlier. So we need to get people involved right away. To do this, do not deviate from the topic. Briefly present evidence of why you should be trusted, and then get down to business. Avoid meaningless intros, avoid long videos, and don’t waste time asking for likes and followers.
I learned this from my own bitter experience. Here you can see how even a 4 second intro causes 20% of my viewers to completely leave the video. I dropped the intro and kept the same 78% of the audience for another 42 seconds.
In short:
- Jump to topic as soon as possible
- Quickly explain your experience
- Tease viewers with content, then jump right to it
- Fewer commercials, intros and requests for likes.
Audience Retention Monitor
We can use the same audience retention report to find out why people are leaving our videos. To find it, click on any video in the control panel. Then click Analytics on the separate video page. After that go to the interaction tab.
Here we see the audience retention report. Remember, the better your audience is retained, the more likely you are to be recommended. We have two reports, one for a working video and the other with some potential problems. In my experience, videos with 45% retention or higher perform particularly well when compared to my other videos.
Notice how the graph above is mostly declining gradually. There are no steep drops.
Next, we have an unhealthy condition report. Audience retention is much lower. 44% is not bad yet, but there are three significant drops when viewers leave a video. We can watch these moments in the video to see what happened.
In this video, I tried to add more length by talking about a different, irrelevant topic, but my viewers refused. So my solution should be to stay tuned and not worry about 5 minutes video length. You can do the same with your videos to learn more about your mistakes.
Create More Loyal, Returning Viewers
Every viewer is a real person. Pin the comment and invite viewers to comment and share their thoughts. Interact with them, talk to them.
As you attract more real viewers, you will have a better chance of posting videos every time. Your loyal viewers will be more engaged, which will increase your audience retention and click through rate.
Find the best time to post your video
The best time to post your video is when you can post the video most consistently. Stick to what works best for you. Consistency is key to building a loyal audience that will always prepare your views.
With that said, this is usually a good time to post about your most popular region in the early evening. You can find your Top Countries report in the Audience tab of the analytics toolbar.
Summary
Thanks for reading my top five tips for increasing YouTube views. Hope these tips helped. Do you have any specific questions for me? Feel free to contact social media and I’ll be happy to help.
–