10 Proven Ways to Promote YouTube Videos & Channel in 2024

Whether you’re a business owner, content creator, or marketer, promotion is the ultimate solution if you want to set your mark on YouTube. 

After all, more than billions of people actively use the platform each day! And you have to take advantage of these platforms by promoting your videos.

But the question is: how to actually promote your YouTube channel and videos?

Promoting videos on YouTube isn’t as simple as it sounds. Most of you may not know the tips or tactics you’ll need for it. 

And, that’s why we’ve created a list of 10 surefire ways to promote YouTube videos. 

If you follow these ways actively, we can guarantee you’ll take your channel from zero views to millions within months!

So, what’s the wait? Let’s dig in! 

10 Ways to Promote YouTube Videos

1. Share Your Videos in The Community Tab

The YouTube community tab is one of the best places to promote both old and new YouTube videos.  

You can even pre-promote your videos with the community tab before they go live. Moreover, you can use this place to engage with your audience outside of the videos.  This way, your audience will be hyped to check out the video. 

For promoting your videos on the YouTube community tab, make sure to create a post that provides a reason or value to watch it. 

Here’s an example of how Neil Patel promotes his YouTube video using the community tab. 

Here’s a heads up: To use the feature of the community tab, you’ll need over 500 subscribers. Before October 12, 2021, YouTube unlocked the feature after 1,000 subscribers. However, to support the creator community, Youtube lowered the eligibility criteria for the Community tab. 

Best Practices to Promote YouTube Videos on Community tab:

• Polls are one of the most effective ways to create hype before posting your video. Using polls, you can ask your subscribers what they liked about your videos, what types of content they wish to see in the future, etc. 

Community polls always don’t have to be about your YouTube channel. You can use it in a more fun way to start a conversation with your subscribers on a niche related to your channel. 

• The Community tab is a great place to share the behind-the-scenes content of your video. Also, you can share a picture about your real-life to give your subscribers a sneak-peak into your life. 

Sharing informal posts, BTS content will help you share the real side of your life. And this way, more people will relate to your videos.

• Engage with your audience by sharing GIFs or a video clip to promote your video. 

• Encourage more people to follow your channel and content by sharing exclusive content that your subscribers can’t find on any social media channel.

• Using YouTube’s community tab, cross-promote videos or collaborate with other YouTubers for more engagement.

2. Use Eye-Catching Thumbnails

The more interest the audience shows in your videos, the more likely they appear in Youtube’s recommendation. 

And the best way to grab your audience’s attention is to promote your youtube videos using eye-catching thumbnails. 

If you don’t create or customize a thumbnail for each video, by default, YouTube will grab a screenshot from the video and use it as a thumbnail. This way, YouTube sometimes creates blurry or not visually appealing thumbnails. 

That’s why it’s best to create custom thumbnails to make your videos look engaging. You can use various photo editing tools such as Canva to customize your thumbnails. 

Here is an example of good, attention-grabbing thumbnails in YouTube videos. Fitness coach Pamela Reif posts videos with thumbnails that have the same structure and text. 

And with more than 8 million subscribers, it looks like the thumbnails are just working great for her!

Best Practices for Youtube Thumbnail:

• Google recommends that your YouTube video thumbnail should be “as large as possible.” After all, the image you’ll use in your thumbnail will be used as the preview image in the embedded player. 

However, while selecting thumbnails, make sure to remember that Google recommended size is 1280 pixels wide by 720 pixels tall. Also, the minimum width of the image should be 640 pixels, and the size must be within the 2MB limit.

• Make sure to upload your video thumbnail in one of the following formats: GIF, JPG, PNG, or BMP.

• Adding crisp yet catchy text to your thumbnail can grab your audience’s attention to the video.

• Instead of using clickbait, ensure the thumbnail is relevant and explains what the video is about.

• Include your brand logo, color in the video to reflect your brand’s personality.

• While customizing the thumbnail, remember less is more. So don’t overdo the image with texts and logos. Make it clear, simple, and easy to understand.

3. Share YouTube Videos on Q&A sites and relevant forums

Q&A sites and relevant forums like Quora, Reddit are some of the great places to promote your YouTube videos. 

Most of the audiences on these sites either look for answers to their questions or search for new content. And your videos can help both audiences. 

For example, let’s say you published a video explaining the best SEO practices for a blog. So, all you have to do is find questions related to SEO blogs on subreddits or Quora, then share your video link with the community. 

Here’s how entrepreneur GaryVee promoted his YouTube video using one of the most popular Q&A sites- Quora. 

Best Practices for Promoting Videos on Q&A Sites:

• Before promoting YouTube video links on subreddits, make sure to go through their guidelines.
• Don’t be too promotional while writing answers on Quora. 
• Remember to provide value on every answer before pushing your video link. 
• Use screenshots, data, infographics to provide proof and credibility. 
• Use images, GIFs, and visual content to grab more people’s attention. 
• After answering the questions, you can even run paid ads on sites like Quora.

4. Start Your Videos With Killer Intro

In a busy world, the best way to promote a video on YouTube is to create a killer hook or intro. 

You only have a few seconds to grab your audience’s attention to the video and hold it till the end. If your video intros are not catchy enough, viewers won’t think twice to skip it. 

So, here are some ways you can start your videos with a great intro:

• If you can start your video with a story, viewers will stick to the end to find out what happened. Storytelling is the best way to engage people. 

• You can increase your viewers’ curiosity by starting your video by telling a fact or sharing a fascinating stat. 

• Everyone loves surprises. If your video intros have a surprise element, more audiences will click the link.

• Nobody cares what the video is about unless it has something for them. So, start with an intro that clearly explains what you’re offering in the videos or how it will help them.

• One of the most common youtube video intro is questions. Ask a question to create a great hook.

• Be humorous! Even if you post professional videos, starting it with some sarcasm or jokes can set the mood of your audience. 

5. Send out Email to Your Email Subscribers

Always have an email list handy to promote your YouTube videos effectively. 

You may think email marketing is an old-school way for video promotion. But the fact is, over 66% of marketers believe that email is a worthy investment. 

So, create an email list that includes your target audience. Then write an engaging newsletter email that is relevant to your video niche. 

Now to promote your video, you can embed it on your blog post, share the link to that blog on your newsletter, or you can directly share the video link to your Youtube page. 

Alex Cattoni, a popular copywriter and YouTuber, regularly sends newsletters to her email subscribers that feature her latest YouTube video. 

Best Practices to Send out Enticing Email Newsletters:

• Your email subject line entices the subscribers to click on the email. So, make sure to put some work into the subject line. 

You can keep the subject short (41 characters or less), simple, and catchy for better engagement. It should explain what the mail is about. And make sure to avoid using spammy or clickbait subject lines.

• Just like any other content, make your newsletters value-packed. Make it unique, giveaway information, run giveaways to keep it valuable.

• Make the newsletter visually appealing by including images, BTS pictures, GIFs, and Emojis. 

6. Run Giveaway Contests to Get Massive Attention

Undoubtedly, one of the best ways to get massive attention on your YouTube videos is to run giveaway contests. 

Contests are fun, engaging, and it involves your audience. So, this way, you can easily make their likes, comments and share your videos. 

There are millions of YouTubers out there running cool giveaways to promote their videos. For example, they’re organizing unboxing product giveaways, birthday giveaways, new year giveaways, Q&A giveaways, giveaways after 100k subscribers, or 1m subscribers giveaways.

Here are some quick tips on running a fun giveaway:

• Start the giveaway with a clear goal in mind.
• Create rules and recommendations for the contests. Make sure to keep YouTube’s rules and restrictions in mind.
• Choose a giveaway prize. 
• Create hype about the contest by cross-promoting on different social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. 

7. Collaborate With Other YouTubers

There’s no better way of promoting videos than collaboration with other YouTubers or Brands on YouTube. 

Collabs with other YouTubers are great for widening your reach. Popular YouTubers can also help you come up with new promotion tips or content ideas.

And for successful collaboration, first, find the right Youtuber on your niche who has a decent engagement quality. Make sure to ask yourself: 

• What can the person offer to my audience?
• Do your audience like their videos?
• Reasons why they should collaborate with you.
• Why will their audience love your video?

Popular YouTubers or channels get hundreds of responses each day. So, if you pitch to these channels, make sure to be clear and provide a good value proposition in the pitch. 

Also, before promoting the video, make sure to agree on the exact launch time or date because it’ll be bad if you give a shout-out to your collab partner in your video, and when your subscribers go to check the video, it isn’t uploaded. 

Before posting the collab, you should create some hype about the video. If you and your collab partner are active on social media channels, create posts to generate excitement. 

A great example of YouTube collaboration is music video collaborations. Famous singer, songwriter Taylor Swift collaborated with singer Zayn Malick on YouTube. The music video was posted on both of the artist’s channels and got over 654 million views and 4.6 million likes. 

8. Share Your Videos On Your Social Media Channels

Social media channels are undoubtedly one of the best ways for youtube video promotion and for building an engaging community. 

In terms of engagement, nothing can beat social media, So after posting your video, make it a priority to promote it on different channels. 

However, social media algorithms favor content that keeps people on their platforms. So instead of posting just the link to your video, create some key points from your video. Also, you can share a quote from the video. 

After writing the caption, make sure to post a short preview of the video, like a 30-sec clip, to grab attention. 

Each social media channel comes with a different algorithm, so you must create a different cross-promotion strategy for each platform. 

Quick Tips to Successfully Promote YouTube Videos on Social Media:

• Choose the best social media platform to promote your posts based on your channel’s niche. For example, if you have a cooking channel on YouTube, promote the cooking videos on a visual-based platform like Instagram. 

• Don’t bite more than you can chew! If you promote videos on every social media platform, chances are you’ll get tired and post boring content. So, focus on one platform at a time and grow gradually. 

• Don’t post the links to your Youtube videos directly on social media. Write great captions, provide value, engage with the audience to promote your youtube channel and videos. 

9. Run Paid YouTube Ads

The truth is, getting organic views on your videos isn’t a simple task. Especially if you’re a beginner, you won’t have thousands of subscribers to start with. 

This is where paid youtube ads can help you. With paid advertising, you can get more views, likes, and subscriptions on your channels. 

However, before running ads on your videos, set a clear campaign goal; for example, decide whether you want clicks, conversions, or impressions.

Also, create the ad campaign for a targeted audience. Analyze their demographics, interests to understand what type of ad you should run. 

Here is a list of YouTube Ad Formats to Run the Most Successful campaign:

• Skippable and non-skippable ads: the ads you see before, during, and after a video falls into these categories. You can skip the skippable ads after five seconds, but non-skippable ads have to be watched till the end. 

• Display ads: The display ads show up on the right sidebar of videos. You can see these types of ads only on the desktop.

• Bumper ads: Bumper ads fall into the category of non-skippable ads. You have to watch these ads before watching the YouTube video. 

• Overlay ads: The semi-transparent ads you see on the bottom side of a video are known as overlay ads. Similar to display ads, overlay ads are also available on desktops.

• Sponsored ads: These ads are created to promote a product or other video content. Sponsored ads are displayed on relevant videos. 

10. Have a Consistent Posting Schedule

From shooting videos to editing, YouTube content creators have to deal with a lot of tasks in a day. In this hectic schedule, it’s natural to forget to maintain a consistent posting schedule. 

But to promote your videos the right way, it’s crucial to have a consistent posting schedule. 

Consistency gives your subscribers a reason to stay excited about your future videos. Consistency also proves the efforts you’re making as a content creator. 

If your posting schedule is consistent, your audience will know exactly what they can get from your videos. 

But the most important reason to follow a consistent schedule is YouTube’s algorithm. The algorithm loves consistency. So, if you upload quality content regularly, your videos will automatically reach more people. 

Here are some tips you can follow to be consistent on YouTube:

• Be specific about your posting schedule. Tell your subscribers exactly when you’re going to post the video. 

• You can use the community tab or the channel banner to show the audience your upload schedule before publishing.

• Not just time, a consistent thumbnail template can also increase your Youtube videos views. Make sure to use the same style, color, fonts, and logo on your thumbnails to maintain a consistent brand tone.

• Follow the consistency in your content niche.

• Posting one time a week is a good practice to get engagement. However, you can post as often you can to get more subscribers, views, and shares.

• You can use post scheduler tools like Hootsuite, SproutSocial, Buffer, and Publer to create a consistent posting schedule. 

Wrapping Up

There you go! There are some proven and tested methods to promote YouTube videos. 

We hope this post helped you realize how important video promotion is and how you can do it all by yourself using a little help from social media tools and channels. 

Now we’d like to know which one of these ways you’re going to try first? Well, whatever you choose, make sure to share what worked best for you with us in the comment.