How did you get the word out about your YouTube videos? Did you know there’s a tool for this that you’ve probably never used before? Did you realise that simply marketing an unlisted YouTube video with a direct link can increase views?
The YouTube Community Tab is one way to do this.
I understand that not everyone will have immediate access to the Community Tab. You’ll need 1000 YouTube followers to do so, but we’ve got a video right here on how to get there.
How to Make the Most of YouTube’s Community Tab
Having just advised you to promote a video using the Community Tab, I have a sneaking suspicion that real YouTube video promotion will limit the reach of that type of content. And here is the result of my research into whether or not that is accurate.
Although YouTube does not provide data on views or impressions for community posts, interaction can be used to assess performance.
According to vidIQ, community posts receive 500 or more likes and at least 100 comments on average. When we use the YouTube video link tool to publish a community post, however, we only get 15% of the engagement we normally do.
So, here’s what I came up with. I used a different technique instead of publishing a video on the Community Tab, which is how YouTube wants me to do it. And this is what I discovered.
Therefore, first and foremost, we conducted a control test. This community’s posts make use of YouTube’s standard video link format. Because the video was unlisted at the time, I knew that the most, if not all, of the views came from the community post promotion alone.
Over the course of 48 hours, there were 288 views. The majority of these views came from channel pages, which includes community postings and video links, according to the traffic sources.
Now for my second experiment, I provided the link to an unlisted film straight in the community post and asked people to score the video in a voting poll.
This community post received approximately four times the number of likes in the same time frame (about 48 hours). As a result, there has already been a significant increase in involvement. In addition, the voting poll style community post received more video views than the traditional video link community post.
Voting poll postings are clearly more popular than dedicated video link posts, hence more people watched the video from the voting poll post.
I also discovered that people enjoy voting on things even if they don’t read the directions. Look! I instructed folks to watch a video and rate it. Although 650 individuals saw the video at the time of recording, 1400 people gave it a rating. That’s a tough one!
Winning Promotional Techniques Using YouTube’s Community Tab
Let’s take a look at the big picture.
First and foremost, if you have access to YouTube’s Community Tab, you should use it to promote your video. However, you should avoid promoting your videos through YouTube’s traditional video sharing link, as this appears to suppress those posts and no one sees them.
Instead, come up with creative ways to make your community feel appreciated and involved in the process. That’s why I set up a vote poll to encourage people to participate with the post itself, and I teased our community posts with exclusive access.
You must, however, take this into account. I had to upload a list of videos on the Community Tab in order to acquire some raw numbers. And it’s possible that I’ve harmed the potential of those videos when they get public.
Those 3,000 views from that unlisted video I placed in the community, for example, didn’t transmit any favourable signals to YouTube in terms of click-through rates and impressions.
Some members of our community had previously seen that film when I released it, so they were less likely to view it again.
As a result, employ these Community Tab methods to promote content that has already been posted to your channel. Whether it’s a video you just posted a few days ago and want to remind people via the Community Tab that you have new content, or you go through your back catalogue and find videos that were popular six months ago and want to reintroduce them to a brand new audience on your channel, the Community Tab is a great place to start.
How to Maximize Your YouTube Experience
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