Youtube is a great platform for Musicians. You can start an account pretty easily get your self up and running in no time at all. But how do you do it well? How do you set it all up and be sure you are getting the most out of your effort? You certainly want to optimize your music promotion on YouTube. Let’s discuss how.
A Lot Of Benefits
Youtube allows you a platform to post your latest Music Videos. You can also document any post all of your behind the scenes excitement in a vlog format.
You can teach some tutorials. That is a help for younger artists who are interested in learning some new recording technique in.
You could even have a big round table podcast to discuss some issue related to your project. You could also discuss anything else you want to and even feature new guests weekly.
So you can see for yourself it is a very versatile platform. Especially for someone who wants to showcase a lot of different facets that go into making music.
If you can do all of that well eventually over time you can monetize the whole enterprise. So what more can be said.
In order to get off to a good start I’ve made a list of things that you could do to better help you grow your channel. Because the sooner that you have things running smoothly the better.
First, Let’s start with the basics. Just what you should post on YouTube.
Content to Post
We have a few articles that dive into this in greater length but for the function of what we are talking about today; Here is a list of the top 5 things you should use YouTube to post.
- Music Videos: Showcase your latest tracks with visually engaging music videos. Music videos are a great way to engage your audience. Here is a detailed guide as to why. Click here!
- Lyric Videos: Enhance fan engagement by publishing lyric videos for your songs. For more about lyric video release strategies; Read This!
- Behind-the-Scenes Content: Provide a glimpse into your creative process and studio life.
- Cover Songs or Collaborations: Expand your reach by covering popular songs or collaborating with other artists.
- Q&A Sessions or Livestreams: Connect with your audience through live sessions, answering questions or sharing updates.
As mentioned. There are other types of content you could publish but these are these are a few as a jumping off point. Now let’s focus on how regularly you should post new content…..
Post Consistently
It’s important that when you do get started you keep going consistently. You want to make what you’re doing like must watch TV. If people know that you regularly release a video every Tuesday; then consistently have a new video for them every Tuesday. That way they can become accustomed to looking forward to seeing what’s next. They will be interested in following along.
It’s just that simple commitment of keeping a steady release day that helps lock in peoples attentions. If you don’t post consistently you lose the opportunity. Without having a consistent rhythm to your posts, then maybe they watch, maybe they don’t.
This is also true for posting new music and music videos. Having an understanding of your timetables to film a video is key to getting it done on time. If your interested in being more successful with that we have an informative guide. It discusses how far in advance of the music video release it should be shot. The purpose is to help you be more consistent with your posting schedule. Check it out!
Catchy Thumbnails
People like to choose the prettiest things, so do your very best on making your thumbnails stand out. You only get one chance to make a first impression. So grab an app like Canva and use their thumbnail templates to help you make the best quality thumbnails you can. Make sure that your thumbnail is representative of your content and not a trick. Youtube doesn’t like tricks.
Keywords
In the description of your video you can can add Keywords that help the search engine optimization. This allows the algorithm to better to know when to promote your content and to whom. So when someone does use the search feature in YouTube and they type in one of the words that you have added, you’re in. Those keywords lists that you type in may just be how you optimize your music promotion on YouTube.
You can also use google trends to help you determine what words are currently trending. That can also be sorted by areas of the world. Don’t try to cheat by including trending words that don’t have anything to do with your content.
Collaborations With Other Artists
Reaching out to other artists that have a similar subscriber count as you and doing collaborations is a great way for two separate artists to introduce them selves to the others audience. As your channel grows you’ll have time to figure out who is out there. You also may considering asking your own subscribers for suggestions of who they they think you should do a collaboration with. You’d be surprised how much help you can get from your fans. Someone may even have an in already.
Give Aways
Having prizes and give aways on your channel is a great way to optimize your music promotion on YouTube. Especially if you want to get your following excited to participate. It doesn’t mean you have to break the bank necessarily either. You could have a contest and giveaway a prop that was significant to your latest music video. It could be a lot of fun for the fans to get the collectable. Then you could have them take a photo receiving the prize and that photo could be used as content to share with your viewers on your other social media accounts.
If you haven’t started making your own DIY music videos yet; you should get on that. Here is everything you need to know. Check it out!
Engage with Followers
People who follow what you are doing make you lucky. So be appreciative of them and ingratiate yourself by doing your best to respond to comments they have left on your videos. When someone gets some sort of direct correspondence from you after they have been pedestal-ing your videos for months. You may do more than just make someones’ day, you may make a ride or die fan for life. Maybe.
Share Your Link Everywhere
Share links to your latest videos everywhere you can. Post them on your other social pages and discussion forums Make a habit of doing this every time you post something new. Cross pollination across all of your social media accounts will lead to growth.
YouTube Paid Adds
This is a great way to get things moving. There are a lot of options on how you can use the adds but at the simplest it will cost you about 1p per click / per view. It seems to me that is cheap enough to where you could feel comfortable to experiment for yourself to determine whether there is a value to paying for the adds.
Now You’ve Got To Get To It
Alright, that list ought to be enough to help you get started. Don’t let yourself feel overwhelmed by how much goes into organizing ones efforts on YouTube and certainly don’t allow being overwhelmed to dissuaded you from getting started. The fact is, while there are no guarantees of outcome, Youtube has been a very good platform for many music artists. Many have been able to showcase some amalgamation of the their life, story and their music successfully on their channel. For more information about how musicians can thrive; we have published an informative article. Read it here!
Quite a few of those people have been able to go beyond that and make their music and their channel into a full time career through Youtube. In some cases the success is so much that artists have to hire full-time help. Imagine being such a success that you create jobs for other people.
So if you are making music and you want to promote there is no good reason why you shouldn’t test your luck on YouTube. Just be sure that you optimize your music promotion on YouTube so it works for you. If you are ready for a lot of hard work who knows, after a few years it could be you putting up a help wanted add.