How do you promote a Youtube Channel (without being annoying)?

Nicho86

I've recently started up a new channel that is all about gaming culture. I am kinda new to the whole 'online video creation' thing though, so I'm not really sure what the best ways to promote my channel are. The videos are only amateur things that I've been doing in my spare time, but I think they are decent enough quality and I'd love to get them seen by more people. Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting thousands of views but if I could break the three figure mark on some of the videos it would be a good start.

So basically, if anyone has started a successful channel, how did you do it? The last thing I want is to be seen as a spammer posting links around my favorite forums (tempting as it might be!) but I'm struggling with how to get things rolling. Some things I've done so far: subscribed to some of the larger shows, started posting under a Twitter account, linked the video around my Facebook and sent the link off to my agent. I know that I should start to use these things more (commenting on other videos under the YouTube account, interacting with people on Twitter, etc), but I am hoping there are some other avenues as well that I haven't looked at yet. Are there any good forums where people can just post links and comment on other people's channels? What else should I be doing (besides simply being more active)?

Incidentally, if anyone has any advice for the videos themselves I am all ears, though it might be better to PM me so we can keep this thread clean!

TychoCelchuuu

I just made videos people wanted to share and they shared them themselves. That's also what people like Campster do. Posting to reddit is also not a bad idea but I think your best bet is to make videos good enough that other people post them to reddit.

This is not to say that there isn't any way to market yourself, but... like, seriously, if your goal is really "I want a lot of YouTube video views" and not "I want to make good videos" then I don't really feel like giving you advice. Focus on the videos, not on the promotion.

The other route is to make videos that people search for on YouTube. Let's take a look at my traffic sources for the last year:



Almost half my views come from people searching YouTube or from people clicking on my video as one of the suggested videos. This is, however, just another way of saying "make videos that people want to share" because the things people search for are the same things people want to share, typically. The only difference is that there's no way you could force people to search for your YouTube video the way you could force people to share your videos by sharing them yourself (aka promotion).

Your channel has two videos about niche topics (Killer Instinct + some obscure Sonic game) and it's unreasonable to expect a shitton of views within less than a month on both of those. Unless Killer Instinct shows up in some serial killer's manifesto and everyone starts Googling it or unless Sega releases a new brand of snack food named "Sonic Crackers" the only way those things are going to get more views are by people searching for that stuff (which is going to happen organically over time - you can't force it) or by people seeing the video embedded/linked somewhere and clicking on it because it seems interesting. So you could spam those videos in every conversation about Killer Instinct or Sonic Crackers, or you could rely on other people who enjoy the video to do the spamming for you.

Probably my best advice would be to make it easy for people to find the video if they're the kind of person who wants to find it. Your FTL video doesn't even have "FTL" in the title. Someone looking for a sweet FTL video will never see it.

Your final two videos are about current events/industry topic sort of things. I never watch videos about that shit unless they're by someone I antecedently care about. Articles are a much better form for that kind of analysis, if you ask me. Your best hope for getting views on those is for someone (perhaps you!) to spam the video in relevant conversations, because that's where people interested in this stuff will be liable to find and watch the video.

So in summary why the fuck do you care who is watching your videos? Have you ever read comments on YouTube? Everyone there is an idiot! A lower view count just means fewer people completely missing your point and fewer people hating your guts because you talk too slow or too fast or sound too gay or too dumb.

Also in summary, give it time. You've been at it less than a month.

ceres

Here you can put it in your sig and participate normally if you never ever bring it up in a post, but the very second it smells like you're posting to pimp your channel mods will start taking disciplinary action and remove your links.

Nicho86

Thanks for the advice guys. I should have been more specific about the views/quality thing. I come from an acting background so I know lots of people who can help me out with editing, production, etc, but none of them know much about Youtube itself and how to build something from scratch (at best they've done some work for existing channels with ready-made audiences).

I definitely understand what you mean about being patient and just making good content though. I'll also go back through and see what I can do about making my stuff more 'findable'. And I won't be spamming links on this forum, no worries.