Are you looking for new ways of promoting, managing, and growing your YouTube channel? YouTube is one of the biggest and most popular websites in the world, presenting businesses with a huge opportunity to reach a wider audience and generate more results for their business.

In this blog post, I’m going to share 5 tips and tools to help you manage and grow your YouTube channel:

• Setting objectives for your YouTube marketing strategy
• Putting together a posting schedule
• How to manage your channel more effectively
• Tips to help you optimize your videos for the YouTube search engine
• How to add end screens to your videos to boost viewership

1. Start with setting objectives

Any kind of marketing tactic should have a strategy behind it – and video marketing is no different. And any good content strategy starts with objectives: what do you want to achieve with your YouTube channel? More brand awareness? More traffic to your business website or blog? More engagement and subscribers? More leads and more conversions? More trust?

Any good content strategy starts with objectives.

Your objectives will determine your entire strategy and the content you’ll need to create. For example, if you wanted to generate more leads and conversions, then you’d need to create more marketing videos, as well as brand and product-related videos. If, on the other hand, you wanted to generate more traffic to your website or blog, then you’d need to create videos that call upon the viewer to visit your website.

Setting objectives also helps with optimization; when you establish your goals, make sure to also establish what your KPIs are – key performance indicators – so you know exactly what to measure in order to measure your video success.

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2. Create a busy, but realistic posting schedule

You know what you want to achieve, you know what you want to post… now the question is, how often can you do it?

Studies show that if you post new content multiple times a week, your videos and channel will perform much better and generate more views. Which of course, makes sense – just like with other social networks, it’s important to be very active and consistently post new content to keep audiences interested and get them to watch your videos.

It’s important to be very active and consistently post new content to keep audiences interested and get them to watch your videos.

Ideally, create multiple videos in one go and then start rolling them out as per your weekly schedule; it will save you time in the long run and you won’t have to scramble at the last second to come up with a video idea and create it.

3. Use a tool to help you manage your channel

Managing any social profile is a challenge – more so though when it comes to YouTube because there simply aren’t as many tools as there are for other social networks.

However, management tools are essential as marketers because they help you become more productive and make the most out of your channel/profile. One of the few great options is Agorapulse; while it’s better-known as a social media management tool for “regular” social networks (like Twitter, Facebook, and the like), it also has some powerful YouTube management features.

For example, you can use it to manage your comments, starting with pre-moderation (so you can say yes/no on publishing comments) and of course, managing your comments from one place and responding to them in a more efficient manner. Additionally, you can also save replies so you can respond even more quickly. And if you work with a team, you can add multiple users to your account so you can collaborate, assign tasks and comments, and so on. But one of the best features is that you can monitor YouTube for keywords; this way you can stay on top of any brand mentions and take action immediately:

4. Always optimize your videos for SEO

One of the best ways to ensure you’re getting more views, engagement, and subscribers, is to optimize your YouTube videos for the YouTube search engine, which is the second biggest in the world. What that means is that if your videos rank well and for the right keywords, then you can generate more views and subscribers without any extra promotion on your part.

So, how do you optimize your videos?

The best place to start is with your channel; make sure you’ve entered the right keywords that define what your channel and your videos are about. To set your channel keywords, go to your Account, click on Channel, and then choose Advanced to see your options.

Next, there’s the actual video; there are 2 very important elements here: the keywords you use in the headline and the description and your video tags. These need to reflect what your video is about, but they also need to be keywords that your audience is actually searching for. Make sure to use relevant keywords in your headlines and descriptions, and as many relevant tags as possible.

There are several tools that you can use to help with this. One such tool is TubeBuddy. It is YouTube-certified and can be added as a browser extension; it actually has dozens of management and productivity features, along with several video SEO features, such as a keyword ranking tracker, a tool that suggests tags to add to your videos, and creating video A/B tests.

There are a few other factors that can affect your search engine ranking; things like watch time (the more people stick around and watch, the better), engagement metrics (likes and dislikes, comments, number of subscribes after viewing one of your videos), and number of subscribers can impact your success.

5. Add end screens to your videos

End screens are free, quick ways to boost up your views and subscribers. They are those short screens/videos at the end of your actual video, which last 5-20 seconds and help promote another video or playlist, your channel (to get people to subscribe), an approved website, or another channel.

For example, Jimmy Kimmel uses an end screen to promote another one of his shows’ videos:

Jaimie Oliver uses an end screen on this to promote other videos from his channel as well as his website where people can book a table at this restaurant:

Interested viewers can quickly click on Visit to go directly to his website and book.

In order to add end screens to a video, you can do so easily by going to your Creator Studio and clicking on Video Manager, then Videos, and finally, once you find a video you want to add an end screen to, click on Edit and you’ll see the End Screen option. From there, simply follow the instructions to put together your end screen.

Conclusion

Growing a YouTube channel takes time and effort, like any other social network or marketing strategy; but at the same time, it’s very much worth the effort because it can help you reach a much wider audience and help you generate more traffic, more leads, and more conversions. Follow these YouTube tips and tricks and you’ll be able to grow your channel at a faster rate.

Are you using YouTube to help promote your business? What are some of your best tips on YouTube marketing?

About the author: Highly regarded on the world speaker circuit, Lilach Bullock has graced Forbes and Number 10 Downing Street. She’s a hugely connected and highly influential entrepreneur.

Lilach is listed in Forbes as one of the top 20 women social media power influencers, named one of 10 top digital marketers by Brand24 and was crowned the Social Influencer of Europe by Oracle. She is listed as the number one Influencer in the UK by Career Experts and is a recipient of a Global Women Champions Award for her outstanding contribution and leadership in business.