How To Up Your Music Game On YouTube

By Taryn Anderson of Talenthouse.

We came across YouTube's very own Creator Playbook Guide which explains various strategies for successfully using their services to get the most beneficial social media exposure possible. Here we will give you the rundown of the best strategies to help you raise your view counts and put you on the right track to becoming YouTube famous.

Optimize Your Videos and Channel for Better Discovery

The majority of videos watched are found through search results so artists should ensure that they’re making good use of their metadata. This includes the title of your video, the tags, the description, and the thumbnail image associated. Titles and tags should always employ highly searched keywords such as a song tittle or the artist’s name. Tags can be less specific and include general terms. These are the keywords that your viewers will be searching for so make sure you cover all your bases.

Make Your YouTube Channel Release Ready

Your YouTube Channel definitely needs to have a user friendly layout that viewers can easily navigate. You don’t want your audience to be confused while trying to find your content so make sure your videos are well organized. Depending on how you want to market your content you can choose from a single channel, multi channel, or curator layout. These can all be tailored to your specific goals as an artist.

Artists can use their YouTube channel to promote their soon to be released content such as songs or albums. Your YouTube channel is a main component of this and should be part of your strategy. You can build buzz and raise viewership by releasing promotional videos like artists interviews, trailers for upcoming songs, and behind-the-scenes videos.

Stay Active and Engage with Fans

To keep your viewers interested, you should make sure to regularly update the content you provide. Creating and uploading videos takes a lot of time and energy, so in between new releases you can like, comment and add videos to playlists. All this activity is featured on your channel feed, so you can use these features to share with your audience content that you like.

Collaborating with other YouTube musicians and artists with similar audience demographics as you is also useful for keeping your page updated and reaching out to more supporters. If you work with other artists, make sure you ask for social media promotions on their end and reciprocate on your own.

Your fans want to be involved with you, otherwise they wouldn’t be following you. It is important to make them feel like they have exclusive access to you, which you can achieve by providing them with exclusive offers such as merchandise or simply doing shout outs in videos. Holding a live chat with fans can provide helpful feedback on what they’re looking for from your end so you can ensure you’re providing them with content they’ll appreciate.

Check out the rest of YouTube’s Creator Playbook for more help in developing your own personalized YouTube gameplan.