Deciding to move from written travel blogging to making travel videos is partly exciting and partly scary. Exciting – for obvious reasons, as making videos to me feels like so much more fun than sitting by the computer for hours and typing.
But the scary part is the fact that starting a YouTube channel or even putting videos on my own blog is something new. And that means – basically starting from zero.
How do I get my videos seen?
How do I get the traffic up?
How do I get subscribers?
So many people say that it’s extremely difficult to start a travel YouTube channel in 2019 or 2020, as there’s so much competition. But at the same time, if you do it the right way, it’s still possible.
What do you think? Are you starting a new YouTube channel too? Or thinking of doing that?
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First 24 hours of a YouTube video
Apparently, it’s extremely important to get as much traffic and engagement as possible to your video on YouTube in the first 24 hours. By that algorithm understands if your video is good or not and should it be pushed for more people to see.
This is totally different when publishing blog posts and working on SEO. Google doesn’t look as much to the first 24 hours as YouTube does. So strategies on promoting travel articles and travel videos have to be different.
So the goal we’re going for here is to get as many views, likes, comments and new subscribers as possible on a new video within the first 24 hours!
But how to do that?
What’s happening next is, that I’m going to research all the ways how other creators are suggesting to promote YouTube videos to the numbers up.
I’m making this list for myself to use and test what works. But of course, I’m sharing it with you too, so you can get more YouTube growth ideas for your own videos.
So here we go:
Ways how to promote YouTube video when you’re just starting out
Send your video out to your email list.
If you have an email list, awesome! Send it out to your audience every time you publish a video.
But what if you don’t have a list – send an email (or FB message, WhatsApp or DM) to your family, friends, and people you know. That’s better than nothing when you’re just starting out!
Promote your new video on IG or FB live
It’s a well-known fact that lives on IG and FB get way more attention and engagement than stories and posts. So as soon as you have a new video out, do a quick live and let your audience know about your video and intrigue them to watch it NOW!
Promote YouTube travel video by adding it to your email signature
Are you sending out a lot of emails every day? Or at least a few? In that case, add a P.S. after your email signature saying “Have you seen my latest YouTube video “Craziest Bangkok foodie experience at the Unicorn Cafe” and link your now video there. And once you have a new video out, change the P.S. text to lead your email recipients to your latest video.
This is a great way how to get eyes on your new videos by the people who know in any way and are very likely to come back for more.
Create funny memes or mindblowing infographics and flood the internet with them
Think about it! What kind of content goes viral easily?
Written articles? Nop!
Links to videos? Nop!
IG photos? Nop
FUNNY MEMES and INFOGRAPHICS? Yep!
So get on creating a few of those relating to your new video and release them on your strongest social media platform.
Twitter works well for that. IG stories and posts do too. Post in on Facebook and Tik Tok. Add a call to action to get people to the original piece of content – your video. And BOOM!
The goal is to have them shared a lot and that will naturally get people’s attention to you.
This is actually how Little Nas X initially got his song “Old Town Road” trending on the internet after releasing hundreds of memes about it with no budget and no backup from any music labels or anything like that. And look how well it worked out!
Post your video on Twitter
Share your video on Twitter. You have two options – share a tweet with your thumbnail and link it to a YouTube video. Or share a promo video.
Also, look for tweets related to the topic you’ve covered in the video. Engage in conversations, replying to other people’s tweets, share some valuable info and say that you’ve made a video about that. Add a link to it and people will check it out.
But don’t drop just your link as a response to tweets, as that’s spammy and annoying and no-one will watch them. Be helpful, create interest in your knowledge and then offer to see more in your video!
Let’s connect on Twitter? @TheTravelLeaf
Post your video on Reddit
This is apparently a great place where to initiate your content potentially going viral. But you’ll have to do some research before posting, as it’s not so easy to do.
I had no experience there myself and trying to post my first video was not easy. A quick share didn’t happen, as all of the most popular Reddit groups have rules in place and most of them include – no posting your blog or YouTube videos.
But if you do some research, you can find ways how to post it there and get your video seen by lots of people.
Send out a Facebook messenger bot
Facebook Messenger marketing is a thing and it’s working well when done in a smart and non-spammy way! This often seems the easiest way how to reach the audience of your FB page. Therefore it’s a great way how to spread the word about your new video.
But again – I feel like it’s important to be careful not to annoy your audience this way. If it feels even a bit spammy, these people will leave!
Identify everybody and all the businesses that you’ve featured in your video (are there any cafes, hotels, shops, airlines etc?). Hit all of them up on FB or IG DM’s and ask them to share your video.
In most cases, they are happy to do that, as it’s a free promo for them.
Find different Facebook groups that are relevant to your video and share it there. Just make sure to do it in a way that you’re being helpful to members of the group and NOT spammy! Before posting, make sure to read the rules of each Facebook group, as many tend to not allow self-promo and posting your own blog posts or videos.
While the previous point already mentions FB groups, this is a bit different. When other people share your content in a relevant group, it tends to do even better than a “self-promo”. And often you’re not allowed to post about yourself, but others are allowed to do that! 😉
More tips are added as soon as I find them!
