- How did you promote your YouTube videos?
Let us know in the comments below,
and with that being said, I'm gonna show you a tool
that you probably never even used for this,
or use it effectively as you could do.
(blows air)
Let's do this.
- [Man] vidIQ
- [Woman] vidIQ
- [Man] vidIQ.com
(energetic music)
- Alright, let's start with two-graph switch,
particularly special in themselves
and neither they too view counts either.
The reason for this is because at the time of recording,
these two videos were actually unlisted.
How do you get views from an unlisted video?
I'll give you 15 seconds to try and answer that question.
The important thing here
is a difference between the view counts.
One video got almost twice as many as the other.
But how?
Time for some answers then.
How do you get views on an unlisted video
while you promote it with a direct link?
And one way to do that is through the YouTube community tab.
And I want to use the community tab as a control test
to see how many people would watch a video
from one viewing source.
Now, of course, I am fully aware that not all of you
have access to the community tab,
which requires at 1000 subscribers,
but we've got a video on how you can get there over here.
When it comes to the community tab,
it actually has a built in function for selecting any video
on YouTube, including your own,
as well as unlisted videos to promote to your community.
Now, the really sexy thing about the community tab
is that these posts don't just reach our subscribers,
they can reach anybody on YouTube
who may be interested in your content.
We've actually already done a really interesting video
about this when lots of people were getting really annoyed
because they were seeing lots
of Pewdiepie versus T series posts on our community tab.
You can watch a video over here.
But, I have a suspicion about the way YouTube
shares community posts that contains videos.
I think YouTube suppresses them.
So, this is my investigation on whether or not that is true.
Well, YouTube doesn't provide a view
or impressions count for community posts.
You can judge each post success through its engagement.
We find that on average community posts
will get 500 or so likes and at least a 100 comments.
However, every time we publish a community post
using YouTube video link tool,
we'll get just 15% of the engagement we usually would do.
So, here's what I decided to do.
Instead of posting a video on the community tab,
the way YouTube wants me to do it,
I was going to use alternative strategies.
And this is what I found out.
So, first of all we control test.
Vis community posts
use the conventional-video link style, YouTube offers.
The video was unlisted service I knew that most,
if not all of the views coming into this video
were from this community post promotion only.
And here are the results over a 48 hour period, 288 views.
The traffic sources confirm that most of these views came
from channel pages, which is what community posts,
video links most commander.
Now, let's mix things up.
And my next test, again, with an unlisted video,
I shared the link to the video directly
in the community post and offered people the chance
to rate the video for a voting poll.
In the same period, around 48 hours,
this community post got nearly four times as many likes.
So, a lot more engagement already.
And then, to back this up in a fraction of a time,
this voting poll style post had more video views
than the conventional-video link community post.
You can see how fundamentally YouTube
is treating each community posts differently
as the traffic sources from the views don't match.
I mean, direct YouTube URLs shared within a community post
are treated as external views.
That's just weird.
And as time goes by the view gap just widens.
Clearly YouTube showed more people leave voting poll posts
than it did dedicated video link posts,
and as a result, more people watched
the video from the voting poll post.
I hope that makes sense.
What I also learned is that,
people just like voting on stuff
even if they don't read instructions.
Look!
I told people to watch a video and give it a star rating.
650 people did watch the video,
but 1400 people gave it a rating.
Figure that one out.
Now, you could argue that maybe one of the videos
got far more views because the topic
was far more interesting.
Well, if the community post tab that was within
a voting poll, was the complete guide to subtitles
and the community posts using the video link
was how to get more views with comments.
I'll let you decide in this voting poll up here,
which one you'd rather prefer to watch
but I think those topics are two quite similar ones
and I don't think if I want to generate 100% more views
and the either which is what happened in this case.
Now, with all of this being said,
I wanted you to do one more test
using a different community post strategy.
Same principle as before even if it's an unlisted video
with a video link added directly into the community post.
But this time I use an image instead of a voting poll
and the video really took off.
In its first 48 hours, it got 1700 views.
And over a week, remember as an unlisted video,
before we publicly posted it on our channel,
this video got 3000 views from that one community post.
I know we've gone this way and that way
and down here and over there during this video.
So, let's try and summarize everything we've been through.
First of all, if you have access to the community tab
on YouTube, you should be using it to promote your video.
However, what you shouldn't do is promote your videos
using YouTube conventional-video sharing link,
because it seems to suppress those posts
and nobody watches the videos.
What you should do is think of inventive ways
to make your community feel valued and part of the process.
That's why I teased these community posts
with exclusive access.
Only those seniors community posts can watch this video.
It's why I set up a voting poll
to get people to interact with the post itself
and as they buy product to watch the video.
And to get people's attention as they're scrolling
through the feed, I put up a nice big square from now
because YouTube doesn't allow me to post 16 by nine pictures
in the community tab, which is really annoying.
However, you also need to consider this,
in order to get some raw numbers, I had to post
a list of videos in this community tab.
And what I may have done is damaged the potential
of those videos when they go live to the public.
For example, those 3,000 views
from that video I posted in the community was unlisted.
So, YouTube probably didn't get any positive signals
in terms of click through rates and impressions.
And then when I launched a video properly,
some of my community has already seen the video,
so, they're less likely to watch it again.
So, use these strategies
to promote content that's already on your channel.
Whether it's a video you posted a few days ago,
and you want to remind people
through the community tab, that you have a new video,
or you go into your back catalog and find videos
that were popular six months ago, a year ago
and you can introduce it to a brand new audience
on your channel who may not have seen those videos before.
So, that is another vidIQ tip
to help you grow your YouTube channel.
We've got plenty more over there.
And finally, did you notice anything different
about our backdrop?
Oh yeah.