Youtube… you can’t ignore how much it can affect your music career. After all, it helped make the careers of a few notable pop stars. Aside from getting lucky and having one of your videos go “viral,” it can be tough to stand out amidst the masses on Youtube. Making sure your Youtube channel catches the viewers attention just as much as your videos do is important.
Create A Custom Background
Don’t settle for the plain white background or just a different color background. If you can then create your own! Use compelling pictures of studio work, live performances, or just high quality promotional images. You can find tons of video tutorials on how to create the right dimensions and layout here. If you cannot create your own, or are just not satisfied with what you come up with, then check out Fiverr.com and hire someone more capable to create one for you.
Link To Your Other Sites/Social Profiles
When you are viewing your channel page, on the right side you should have your short “About Me” section. If you click Edit to the upper right of it, you can then add links to your other sites and social network profiles. Put them in order of importance as well. Obviously, if you have a stand-alone website it should be the first one listed. If you have an album out then put a link to where it can be bought.
Don’t just limit your links to your info section though. Add your website and important social profile links to all your video descriptions at the very start of it. Any video promoting a song from an album should include a link to where that album can be purchased at the beginning of the description. Putting these links at the beginning of the description is key since Youtube will truncate the text past a certain length.
Share Your Videos on Your Other Sites
Don’t just link to your other sites within your Youtube profile and videos. Make sure you cross-post your new uploads to your social network profiles. You can always embed your videos on your website as well, and if you are using WordPress you can install a plugin to automatically display the newest video in your channel.
Tag You’re It!
While you are improving your profile and videos in general, make sure you are using tags. You can use tags on not only the individual videos but on your profile as a whole. So pick the ones that best describe you and keep it to a low count. Adding too many tags will make you look like a spammer and could affect how readily you show in search results.
Video Quality
There are too many devices available now to not shoot in the highest quality settings you can. If someone has a slow connection they can lower the quality. There’s no way for someone to increase the quality settings for a low quality video. In addition, make sure you shoot using a popular video format that allows for HD quality. MP4, MOV, and AVI are just some you can use.
Video Titles
If you haven’t already noticed, when you upload a video from a file on your computer, it tends to get automatically named whatever the file was named. If that’s mar18obscurebar.mov, then it’s not going to be popping up in too many search results. If it is a clip of you playing one of your songs live, then changing the name to reflect that will make it easier to find outside of your channel. Preferably, title your video with your name, the song name, the venue or location if it is a live performance, and maybe some additional relevant keywords. For example, “XYZ Band playing Do Dum Dee at ABC Bar” is fine, but “XYZ Band playing Do Dum Dee at ABC Bar – crazed fan dives off stage!” is even better. This opens you up to getting viewers looking for “crazed fan” and such by adding the number of searches your video will show up in as well as showing up in recommended videos for those keywords.
Mix Up Your Content
Not every video needs to be a live performance of a song, or even a studio performance of a song. Keep things fresh by posting showcasing various content. Post an interview video, a video of you signing autographs after a gig, a slideshow featuring pictures of you with fans, etc…. When you hit the studio, post video clips of you in the studio working on the new material. Keeping a variety in what you post keeps what you post interesting.
Make Use of Annotations
Even though annotations can be turned off by the viewer, if you limit what you add then the viewer will be less likely to bother hiding them. Add simple relevant annotations like a pop up with a link to where to buy the song at the beginning and end of the video. Have a live video where something funny happens on stage? Put in an annotation pointing it out or making a joke of it. Have a playlist of live performances of songs from your new album? Add a link annotation at the end of each video to the playlist. Have a video for your new single? Try adding lyrics into the video. Annotations can be both a way to add informational value as well as entertainment value to your videos.
Push For Those Subscriptions
Make sure you add either in the descriptions or the annotations that you love subscribers. Ask viewers to subscribe if they like what you do. When you promote your videos or channel on other sites, make sure you ask for subscriptions if you can. One sneaky way to push for subscriptions currently is to use a link to directly pop up a subscription box.
The link’s format is like this: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=yourusename