Independent Film Marketing: How to get more views on YouTube

Part Two

This two part series is for the DIY independent filmmaker who is self-distributing their film and for any filmmaker who wants to help build their reputation. In part one I talked about understanding YouTube as a community and search engine when developing your marketing strategy. Here you will learn that optimizing your videos for YouTube goes beyond choosing the right keywords. While they are critical to your success they are only part of the solution to getting more views for you content. Lets start by restating our goals from part one:

• Increase awareness and interest for your film
• Develop and sustain positive word of mouth
• Build an audience
• Promote yourself (as a director/writer/producer)

There are four key components:

• Content
• Metadata
• Community
• Channel

CONTENT

Remember, this is about marketing your film and building your reputation as an independent filmmaker. Audiences want to know what they are buying and trust becomes a big factor in any purchase decision. Your marketing content can help interest them in your film, and in you, building the trust needed for an audience to pay with their valuable time. Think of each video the same as you would a post on your blog. The videos should communicate a message to your audience that fits your strategy for promoting you and your films. You are constructing a library of content that through the long tail of the web will continue to get views. You have to balance volume and consistent uploads of content to fewer videos of higher production quality. Your videos could be as simple as a vlog or more high production value content, but be consistent and post videos often (at least once a week). The key point is to make a connection with your audience to build trust and interest that provides them a reason to spend their time on your film.

In your videos add a clear call to action asking your viewers to rate your video, (YouTube recently ditched the star system for a thumbs up/down model), leave a comment and subscribe to your channel. The ratings and comments on your videos factor very highly into the ranking of your video. The more people rate and drop a comment, the more it shows Youtube you have engagement with the community.

Content is a key factor in whether someone will subscribe to your channel. These are the your über fans who will help you spread the word about your film if you engage with them and make them a part of your channel.

Successful marketing is often about good storytelling. Your content should be original, entertaining and interesting enough to increase your chances of viral success (viral meaning simply the act of sharing the videos). You want subscribers to your channel. Who wants to subscribe to a channel of dull videos? As independent filmmakers, give the same thought to your marketing videos as you do your films and you will see success.

METADATA: title, tags and description.

Google is a search engine that uses text-matching techniques to find web pages that are important and relevant to a user's search.
Replace “web pages” with “videos” and you have YouTube. The spiders that crawl your channel to index your video have no idea what your video is about except what you tell it. This is about optimizing your video to get the highest ranking. You need to do your keyword research as I described in my previous post about finding your audience. The YouTube keyword tool https://ads.youtube.com/keyword_tool can get you started. One big difference between how people search on Google compared to YouTube is that on Google they search more for information, and YouTube for entertainment. Think about using adjectives with your key search terms that reflect that approach.

After you type your search word, YouTube, just like Google, has a drop down menu that makes a suggestion for the most common related words. This is great information to get you started as it supplies you with actual top search results.

Each video should add to your overall SEO based on keywords. Just like a blog post or website page, your video should be optimized for keywords. The goal is to get your video ranked on the first page and preferably above the fold. Being on page two means very few people see your video.

Title

This is the most important as it supplies the most SEO juice. It also informs your viewer about what they are going to see and sets up expectations. The tendency is to put the title of your film in the… title. It works for the major studios because they have spent millions of dollars creating awareness for that title. People search for those titles. If your film hasn’t created that awareness then you will not get people searching for your title. So be descriptive instead. You have around 120 characters for your title before it gets truncated but it is weighted so keywords want to be at the front of the title. This is not about creating the next viral video hit but building an audience around you, your current film and your future films. It is not just a numbers game of how many viewers you can get but the quality of the viewer. You want to build an audience that will pay for your films.

Tags

Use keywords from your title and description. Write the tags thinking about a sentence but only with keywords. Don’t keyword stuff as YouTube might consider this spammy and don’t duplicate words as they will be edited out anyhow and you risk confusing the spiders.

Description

The first two lines are the most important. Not because they are weighted for optimization, but this is what the visitor sees and you need to entice them when they glance at your description. Common wisdom says to put your website URL first. I disagree. With the new layout on YouTube this description is taking up valuable real estate directly below the video and more people will read it. You haven’t earned my trust yet for me to leave YouTube and go visit your website. So I recommend you make those first two lines compelling enough to grab someone’s attention and help them decide to watch your video. Put your website and all other links (Facebook, Twitter, etc) in the body of your copy.

Brevity is not your friend here. A full description, you have about 1,000 characters, loaded with keywords will help you not only be findable but just as important help you end up in “relevant videos” which you see on the side of the page.

How to get into relevant videos

YouTube doesn’t disclose exactly how the algorithms work that determine which videos show up as relevant to other videos. At times you see a video that appears to be completely random but what they are doing is trying to expand the video experience by adding videos you might not otherwise ever discover.

Most importantly, the more video content you have, the more views you will get from your own related videos. Once you the viewer clicks on your title video, your other videos will appear in related videos. This exposes the viewer to more of your content leading to additional views from the same visitor.

Try experimenting with keywords to try and get into other popular and relevant related videos. Watch your own videos and see whic related videos appear. Research their tags and descriptions to see if they have keywords you can add to have you show up in their relevant videos. What you can’t control is a users history and that will be a factor in what relevant videos show up in the side bar.

Test, Measure, Revise

None of this fixed. Through YouTube Insights you can analyze tons of data about your videos, including what search terms are working. Track your videos and experiment with keywords in all your metadata to find the ones that bring the best results. Research other videos to get new ideas on what is working and what isn’t. When you make a change in your metadata, allow time for YouTube to index your video’s as results are not immediate. Insight offers too much to go into here but check this out for more info .

Community

Perhaps the most overlooked part of creating a successful channel is to understand YouTube as a community. If you join Twitter or Facebook you don’t just send out one message and leave it. The more you engage in the YouTube community the better chance you have of your videos being found. YouTube supports content providers who are active in the community. That is why you often see video’s with lower view counts rank higher then videos with substantially more views.

It’s about interaction:

• Subscribe to other channels.
• Add friends.
• Comment on other videos.
• Respond to people who commented on your videos and channel

Collaborate with other filmmakers and content providers on YouTube. Recommend their trailers, films, and channels and ask them to do the same for you. This helps cross promote filmmakers channels and brings the collaborators additional viewers.

Don’t sit back and wait for people to discover you, go to where they are. Browse popular videos, ones that are currently rising, top videos of the day, etc and drop a comment. It’s best if the videos have some connection or relevancy, but even if they don’t you are just trying to build exposure for your channel. When commenting follow the same etiquette you do on other social networks. Don’t spam and drop tags randomly, leaving unrelated comments or worse just dropping an ad or call out for your video. Attach video responses on other popular videos but make them relevant (since the owner of the video you respond to will need to approve your video). Don’t be spammy. Video responses are very successful in gaining awareness and they get a much higher click through then text comments.

This wants to be done daily. If you haven’t logged into your account for a week or a month, YouTube may consider you inactive and it could affect your ranking.

YouTube is offering you a free channel to market your film. The more time you put in the more you will get back.

Optimize Your Channel

The place to start is by optimizing your account. What do you name your channel? I suggest you think long term. You may want to name the channel after your film and that might be a good strategy if you are only building an audience for this film. If you are establishing yourself as an independent filmmaker and creating a personal brand then the channel provides a path for promoting yourself. You might want to think of creating a company name or something that has legs beyond the film. Why promote yourself? Because people want to trust that they will have a good experience before they watch your film. The studios put out a known brand of films. You have expectations for studio films around defined genres, stars, and high production value. You know what you are buying. Not so much when it comes to indie film and especially for the DIY micro budgeted film.

Write your profile to give visitors a sense of your personality and what this channel is all about. Your description adds some keyword juice to improve search results but more importantly it gives channel visitors an opportunity to know you at a glance. Include all relevant links to your IMDB account, website, Facebook and Twitter accounts and any other links that can help establish your brand. You are selling yourself and your content so make sure you tell a compelling story.

THINK LONG TERM

Just like other social networks and DIY marketing efforts this takes time. I would plan on devoting time everyday to your channel. This is a long-term strategy and it is important to start as early as possible in setting up your channel. If you can produce content before you begin filming you will have better results when you finally get to uploading your trailer. By staying connected to your audience and adding fresh content you will build a fan base not only for this film but for future projects as well. These are the fans that hopefully will purchase your film, help spread the word of mouth buzz that greatly contributes to a successful film release and perhaps be the ones who help fund your next project.