How to get more views on YouTube
August 29, 2024
YouTube has become a very competitive platform with more than 3.3 million videos being uploaded every day. To make your YouTube videos standout from this sheer mass of content, you need to be very strategic about it. Here are 4 strategies that are used by many of the most successful YouTubers to boost their videos.
1 - Test multiple thumbnails and titles
You probably already know that both thumbnail and title have an immense impact on the performance of your video. This is because they are the first point of contact with potential viewers and if the packaging of your video is not appealing they won't click on it.
The most successful channels on YouTube put a lot of effort into testing different thumbnail and title combinations to find the best performing one. This practice is called A/B testing and since this year YouTube has rolled out a feature to test three thumbnails in parallel.
A video by the Stokes Twins illustrates just how effective A/B testing can be. After roughly 6 months their views seemed to stagnate at around 13 millions views. But after changing the title and the thumbnail it suddenly took off again, acquired an additional 55 million views within 4 months, and still receives around 200k daily views as of today.
But how do you come up with new thumbnail and title ideas? A good way is to checkout the thumbnails and titles of other videos that performed well on a similar video topic. You can use our free Outlier Database to search for them. Just type in the topic of your video and you will find the best performing related YouTube videos. Many of these videos get this many views because they have an eye-catching thumbnail or a title that stands out. Use them as inspiration to come up with new thumbnail and title ideas, and A/B test lots of different versions.
2 - Translate your video to multiple languages
Around 1.5 billion people speak English as their first or second language. This represents roughly 19% of the world's population. So if you are releasing your video only in English you are loosing out on 81% of the world or 6.5 billion potential viewers.
So to make your video available to a wider audience you should make sure that non-english speakers also have a chance to watch it. YouTube provides two ways to achieve this. One way is to add captions in different languages to your video. Another and much more effective way is to a add multiple audio tracks. If you speak another language you can just record it yourself. For languages you don't speak you can hire a professional translator or use tools like Dubly.AI to translate your voice line to multiple languages.
Some YouTubers take this to the next level. Mark Rober adds for example 15 different voice lines including Thai, Arabic, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Portuguese, Hindi, Chinese, English, Spanish, Turkish, French, and German to his videos.
3 - Strategically find new video topics
Making a new YouTube video requires a lot of time and effort. It is therefore very important to make sure that your video idea has the potential to get a lot of views. Of course you can't forsee the future but there are several ways to validate the demand of your video idea.
Turn your most successful videos into a series
One of the most promising strategies is to repeat what has worked on your channel in the past. Let's take again Mark Rober as an example who made a video about building a Squirrel Ninja Warrior course in his backyard - in my opinion one of the funniest videos on YouTube. This video completely blew up and got over 128 million views (after 4 years). Since it performed this good, Mark turned it into a series and made two follow up videos with updated courses and other variations. Both of these videos were also highly successful, gaining over 97 million (after 3 years) and 36 million views (after 1 year), respectively.
But also smaller YouTubers can apply this strategy. A good example here is Max DeMarco who currently has 18k subscribers. 6 months ago he posted a video about a self-experiment to sleep on the floor for one week. This video got over 300k views and is now the second best performing video on his channel. Recently he released an update video about sleeping on the floor for half a year. Within two weeks it acquired 20k views and is on track to becoming another top video on his channel.
So what can we learn from this? If a video topic got many views on your channel in the past, there is a high chance that a similar topic will be successful as well. It therefore makes sense to take a look at your most popular videos and see whether you can turn them into a series or create follow-ups. This is an easy way to come up with promising and validated video ideas.
Find videos in your niche with high demand and low supply
Another very prominent strategy among successful YouTubers is to find underserved video topics that many viewers are eager to watch but with very few videos on YouTube covering them. This imbalance of demand and supply will highly increase the chances of your video being successful.
Take for example a Minecraft YouTuber who is thinking about uploading a new video. A bad idea would probably be to upload a standard gameplay video as this topic is already covered by millions of other videos on YouTube. But by doing a bit of research he may find an underserved topic that has the potential to go viral.
How can you find videos with high demand and low supply? Look at our free outlier database to keep track of them. Here are for example three Minecraft topics that went viral this year:
By using underserved topics as inspiration for your next video you have some form of validation that the video has the potential to get many views. Of course these views are not guaranteed as many factors influence the success of your video. However, the odds are certainly higher than if you were to choose a random video topic based on gut instinct.
4 - Generate additional traffic for your video
When posting a new video on YouTube it is all about directing additional traffic towards it. The aim here is to give the video an initial push such that the YouTube algorithm picks it up and starts promoting it. When it comes to additional traffic you need to differentiate between external and internal traffic.
Posting on social media creates external traffic
One way of generating additional traffic is by sharing your new video on your social media pages (i.e. Instagram, TikTok, X, Facebook, Telegram). This will reach your core audience and make them aware of your new video. Doing this is definitely recommended as it will give you some views and engage your audience but it is questionable whether it will increase the chances of the YouTube algorithm promoting your video. This is because YouTube keeps track of the source for every view and seems to penalise views that come from external links. Most likely because many people have exploited external links to artificially create additional views for their videos.
Posting supportive YouTube Shorts creates internal traffic
Another way to direct more viewers to your video is to create supportive YouTube shorts. Since YouTube introduced shorts in 2021 they generated a staggering number of 5 trillion views. So you should definitely utilise this traffic stream and divert some viewers to your videos.
The content of your YouTube short should be different than your average new video announcement on Instagram. Keep in mind that the consumers of YouTube shorts are quickly scrolling so you need to hook them within the first 3 seconds. Take the most entertaining parts of your video and cut them in an engaging way. The short should teaser your video and make the user want to see more. Make sure you add the video that you want to promote as related video to your short. Here are instructions on how to do this.
So now when a user sees your short and clicks on the related video link or your channel name you will get additional views for your long-form content. And even better, these views will also increase the chances of the YouTube algorithm pushing your video as these views are considered YouTube internal.
