YouTube remains a valuable tool for music promotion. In the ever-changing landscape of social media, YouTube is versatile through its ease of accessibility for fans and also in terms of the type of content you can share on it. From professional videos to more ‘home-made’ and ‘behind the scenes’ content, you can show all sides of your band through both long form and short form videos. YouTube, therefore, is a platform you should be utilizing.
Quick Tips:
- Ensure your YT profile is fully populated with all of the band’s information. Make sure to customize your profile photo and channel banner, add in bio info and link all of your social media and website/music & merch sites. Also, take care to update your channel’s layout – the content you want people to see first, should be clearly visible at the top of your page.
- Use all of YT’s functions. Upload both longer form videos and Shorts. Resharing content created for Instagram Reels or TikTok as Shorts is an easy way to add content and boost your upload numbers. The Community tab for static posts and text updates should also be updated to share news and music/merch links that may not suit video form.
- Interaction is key. Engage with comments on your videos, and also go out and comment on videos of fellow bands or musicians you admire. Of course, ensure any and all comments are polite, respectful and genuine. YouTube reaction channels and review channels can also be found and interacted with through your band profile. Be considerate and build up genuine connections if you do interact with them. A hard sell in attempts to gain coverage will often be off putting and potentially harmful to your reputation.
- Think about thumbnails. Getting people to click onto your videos in the first place means you need an appealing thumbnail image. Consider taking the time to make a good quality thumbnail that summaries your video effectively.
- Grab your audience’s attention and retain it! You want (and need!) viewers to stay on your video once they have clicked on to it. To do this, make your content as appealing and interesting as possible. Think about what leads you to stay on a video as well as what makes you skip to something else. Evaluating your own behaviors here can help improve the quality of your own videos.
- Consistency – where possible. YouTube, as a social media platform, functions with good ‘ol algorithms so where possible, be consistent with uploads. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to upload every single day, or even every week. But avoid long periods of inactivity where you can. Scheduling tools can help here.
Check out the Heavy Business Podcast for more in-depth discussions using YouTube for promotion: