Being the second most used search engine globally, YouTube offers you a significant advantage in attracting traffic or visits to your website. However, it can also be very beneficial for promoting and disseminating your campaigns. But, there are several mistakes that you should not make on your YouTube channel to ensure that all these advantages are reflected in sales.
In this article, you will learn about some of the most basic drawbacks of video content strategies, regardless of the type of content you generate, whether for companies or influencers. Read on to learn how to spot these missteps and fix them instantly.
How to see the possible errors on your YouTube channel?
Before you start, you need to have the tools to visualize the errors affecting your strategies more accurately. For this, you will use YouTube Analytics, a tool available for free within your channel; it is that section where you have a great list of all your statistics.
To interpret them, you have two options, the first is to analyze the data obtained for a single video, and the second is to have an overview of the channel’s performance. We will focus on the latter to have a complete report on the statistics generated in the last 30 days. But keep in mind that this tool also has other more detailed reports so you can get the most out of your statistics.
In any case, you will view the number of views that your videos generated, the number of your subscribers, the number of current subscribers, generated interactions, and others. But, you also have other analytical options like the following.
- Real-time report: It is a metric that shows you the activities and interactions of the 20 best videos every 10 seconds.
- Viewing time: It is an important statistic that reflects how much time your users spent on average watching your videos; it is information that the algorithm uses to prioritize the results page.
- Interactions: The number of likes and comments generated on your content.
- Income: This reflects the data of the effectiveness of the ads that you have paid to advertise.
Why does your YouTube channel have few views?
Since you have an overview of your data, you may be wondering why you have few reproductions. The truth is that as in other social networks or in Google itself, it is difficult to determine what are the aspects that influence the positioning. However, you can get an idea depending on the type of content, the language used, the organization of the text in the video’s description, among others that may be responsible for the popularity of a video.
You must bear in mind that YouTube works with a keyword positioning algorithm, so the content within the video must be complemented with other aspects, such as the title, description, URL, among others. In this way, the better optimized your channel is, the more likely you will position the videos in the first places of the results pages; more people will see your videos. The following are among the most important aspects that make a video more visible.
- The channel name influences the positioning.
- The channel overview needs to be optimized.
- Video content and cover images carry significant weight.
- The links to a website or blog associated usually have greater visibility.
- Including other social networks is also possible to guarantee a good positioning.
- Other settings within YouTube, such as channel recommendation, can increase visibility.
Errors that you should not make on your YouTube channel
Now, you know what aspects positively influence positioning in the search YouTube, but it is important not to ignore negative aspects. Those are those errors that you must make us on your channel. Here is a list of the most important ones.
You are not identifying your audience well
The first mistake is not knowing how to identify your audience well or the topic you will focus on. Many people want to start a career as YouTubers without being clear about the niche they will target; in this case, it is not enough to start posting videos randomly or have a general theme.
This is because the YouTube algorithm is designed to position videos in a segmented way; that is why it is recommended that all videos be related to each other in a single theme. If you establish an explicit category for your account, you will know your audience well.
To carry out this process, you can also use other tools such as Google Analytics to verify the type of audience you attract and important data about their demographics. The following are the things to keep in mind when identifying your audience.
- Know what their interests and needs are
- Com turns its cultural and social context
- Please consider their location, that is, the country where they reside
- The age of the audience is on average
- The type of academic training they have acquired
- Their social role and their role within the family
Stop being active on social networks
One of the most important factors when trying to get more views on your YouTube channel is the frequency of publication. If you don’t have this feature, it is doubtful that you will get a good ranking, even if your videos are of very high quality. That is why you should establish a sound frequency of publications, especially if you want to generate a prominent organic positioning.
One of the suggestions from YouTube positioning experts indicates that an average of two to three videos should be uploaded weekly. Likewise, you should also pay attention to the time of publication, and the experts guarantee that the peak viewing hours are between 12:00 and 16:00. This allows videos to be indexed before 6:00 p.m., when the peak traffic time begins.
At the same time, you must do your homework when marketing your videos, publish them on other social networks, invite other users of your digital platform to visit the channel, and generate popularity from other links.
Avoid commenting or interacting with your followers
Beginning content creators often make this mistake, but there are many reasons why this happens, whether it’s due to time constraints or trying a pretentious image. However, it is very important to comment and interact with followers because it gives a touch of humility and empathy to the channel. Still, it is also one of the essential aspects of positioning.
The YouTube algorithm can recognize when a channel is interested in the doubts or comments of its users so that they generate conversations between communities, generating a productive space for the topic discussed in the channel. So with this, the search engine can position itself as a reference within the social network. Among the aspects that you can use for comments are the following.
- Write a long sentence using the keywords from the video.
- Use emoticons, images, or any other format available in the comments.
- Highlight a comment with a large number of interactions.
- Promote a link within the comments; it could be for another video or your website.
- Customize the comments, do not just make a generic response; use the user’s name who interacts and do it with kindness.
Not paying attention to the first seconds
It is proven that most YouTube users decide whether to watch a full video for the first 3 seconds. Therefore, if you use your first few seconds for a long introduction, visitors may lose interest and jump to another video as a result.
To avoid this error, you must pay attention and take better advantage of these 3 seconds. It is advisable to start talking about the subject directly; some trends indicate that naming a factor or essential data during the first three seconds may be enough to guarantee the permanence of the user.
After those 3 seconds, you can proceed to the introduction of the channel and then continue developing the content directly. The important thing here is to hook visitors and prevent them from getting bored. The secret is to quickly give them what you promised in the video title, after which you will have an additional two or three minutes to explain more about the subject.
Neglecting the editing details
During creating video content for YouTube, it is very important to take care of the details, both audio and video. For example, great YouTubers are very concerned about background sound, so they will record again if there is an annoying noise, all this for the quality of the video. If these experts do this work just because of the sound of a horn in the background, it must be because it is something important, mainly in respect of the user.
Therefore, the details of the edition are very important, especially when your main objective is to establish a better relationship with your user, such as guaranteeing engagement for a brand. High-quality edits are often highly valued by visitors, so not only will they like the video, but they’ll also be more likely to subscribe. It would be best if you kept in mind, runs are as follows.
- Test the sound volume in your video; this is very important because the sound will always be decisive no matter how well the screen looks.
- Using transitions and other editing factors, they could make viewing more comfortable.
- Also, please pay attention to the text within the platform, do not use capital letters unless they are in acronyms.
- Always add a call to action at the end, whether to subscribe, comment, or even visit an external platform.
Posting content too long
Likewise, some studies within the platform have also shown that content longer than 3 minutes is usually easily discarded. Although this will also depend a lot on the user, if he usually watches videos of 10 minutes on average, the algorithm may recommend videos this long.
But, generally, people tend to capture their attention in videos of less than 3 minutes. In this way, it is important to reduce the content and avoid information that is not relevant; likewise, to make a hierarchization by points easy to process. You also need to think about the video structure, separate them into three sections, introduction, body, and conclusion.
You can use different formats, such as storytelling, a strategy that consists of explaining a topic based on a true story or using bullet points, that is, points or subtitles to separate the content. In these cases, it is worth looking at what your competition is doing, so apply something similar to reduce content and guarantee a more excellent permanence of users.
Post ephemeral content
One of the many errors that cause the “5 minutes of fame” effect is ephemeral content. A video goes viral from one moment to another, but without considering that it will not have permanence in time. For example, a scandal in Hollywood can make a video viral for a couple of days, but users will quickly forget it, so they will gradually stop looking for it on YouTube.
In this case, it is important to produce evergreen content, that is, that is durable over time. These can have a viral effect at some point; however, it is important to ensure that users will continue to talk about it for the long term. For example, content that talks about “Hollywood’s most shocking scandals” will make a difference, more than just talking about Taylor Swift’s new boyfriend.
Although fine, you can also play with this by talking about a topic that has been so shocking that it made history. Following the same example from the world of cinema, a scandal that has not been allowed to speak (because it is a classic) is the romance between Marilyn Monroe and Kennedy; it remains an important issue to position in the long term, especially in times of elections.
Finally, these may not be all the errors you should not make on your YouTube channel. You should also pay attention to the optimization drawbacks of the same platform. For example, the language you use when speaking in a video is increasingly important to the position. In this case, don’t discount anything and optimize your channel as much as possible.
