Get More Viewers with Social Media Marketing for YouTube

After uploading your video on YouTube, you may want to sit back and enjoy the massive uptick of views and subscribers. However, until you have established a big following on YouTube, only a few people are going to see your freshly published video… unless you share on social media.

So don’t relax yet, it’s time to spread the word about your video and channel on social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Reddit. 

Why is social media the best place to share your YouTube video? Let’s take a quick look at the statistics of some of the biggest social platforms in the world:

- Facebook has over 2.1 billion monthly active users.

- Instagram has approximately 800 million monthly active users.

- Twitter has approximately 330 million monthly active users.

- Reddit has approximately 330 million monthly active users. 

- Snapchat has approximately 200 million monthly active users.

While your loyal viewers might watch your videos on YouTube, YouTube might not be the platform they spend the most time on.

Start by understanding your audience. If your YouTube channel is discussing fan theories for a popular television show, then Twitter and Reddit should be where you direct your efforts. If you are creating video content that has a lot of visual appeal, like travel or photography, then Instagram and Snapchat are better for cross-promotional content.

By promoting on the right social platform, there’s a better chance of discoverability. Additionally, branding that is consistent across all social media increases the trust among your viewers. Consistency does not mean simply putting the YouTube video onto Instagram or sharing it on Facebook.

Content is not one-size fits all!

Regardless of what platform your viewers are spending most of their time on, it’s important to understand how the community interacts. Sharing your video content on Facebook is different than on Reddit. What may be okay on one platform may come across as spam in another.

In this post, we will go through the best practices of sharing and engaging with your audience on 5 of the most popular social media channels.

Table of Content:

1. Instagram
2. Facebook
3. Twitter
4. Reddit
5. Snapchat

Part 1: Instagram for YouTube Channel Marketing

There is a lot of content today and therefore, audiences are more selective about how they choose to spend their time.

Take this example: Before you go to the theater to watch a movie, you might see a poster or a trailer first.

A movie poster lets you know this movie is coming to theatres and the trailer gives you a taste of what to expect before you buy the ticket and sit in the theater for two hours. If the promotional materials don’t entice, you wouldn’t go see the movie.

Instagram can work much in the same way for your YouTube channel. Your Instagram account can be a platform for attracting new viewers and hyping up your loyal following.

1. Using Bite-sized Snackable Content on Instagram

Images and one-minute long videos can engage with your users, help them work up an appetite for your videos, and direct them to your YouTube channel for more.

The great thing about Instagram — compared to YouTube — is that it’s easier to produce content for Instagram every day without exhausting your resources.

Be thinking about what you can post on to Instagram while you work on your YouTube video. You want a really attractive image or short video, which can be something you capture as you work on your long-form video: short preview or behind the scenes footage.

2. Share Your Life

Instagram allows you to consistently post content from your life. This allows you to connect with your audience as they discover more about you, so when it comes time for the YouTube video, they feel that have an established relationship with you.

They see your picture or video on their feed every day after all. You and your followers are practically friends.

While Instagram has multiple ways you can post onto the platform, we will talk about two very different strategies:

How YouTubers Should Post on Instagram Feed

When you post an image or a video onto Instagram directly it will be on your timeline and acts as a tile for your whole Instagram feed page. This piece of content will stay on your page forever, or until you delete it.

Like your YouTube videos, the content you post to your Instagram directly should have a cohesive theme that matches your branding. Keep an eye on your: -

- Aesthetic

- Caption

- Filter

As Instagram has grown in popularity, a lot of tools have been developed to help creators like yourself. Here are a few apps that you can include in your kit:

- VSCO: A photo editor app that will allow you to clean up and enhance details to really make your visuals pop.

- UNUM: An Instagram planner app that enables you to visualize and pre-plan your post.

- Later: A scheduling tool you can use to auto-publish to directly to Instagram.  

- Planoly: Drag and drop scheduler and planner, allows you to see the whole grid before posting.  

Here’s Liza Koshy’s Instagram feed. As you can see, she has a clear style and also a variety of content. If you haven’t heard of Liza Koshy and found her through Instagram, you get curious: “What does she do?” Instagram is fantastic for building intrigue and garnering interest.

Instagram: Liza Koshy

This will be a good place to post a teaser of your latest video, upload an inspiring image, or share an interesting piece of content that shows the world what you are all about.

Have a different type of content lined up. You don’t want someone to end up on your Instagram page and only see selfies or inspiring quotes.

You won’t know which type of content will hook your next fan... so experiment.

When you post onto Instagram directly, you can’t add a are unable to link in the caption. This has been a bane for marketers and creators since the beginning of Instagram.

Instagram: Pointless Blog

While Instagram is a great engagement platform, it hasn’t been the best channel for those who want to have a direct call to action. The old method was to direct the viewer to your Instagram bio where there is the only place to post a link.

However, once you’ve gained a large following (10K) you will be able to attached links in Instagram Story.

2. How YouTubers Should on Post Instagram Story </h3 >

Instagram Story allows you to post a series of images and videos over the course of 24 hours. After that, the collection of content — or “story” — from that day disappears.

1. Don’t want your Instagram Story to disappear forever?

There is a feature called “Highlight” which archives your stories so that you can view them later, however, they will be kept on your Instagram profile page. This allows visitors to see your best stories and have prepared content even when you go 24 hours without posting something new. 

Instagram: Marianna Hewitt

2. Use Instagram Story to Make an Announcement

While you are uploading your latest video to YouTube, go on Instagram Story and let your followers know.

Unlike posting directly to the Instagram timeline, once you reach a certain milestone, Instagram Story allows you to create a link right in the content. The ability to offer something timely and encourage the viewer to swipe up is a fantastic way to catch your audience when they are most interested in your content. By doing so, you redirect them from Instagram to your YouTube video.

Instagram: Jenn Im 

Don’t think of Instagram Story as simply a mean for promoting your video, but a chance to give your loyal viewers an exclusive view into your process, allow them to get familiar with your personality and increase the exposure of your brand as a whole, solidifying your relationship.

Part 2: Facebook for YouTube Channel Marketing

Facebook is the world’s most popular social media platform. With that claim, it can help any new YouTuber find and grow their audience. It doesn’t matter if their channel is about fashion or karate, Facebook is an appropriate platform for interacting with the audience, as long as the content you share is relevant and click-worthy.

There are a number of ways to share content on Facebook:

- Sharing on your own personal timeline allows your Friends to see the content.

- Sharing directly to a particular group or person’s feed assures those in the group or that specific person will see the content.

- Sharing via a separate Page you’ve built for your YouTube channel allows those who are following the page to see the content.  

1. Improve YouTube Video Thumbnail on Facebook

Facebook doesn’t make it easy for YouTubers to show their video on Facebook’s news feed, especially if it is hosted on YouTube.

When you post your video from YouTube directly to Facebook, it’ll look something like the image above. Unremarkable. While your audience can still view the video on the Facebook timeline, your fans scrolling by wouldn’t even notice it.

This is Facebook’s way of encouraging you to post videos directly to Facebook’s platform. Which is something you should consider as well, but as you are currently working to grow your YouTube channel, it’s good to focus on this task first.

Well, how do you make the post look better? There is a tool called Thumb Tube that gives you full sized image on Facebook:

Thumb Tube takes your YouTube video link and redirects it so it is now hosted on ThumbTube.com. Yet, anyone viewing the video there is watching on YouTube, not Facebook. This allows you to still capture all the views, likes, and comments on YouTube.  

1. Managing a Facebook Page for Your YouTube Channel

Know this, Facebook has been around for over a decade, and establishing yourself on the social network in 2018 is not what it was like in the late ‘00s. Hard truths: building a following from scratch is going to be a lot of work.

1. Growing on Facebook is Hard!

Before you go and start committing yourself to Facebook, consider your capacity and your audience: are you able to dedicate time and effort on Facebook? Is this the best platform to reach your viewers?

So Facebook is for you. How should you approach it?

2. Setup a Facebook Page for your YouTube Channel

This separates your personal account from your channel, allowing you to still have some autonomy. You don’t necessarily want your fans to be your friends… On top of that, having a separate page for your channel enables you to keep a consistent branding, which is important in getting more likes and subscribers.

To set up a separate Facebook Page:

1. Go to Facebook, and click “Pages” in the right-hand column

2. Click “Create Pages”
3. Let Facebook know whether your Page will be classified as a “Business or Brand” or a “Community or Public Figure"

4. Name your Page, preferably your YouTube channel name
5. Add Profile and Cover pictures
6. INVITE! 

Treat your Facebook Page like another homepage for your channel. Landing on your page might be the first interaction the audience will have with your brand, so it is important that it is similar to your YouTube channel. This means, the logo has to match, the descriptions need to be aligned, and the cover photo should somewhat resemble your YouTube channel art.

Once you are confident that all the Facebook elements are consistent, it’s time to start marketing.

3. Invite Your Facebook Friends to Like Your Page

Your circle of friends will give you your initial burst needed to grow your YouTube channel, as they like and comment on your videos. The more engagement you get, the more impressions your post will earn not just from your friends, but from your friends’ friends. This expands your network.

However, don’t post the same thing over and over again. It’ll come across as spam to your followers, and it’ll also look lazy if someone lands on your page and see the same piece of content repeated on your news feed.

Facebook is best if you are consistently sharing a variety of content related to your channel. 

This does not mean you have to be creating them all. If you were to post five times a week, perhaps only one of the post can be originally created by you. Curate content (i.e. blog, infographics, podcasts, images) that matches your audience’s interest. By always having engaging content that your fans are eager to like, share, and comment, this will give your videos more exposure when it is time to share it.

Pro Tip: Save time by scheduling your Facebook content ahead of time. By batching your Facebook content to be uploaded in one sitting, you can have a week to a month of content prepped ahead of time, so you can go back to focusing on YouTube. 

Managing Facebook as a channel to build your YouTube audience can be very effective, but it is a lot of work in itself.

Managing Facebook involves:

- Posting content

- Responding to comments

- Engaging with Facebook groups 

- Tube Ritual (Video Marketing YouTube Group)

- Beauty and the Vlog (Fashion and Beauty YouTube Group)

- Travel Vloggers United (Travel YouTube Group)

- Evaluating performance repeatedly

Don’t spread yourself too thin. If YouTube is your priority, all other social media communities should be complementary, not an obligation.

Part 3: Twitter for YouTube Channel Marketing

Unlike Facebook or Instagram, Twitter is a platform where you must be ready with a large amount of valuable content to share, otherwise, you will be lost in the noise. Don’t be afraid to tweet similar content throughout a day. As long as it is done well and isn’t misleading viewers, it wouldn’t be considered spam.

Twitter allows you to get in front of some of the most influential people on the Internet and stay on top of global trends. It is not always easy to get noticed on Twitter, but when your content really resonates, it’s also hard to be ignored.

1. Take Advantage of Trending Hashtags

In order to be successful on Twitter, you must be ready to jump onto a relevant trend. If you are talking about something that nobody is interested in, you might not be heard at all. Keep an eye on the most popular hashtags for that day and get involved with a conversation.

While you should definitely tweet and gain engagement for your YouTube videos, you will also need to tweet out other content.

Constantly keeping an eye on what the world is talking about gives you an idea of what is important to discuss. This may even help guide your next YouTube video.

2. Tag Brands and Influencers

Twitter is a great platform if your channel showcases brands, personalities, or influencers because it gives you the ability to get in front of them. Getting a big brand or an influencer to share your video can earn you a lot more Twitter followers as well as a lot more views to your channel.

An effective way for YouTubers to use Twitter is to be active during an event. If you know that the event will get a lot of attention and the content you are producing is relevant to that audience, then use the official hashtag, tag an attendee, and get that crowd who are actively engaged during the duration of the event to view your videos.

Creators sharing their thoughts on #VidCon

Connecting with people with a lot of clouts can increase your credibility on the topic you are covering.

However, in order for these high-influence people to notice your YouTube channel via Twitter, you must commit to building your Twitter account and audience.

If your Twitter account looks amateurish, for example: if you display picture is still an egg, then any attempts at reaching out to these big brands and influencers will be a loss. Stay active and over time you will gain a following to support you.

Part 4: Reddit for YouTube Channel Marketing

Reddit for YouTube creators can be an intimidating place. Reddit users (Redditors) can sniff out marketing material or misleading click-baits.

You can commit this sin on other platform and get away with it, but on Reddit, this type of posting at best will not be ignored and at worst roasted alive in front of the whole platform.

Because of the anonymity of Reddit’s user base, the comments for posts are often unfiltered.  

1. Good Content Gets Seen and Discussed On Reddit

If you can tap into the community values of Reddit, contribute to conversations and share interesting and relevant content there might not be a better platform to grow your YouTube audience.

Many media organizations with a significant following are starting to use Reddit to find stories and viral content. The chances of being discovered on Reddit is much higher than on Twitter, as the upvote/downvote system gives your good work a higher platform to stand on while lowering the bad content to Reddit’s cellar.  

2. Don’t Promote Yourself

Reddit is not a platform where you enter, drop your content in, and expect people to engage with it. For Redditors, this is intrusive and unappreciated.

Imagine being at a party and talking to your friends, and then someone you don’t know comes in and starts a conversation about the latest movie, singing a song and asking for feedback, or discussing the coolest restaurants in town. That would be annoying, right?

You cannot go into Reddit blasting your content, because it wasn’t welcomed content.

Before you can get people on Reddit to care about your YouTube channel, you must show them that you care about them — the community.

From day one, you need to be a part of the community, and your reason for being a part of the community cannot be because you want to share content. If you have a hidden agenda, you will be discovered.

3. Understand the Reddiquettes

When engaging on Reddit, you must abide by rules which are called “reddiquette.” There are global reddiquettes and then there are individual community reddiquette.

Global reddiquettes:

- Search for duplicate content before posting.

- Consume the content before voting.

- Act as you would in real life.

- And more.

3. Community reddiquettes:

These are additional rules that the individual Reddit communities enforce. Be sure to read these rules before posting onto these specific communities. Understanding these rules will help you understand the purpose of this community.

Here is an example of reddiquettes for r/Cameras:

You only have so many strikes with Reddit before your account gets banned. But don’t worry about all that. Be your awesome self.

When you are on Reddit, don’t think of yourself as a YouTuber, think of yourself as a redditor, if you do, you’ll have a bright future on the platform.

4. Subreddits Where You Can Post Freely

While there are some subreddits that demand relevant content, some subreddits will allow you post your videos as long as 90% of your content are from another source aside from your YouTube channel, you won’t be considered spammy.

- r/YouTuber: Get critiques for your videos

- r/Videos: Post any video into the masses

- r/YTPL: Share a whole playlist

Because these subreddits are unfocused and loaded with a variety of content, it’s often tricky to find your specific audience there. Then again, you’ll never know.

Part 5: Snapchat for YouTube Channel Marketing

If your audience craves immediacy and exclusivity, then Snapchat is definitely the social media channel that you’d want to explore.

The ephemeral nature of Snapchat makes it a unique way of marketing your content as what you snap will only be available within 24 hours. Because what you post will only be available for a brief moment in time, those who are following you will dedicate their attention to your content knowing that if they miss it, they might never see it again.

This undivided attention cannot be recreated on Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit, as users can easily scroll pass your content.

The key is to get your audience a personalized experience on your Snapchat. What can you offer on Snapchat that they can’t get elsewhere?

1. Don’t Worry About Professionalism

Snapchat is young, fun, and silly. On Snapchat, your personality needs to be the fuel for your content.

Pull the curtains open and welcome your audience through the private window into your life. Treat your Snapchat audience less as a faceless crowd but as your friends and family. Take them on a private tour, show them unseen footage of your video, and don’t be afraid to use the filters, text, and theme to liven up your content.

Start following some popular YouTubers on Snapchat and you can quickly see how they are using it. Don’t use Snapchat as a place to perform, but instead a place for you to be spontaneous. Remember these content don’t last forever, so don’t take forever planning it out, just start doing it.

Promoting your Snapchat account can be hard if you are not a celebrity. Unlike Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, there is no in-app discovery or suggested users feature in Snapchat. The user will have to search for who they want to follow. Unless someone already knows about you, it’s unlikely that they will be following you on Snapchat. This makes promoting your account to your viewers essential for growth.

YouTuber, Markiplier tweeting his Snapchat username.

Here are a few quick tips for promoting your Snapchat account.

- Make sure your Snapchat handle is present on your YouTube channel and other social media platforms.

- Make your Snapchat snapcode your profile pic, so people can scan and connect with you.

- Get other Snapchatters to give you a shout-out on their account.

Marketing on social media is essential for not only growing your YouTube channel but your entire brand. If you like more content around social media marketing for your channel, join our community of YouTubers where we are always discussing new tactics and opportunities.

Is there a social media platform that you want to test out but not sure how? Leave a comment below.