 In this video, I'm going to show you how to promote your YouTube videos to increase the views if you're a small YouTuber like me. Now I've observed over time that as a small YouTuber, if you don't work 500% more and you want to rely solely on being fully organic, without using some of these strategies that I'm going to share with you right now, strategies that are free and at your own disposal, then your channel won't grow as fast as it possibly could. And as the title of this video indicates a comprehensive guide, so let's make sure we understand why we even need to do this to get more views on the videos that we post. Now, when you understand the why, it makes it much more durable to do the how. This video is going to be broken into three parts. Why, what and how. So why? As a content creator or an artist, musician or consultant or whatever, what you create and post out there for the world to enjoy or use or even buy is considered a product that you have worked so hard to create. When you create a product, you want to reap some kind of benefit from it. Even if it's not monetary benefits and all you want is the benefit of satisfaction that someone sees it and admires it and brings them some kind of happiness. That is your aim for creating the said product. You're selling yourself and what you'll create, even if all it brings is joy to you, joy is your benefit. Now imagine having all these amazing products and your store is underground in some bunker with no sign or even entry point. Nobody's going to see it. All these amazing products are not going to be seen by anyone. A simple analogy is turning on the light and putting it in the cupboard. You're still in the dark. So essentially, if you want people to engage you and buy into what you're selling, you need to direct attention to your store and that in a nutshell is what promotion is. This is your why. Now what? Promotion. In marketing, promotion covers all the activities you do to increase awareness of our products or services. It's a great interest in it for a target audience to get them to see the benefits of buying into this specific, in this case, view in our videos and recommending it to others. When you promote and they see it and they come and watch it, you want them to come back and watch more of what you have and that's why you ask them to like, to share and subscribe. Promotion is also used to create brand loyalty, what you call subscribers. People who enjoy watching your products and want more of it. So promotion is very important and if they don't stay or subscribe or even like it, it could only mean that well, your products, in this case your video, didn't benefit them in the way that they wanted. They were not entertained, inspired, informed or educated by it. But that's a whole other topic which is product development and that's not what we're discussing now. We'll do that in another video. Today we're talking about promotion. So we'll assume that we have great videos but YouTube, I mean, we're not getting people to watch it and that's why we need to promote it properly to get the views. Good promotion comes in three parts. Pre-promote, real-time or actual promo and then post-promotion and yes, you have to do all of it, especially the first two. Pre-promote is basically creating anticipation for the videos that you're about to launch or post on your channel. Why should people want to see it? The real-time or actual promo is engaging your audience while your video is live or in this case either premiering or replying content and even engaging your viewers and then post-promotion is the re-engagement you try to do to get through to the people who may have missed your previous promotional post or activities. Now, if you liked this video so far, please give it a thumbs up. It means a lot to also make sure the algorithm suggests it to other more viewers to learn. Now let me tell you why this works or use a simple example which is in your face all the time. All film industries use it, Hollywood, Bollywood and so on. Production companies are spending a lot of money and time on promotion because it's the key to making sure that they gain all they've put in. The films they make are the products and in order to create anticipation, you may start seeing teasers behind the scenes post-actors giving hints and all that before even the trailer comes out. If you're lucky, you're going to have several versions of the trailer until the actual movie launches. That's pre-promote. On the day of the launch, there's the Red Carpet event, celebrity engagements, premieres all over the world and this is also to improve the engagement with you, the viewer, to make sure that they are reaping the maximum benefits from the product. They spend a lot of time and money creating new buy tickets to watch movies. That is the real time or actual promo. And if you've probably also realized that after the movie, there are behind the scenes videos that surface bloopers, actor interviews, reviews, hidden messages you may have missed and all these post-promotional activities to keep the movie lingering for as long as it takes to make sure that it has the maximum engagement or somebody or ceases. Now that you've understood your what, let's enter part three, which is the how. All these tools are available at your disposal. You have it in the palm of your hands. If you're producing content at this level, chances are you are on other social media platforms. Those are the places where your target audience hang out until you build such a strong brand on YouTube where you have such a strong fan base that you do not need to promote your videos to get a decent amount of views. You need to manually create these brand loyalty promotions to make sure that you're using your social capital like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or WhatsApp. And what I would advise is that you play to your strengths. The more you're on potential viewers radar, the more it's easier for them for you to gather support and get more views. Don't be the kind of creator that only shows up online to share their new video and then vanishes until the next one is ready. You're creating content and putting yourself out there. You are creating a community around your products and your video content. It's not an abandoned museum where you go and leave your art and do nothing about it. No, every time you post a video it's an exhibition day or launch where you walk in the gallery and possibly engage your viewers of your work actively. So in employing the same strategy used by Hollywood you need to pay attention to these elements I'm about to mention. Your thumbnail is your movie or video artwork and it should receive a lot of attention in design making sure it generates clicks and increased anticipation. You post this with catchy captions or messages on social media and of course you cut and edit some punchy areas of your video and use it as a trailer and promo to what people can expect when they watch your video. This could be anywhere between 15 to 60 seconds with a call to action message leading them to a link that they can use to watch the video. Try and also engage your social media community about the topics your video are centered on. It improves the relatability to your videos. So these are your social media posts on the topics and it will garner general comments and engagement before the launch. YouTube allows you to premiere your videos in order to engage your audience while your video is airing for the first time and this also gives you the opportunity to engage them while it's airing. That is your red carpet interview and premiere all in one. When this is done don't forget to like the comments and reply and engage your audience as much as you can. It makes them feel seen and part of your community because they really are. And finally after a few days you want to remind people of the existence of the video if you're not someone who posts every day so as to keep them in the top of mind recall of your audience and someone as someone who has created content that they like to watch. This is the amount of work that you're most likely to do to your videos in promo week after week so you get to the point where you don't have to do this religiously. That's when you build some kind of brand loyalty that people know and know exactly what to expect from you without much fuss. Remember that these tips that I'm giving are not magic tips that you do and immediately you start hitting viral numbers for your views or videos. Although this is possible I've observed that the videos I have created that I didn't get enough or I didn't put enough effort into promotion seldom does well and when I put a little effort into it I'm able to meet my view duration or channel average numbers. All this just to get about 140 to 200 views within 24 hours which is my channel average at the moment. Sometimes I reshare a couple of times just to meet that target so if you could improve the chances of your video getting seen and viewed why not do it. Let's get this video to beat that channel average with your likes and that can change that real quick. My name is Kwame and if you like this video all I ask from you at this point is to give it a thumbs up if it helped in any way. Check out my other YouTube tips in the link above and below in the description box and I'll catch you in the next video.