SketchShe is a female comedy trio who saw the highest conversion of views to subscribers on YouTube with their first viral video ‘Bohemian Carsody’. Their second video to go viral was ‘Instafaker’, this popularity led them to appear on the Ellen show, and they found themselves with their own TV show soulmates on ABC iView.
They talk to us about how you can use different social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to grow your YouTube channel and audience, as well as your brand in general.
Use your thumbnail to stand out from other videos
On YouTube, you are competing with millions, even billions of other videos. Make sure your video stands out from the crowd by making your thumbnail bright and clear, and by overlaying your thumbnail with engaging text. It’s important to make sure your video’s title is also intriguing enough to have people click on the video.
Make the first three lines of your description box count
When people see your description box, they will see the first three lines before having to click ‘show more’, so make sure that you show 3 points that your audience needs to know. SketchShe optimizes its description box by following this:
the first line is a description of the video
the second line is a link to subscribe to your YouTube channel
third is a link out to another social media page for cross-promotion.
Following this template means that viewers can subscribe to your channel and find you on Facebook or Instagram – or wherever you have linked out to without having to read more.
Have a subscribe link in your video
The subscription link is what prompts people to watch more content from your channel or to subscribe to your channel. With YouTube, if someone is subscribed to your channel they will receive an email notification and/or push notification whenever you upload a new video. Traditionally the prompt to subscribe will always appear on the end screen of every video in the same format. This doesn’t have to be the case, be creative with the way that you show you subscribe box/link for optimum conversions.
Utilize all social channels
YouTube content is no longer just for YouTube. You should be sharing video content across all of your channels. This will increase exposure to your brand, and you will start to find audiences who aren’t on YouTube. For instance, SketchShe has over 8ooK subscribers on YouTube, but over 1 million on Facebook - you don’t know where exactly you will find the most followers/subscribers.
Upload regularly to keep your audience engaged
If you are not constantly engaging your followers, they will forget about you and move on to another brand that is providing them with entertainment and content. With an online brand, you need to be posting on a daily basis, and be interacting with your fans and audience around the clock. You need to stay current and be in people’s minds.
Quality over Quantity
If you want your Facebook content to show up in people’s news feeds, it’s about quality over quantity. If you post content that people are engaging with, Facebook will determine that piece of content to be of high quality, and so the next time you post something on your page, it will appear higher on your followers’ news feeds. The more consecutively quality content you are posting, the more likely your content is to be seen by your followers.
Upload to all social channels
The more places that you are posting your content, the more opportunity you have to reach a greater number of people. To get the best result in reaching a large audience, upload organically to both YouTube and Facebook. If you do want to push people from Facebook to YouTube, then upload a 1-2 minute trailer to your Facebook page linking to your YouTube channel. For Instagram, you should change the link in your bio to your latest YouTube video. Then put up a 1-minute teaser with the direction to click the link in your bio.
You can watch SketchShe further explain the points in this article in this video: