YouTube is an incredible platform that can be utilized for various purposes. Women and minority business owners (MWBE), BIPOC-owned businesses (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) as well as entrepreneurs can create YouTube channels to promote their businesses for free. It is simple to do, and importantly very cost effective, which is even more important for those business owners who often lack access to bank and other forms of financing.
As one of the most popular sites online, YouTube can be used to build an entire audience from scratch. Many brands, minority or female-owned businesses and influencers develop large followings from their content, reaching thousands of targeted viewers and potential customers, all for free. Whether you already have a business or not, the platform can drive traffic to your offers for increased revenue.
Many small business owners as well as startups make their YouTube channel(s) as a marketing strategy as it is so easy to do. Some business owners also make personal channels based on their hobbies or passions. You can even make money by becoming a YouTube influencer or expert on a topic and building a business or personal brand. Or create free content to highlight a new business product you are offering. However, if you want to do any of these things, you need to know how to get more YouTube views.
Some studies, including from Business Insider and Google, show that YouTube delivers a higher return on investment than TV or other social media platforms, and about 75% of business owners have a higher return on YouTube. That ROI can be critical to making your minority or women owned business succeed.
Getting views can be tricky at first. Some MWBE business or start up owners spend hours creating detailed content for their channel, only to be disappointed when they get a handful or under a thousand views. Fortunately, there are many completely free strategies you can use to get more YouTube viewers and even convert them into subscribers.
One of the best ways to develop an audience for your MWBE company is for your videos to be found within the search results. As users type relevant terms into the search bar, it is important your videos appear near the top of the results. So how can you optimize videos to help appear in the search results? You can even get a free SEO consultation, which can help with YouTube ranking as well. Get free SEO advice.
1. Use Enticing Titles
One of the most effective ways to maximize your YouTube views is to optimize your titles. Your title is one of the first things people will see when they search YouTube, so make titles that entice people to click. Google search also uses the title as a key data point.
A good title will encourage people to watch the video, helping to increase click-through rate. As the video gets more clicks and likes, your search position should improve. You should also get more views from people sharing your content. An effective title for your women, veteran or minority owned business will include a target keyword, but still be written for searchers instead of the search engine. To find appropriate keywords, use the Google Keyword Planner, SEMRush or KeywordTool.io for suggestions of popular terms.
Your titles don’t need to be over-the-top or misleading. Simply make them more eye-catching and click-worthy. For instance, instead of “Best Exercises” use something more unique and descriptive like “Best Home Exercises To Get Ripped This Summer”. You might even want to research popular search terms and use them in your titles.
2. Pad Your Descriptions With Keywords For Your Women-Minority Business
Another way to get more YouTube views is to add popular keywords to your descriptions. Much like websites add highly-searched keywords to maximize their search engine optimization (SEO), a keyword-packed description will get you more hits both via Google and YouTube’s search features. Use a couple keywords in the description as well. It helps the google algorithms know what your video is about as google uses an increase amount of AI to determine what to display to searchers.
While the description can include a great deal of important information, very little of it will be shown in the search results. In general, a search engine will only show the first 150 characters of your description. Focus your attention on creating an enticing opening line that compliments the title. It may be a brief summary of the content, business, product you are trying to sell, etc. The description needs to be short, and relevant to the content of the video. The title will be most important, but the description could include some additional information that catches the eye.
You might even want to use tools such as the free Google Keyword Planner and YouTube’s predictive search to research keywords to use. Find popular search terms related to the content of your video and make sure to include them in your video descriptions.
3. Make Use Of Your Video Tags
In addition to optimizing your video descriptions and titles, you should also add any relevant keywords to your video tags. Many people underutilize the tag feature, but it can be incredibly helpful for bringing more eyes to your videos.
While the importance of tags for website content has been reduced by the search engines, they still play a key role on YouTube. Tags are used to provide relevance, helping both viewers and YouTube itself to understand the content within the video. Adding unnecessary tags could potentially be damaging to results, so focus on listing the most relevant and focused categories in your content.
Make sure you add any popular terms that people might search for. This will make your videos more visible on Google and YouTube, resulting in more views for you. You might even want to keep a list of common keywords to add to all your videos before adding other video-specific keywords.
4. Promote Your Videos With Your Business Social Media Account
Working on your video SEO can go so far, but you should also work on promoting your videos in other ways. Social media is an excellent tool for bringing your YouTube videos to the attention of many new people. You should have a Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. business account for your veteran, women, or minority business. Post your YouTube videos to it.
Make sure you post all of your videos on relevant platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Use relevant hashtags to help people find them. You should also encourage viewers to share your videos – this can be incredibly effective for building a following fast.
5. Collaborate With Other YouTubers or Influencers That Support Women-Minority Businesses
YouTubers who make videos on similar topics often collaborate on special crossover videos. Not only does this make for some very entertaining content, but it’s also one of the best ways to tap into a wider audience. Many influencers focus on social causes, and there are more influencers, bloggers and others who are willing to promote Black, LGBTQ, Latino and minority owned businesses. Contact them for publicity.
When you collaborate with other YouTubers, you’ll instantly gain more views as their viewers will check out your channel. Try finding similar YouTubers, or those that encourage shopping at Latino and Black businesses, with larger followings and ask them if they’d like to collaborate on a fun project.
6. Use Eye-Catching Thumbnails
Another of the best ways to get more YouTube views is to optimize your video thumbnails. People often scan over titles when they’re looking through YouTube search results, but an eye-catching thumbnail (which is the image a searcher will first see) is often enough to make them click.
The thumbnail image is a chance for you as an entrepreneur or business owner to offer something visually appealing, helping to tempt searchers into clicking your link. Rather than letting YouTube show an autogenerated thumbnail, choose your own image to attract people to your women owned or minority owned business. It is worth testing different types of video screenshots across new content, but you can often get a better click-through rate by designing a unique graphic for each video.
Instead of using the default thumbnail, change the thumbnail of each video to an enticing scene. You can also add a short, snappy caption in a large, readable font to make more people click. Some popular YouTubers or business owners even use custom-designed thumbnails for every video.
7. Make Videos Based On Current Trends
If you want to get more viewers fast, it helps to create content based on current trends, including social justice trends or equal rights. If you know that tons of people are searching for content on a certain event right now, such as Black Lives Matter or equal rights for women in the business world, making a tie-in video is an excellent way to attract people to your channel.
For example, during major sporting events such as the Olympics, many YouTubers make relevant content to tie in with the event. Fitness channels cover athletes’ routines, reaction channels react to notable results, and many channels post videos delivering facts and stats on the event. Cosmetic or apparel business owners may push the latest trends, minority or women owned restaurants the latest food trend or what not. If you can find an angle that’s relevant to your channel, this can be a great way to take advantage of a trending event. Use the free Google Trends service to help with this as it shows the latest trends in the nation and worldwide.
8. Engage With The Community – Your Business Customers and Clients
As a small business owner, or start up, you often lack the same advertising and marketing budget. This is even more true for women, Black, Asian or Hispanic owned businesses who are often shut out of the capital markets. Many popular YouTubers and business owners build a strong following due to being active in the community. For instance, makeup YouTubers often interact with each other as well as their fans both on YouTube and social media.
Make sure you like and respond to all of your comments – this can make your viewers feel valued and make them more likely to subscribe. You should also get involved in any relevant forums, Facebook groups, and even comment on related YouTubers channels to boost your visibility.
9. Ensure That Your Videos Link Into Each Other
Sometimes YouTubers find that one or two of their videos take off but the rest suffer from low view counts. Fortunately, it’s easy to counteract this by linking your videos together as much as possible. Even see the End Screen process below.
One way to do this is to add cards linking to other YouTube videos via the YouTube video editor. Many people use this for their end screens, but you can also add links at any relevant point of the video. You should also add links to other videos in your descriptions and create playlists for your videos to keep people watching.
10. Encourage Viewers To Subscribe and Follow Your BIPOC or MWBE Business
Subscribers can enhance your YouTube views much faster than new viewers. The more subscribers you have (think about them as customers to your business), the more consistent your view counts should be. As such, you should aim to convert as many viewers into subscribers as possible.
Most YouTubers and business owners encourage viewers to subscribe and hit the bell for notifications in every video. However, you should also give them incentives to do so. You might want to offer a giveaway for subscribers or even offer to do a special video once you hit a certain subscriber count.
11. Closed Captions
Closed captions (CC) can be used to add some additional text content to your videos, enhancing the experience for viewers and assisting the search engine. It is mostly for deaf and/or heard of hearing internet users.
Adding relevant keywords to the content can lead to rankings for a wider variety of search terms, but it is important to only use these keywords where appropriate. You can also use the same method to add subtitles that benefit you in the search results.
12. End Screen
End screens appear after your main content has ended, promoting other videos and offers. There can be up to 4 elements involved and in general they can last as long as 20 seconds in total. At the end of the day, it is a thumbnail that you can add to the end of your video to encourage other views of your content.
The end screen can be used to promote a complimentary video, so users remain on your channel. Additionally, you can gain more likes and shares by directly asking viewers to promote you. A positive reaction to your content, from individual videos and the channel as a whole, are key to gaining prominent positions within the search results.
Conclusion
Building a loyal YouTube following for your women or minority or BIPOC owned business can take a while. However, these easy and free tips can speed up the process and make it much easier to get more YouTube views and subscribers for your channel. Remember, YouTube provides a higher return on investment (ROI) than TV!
There are various ways to build an audience on YouTube, with the search results only one element. The biggest YouTube accounts promote themselves across all social media, integrating cross-promotion and paid ads to make their mark. Optimizing videos for the search results, though, is a great way to get targeted traffic, with specific searches suggesting users will be a good fit for your brand.
Make sure you use as many of these strategies as possible and you’ll soon notice your view counts rising fast. As time goes on, more viewers will turn into customers of your business (subscribers) and you’ll consistently gain a good amount of views for every video you post.
Gaining traction on YouTube for your startup or business can be difficult at first, but as you start to post a number of quality videos and tweak your approach based on measurable results, each new video should have a greater chance of a prime position for your target search terms.
By Jon McNamara