Tips for partners: Ask and you shall receive

Over the last few weeks in our 'Tips for partners" series, we’ve shown you tips on:

• metadata 
• annotations and playlists 
• finding your niche and using Insights

Our partners have given their own tips on these topics: Bettyskitchen discussed metadata, ZackScott talked about annotations and playlists, and LinusTechTips gave tips on how to find your niche. Now that you are ready for fame and fortune, for our last topic in this series, we want to focus on the YouTube community and how to build your brand and audience.

Help Them Help You

Think of YouTube as your big, extended family; a large community who wants to engage with you, share their opinion, and help you be successful. So help them help you. Use social media such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Google Buzz to engage with your audience and let them know how to keep track of your different YouTube channels, social media outlets, and ways to contact you.

Use your referral headers to see what specific sites are your top referrals. You can see your referral headers through our Insight tool by going to ‘My Videos’ and clicking on ‘Insight’ under one video. Next, click on “Discovery” and then “External Links”, and set the date range. You can only see a breakdown of external links on an individual video, so make sure to review your top videos to see if your referrals are consistent or different.

An example of referrals for a video:

Customize your interaction with your audience based on your top referrals. If your top referrals are Facebook, Twitter, or Buzz, make sure to let your audience know via those mediums when your next video is live. If your top referrals are YouTube subscribers, post a bulletin to your subscribers letting them know you’d love for them to share your video with one new person.

To Do:

• Don’t be shy, push your content out there. Engage with your audience through YouTube, Twitter, Buzz, Facebook, MySpace and other social media through links to your channel and videos.
• Widen your reach. A huge amount of view counts come from embedded playbacks so take advantage of this and embed your videos. Share your video with blogs/sites aimed at your audience. They may embed your video because it reaches their target audience.
• Ask for subscribers! Subscribers can be the best marketers to push your content to different blogs and social media. Ask for subscribers on your channel, through your videos, or through annotations, and then ask them to share your video.
• It’s free to ask for feedback (just keep a thick skin). Make a video where you ask your viewers what they liked or didn’t like or what types of videos they would like to see.
• Look at your comments, see what your viewers are saying and feel free to respond. Also, through ‘Insight’ you can see the words most commonly used in comments of your videos. 
• Run Promoted Videos to get more eyeballs on your videos and drive community engagement. 
• Add your YouTube Channel to your email signature so your contacts are aware of your ongoing online presence and can easily access your channel.
• Two minds really are better than one. Collaborate and network with other YouTubers and amaze us with what you can create together.

Now is a great time to log into your account and check out your top referrals and make sure viewers know how to connect with you through social media. Tune in this Thursday (our last post in this series) to hear from one of our partners who’ll discuss first-hand how he engages with his YouTube audience and uses social media to increase his audience and build loyalty.

Julie Kikla and Mahin Ibrahim, Account Managers, YouTube Partnerships recently watched "Dude Perfect™ (Amazing Basketball Shots) - HD."