YouTube it has become the primary way music fans find new music online. That’s why it’s also important that your YouTube channel represents your music in a compelling and engaging way.
8 Tips for Creating a YouTube Channel That Engages Your Audience and Boosts Music Sales
1. Use a custom YouTube channel photo background
When you’re signed in to your YouTube account, you can style your YouTube channel page by clicking Themes and colors and then in Advanced Options. Here you can upload your own background for your YouTube channel page.
Tips for choosing and uploading your background:
- Choose an image that is more panoramic than a foreground flat. Think: wide-angle shots of your band on stage or something scenic.
- The center of your image will be somewhat obscured by video and text. So if the focus of the photo is to the left or right, so much the better.
- Use a photo taken in a landscape instead of a portrait. This will work best for modern widescreen monitors.
- Use a photo that is more than 970px wide. This way your image will extend beyond the borders of the main content area on YouTube (which is 970px).
- Make sure you set the transparency to General and Color Palettes so your photo can show through the foreground boxes.
- Try setting your transparency to between 10% and 40%. You can also change the color of the text to make it more readable.
- In most cases, it doesn’t look very good to tile the image. It’s probably best to choose a larger image.
- Set your background color to something that goes well with your photo.
2. Set your channel type to “Musician”
When you are logged into your YouTube account and go to your channel, click on “Settings” and you can select musician as channel type. You can now add artist information and publish a schedule of show dates (by enabling the “event dates” module).
3. Add links to your website and where they can buy your album
Linking to your website is nice, but making a link that takes fans to your iTunes purchase page, CD Baby or your website is the most effective way to drive sales.
As long as you’ve selected musician as the channel type, you should be able to add your own buy buttons using the channel art. album.
You can also use the channel description or about me area to place a text link for your album.
To create a link, simply enter the URL of your store page and YouTube will link to it.
Also, be sure to include a website or purchase link in the first sentence of your store description. your video for every video you make. It must be in the first sentence because YouTube will truncate the text so that only the first sentence is readable unless you click to expand the description.
4. Add tags to your channel and videos
Tags are important. Tags are keywords that help people find your video in the YouTube search engine. What will your fans type on YouTube to find your video? Tag your videos with place names, your band name (correct spelling and misspellings), song names, city, state, genre, and other relevant keywords. Then when someone types in a search for your song or band, you’ll have a much better chance of appearing first.
To add tags to your YouTube channel, look under Settings.
To add tags to an individual video, click Videos in the dropdown menu at the top right of your screen. Then click edit next to the video you want to add tags to.
5. Keep in mind the title of your videos
Not many people on YouTube will search for “sadsong-ver.2 without vocals recorded at John’s house .”
Include your band name, song name, venue or location (if relevant), and maybe even some specific keywords that accurately describe your music.
Please example:
Tommy Jug Band plays Silly Girl at Sunnyside Tavern, Portland, OR – Country Funk and Bluegrass
6.Add a variety of video content
Mix things up. It doesn’t all have to be traditional music videos. Interview your bandmates. Interview your followers. Check out this post on the 12 Types of Videos to Promote your music.
7.Use YouTube Annotations
Video annotations let you add comments and links to your video.You control what the annotations say. annotations, where they appear in the video and when they appear and disappear.While it can be easy to overuse them, adding links to where people can buy your album (right in the video) is great. It is also useful for adding song lyrics or comments that can further engage your audience. Learn more about creating YouTube annotations here
8. Respond to all comments
Responding to comments will not only make your fans feel appreciated, but it will also inspire others to comment on your videos. Try starting the comments yourself by asking a question or pointing out something interesting in the video.
For example:
Can you identify the scene where Chris drops his guitar? Is the end of this song too long? Take a look at the error of 3 minutes and 12 seconds.
Do you have any tips to improve your YouTube channel? What worked and what didn’t? Let us know in the comments below.
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