Keep reading to explore 4 more tips to increase more YouTube engagement here!
2. Hold dinner parties—not soap boxes
Not literally of course, unless you have a space to host a dinner party for all of your YouTube subscribers.
Brands treat social media engagement like it’s a soap box or a dinner party.
Soap boxes are those social media accounts that are focused on themselves. They exist simply as a place that brands can promote their products and services—while ignoring any data, metrics, and customer interactions.
Dinner parties are those brands that invite their audiences in for conversation and engage with them. They actively listen to what their audience is telling them and react to it. A good dinner party host knows their guests well.
If you want your YouTube page to have dinner parties — and not soap boxes — you’ll have to know your audience well too. That’s why you should spend a lot of time immersing yourself in your viewers’ needs, desires, and pain points.
What is your viewer struggling with? What do they need to see from your video to inform and delight them?
To help, we’ve created a comprehensive guide to conducting audience research to help you know your YouTube audience on a deeper level.
Think about it: are your friends more likely to engage with you if you invite them over for a dinner party? Or if you yell at them about everything you’ve been doing for the past few weeks from your soapbox?
3. React (strategically) to trends
Trending events on YouTube are great sources of content for your viewers. Not only are they a good way to provide fun videos for your audience, but it’s also a solid way to increase brand awareness.
And the more people know about you (via brand awareness) the more they’ll engage with you (via brand engagement). After all, how are they going to like and share your videos if they don’t know who you are?
One great example comes from a trend I like to call “experts react.” Here’s a good example from GQ below:
In these videos, subject matter experts react to movies and TV shows depicting that subject in action. While GQ has a whole series of these videos, they certainly aren’t the only ones who have jumped on the trend.
Here’s a popular example from WIRED:
Even smaller creators have gotten on the trend to great success:
Does this mean that your brand should scramble and try to do an “experts react” video? No. Not unless you find that it’s: a) Something your audience wants to see and b) something that actually works for your brand and services.
But if the trend seems like it fits both criteria, by all means, go for it! And have fun while doing so.
4. Collaborate with other creators
It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to increase subscribers on a newsletter, a podcast, or your YouTube channel. One of the best ways to grow your audience and increase engagement with your videos is to collaborate with other creators.
After all, loyal viewers trust the creators they subscribe to. That’s why they typically subscribe to them in the first place. So if you collaborate with them, it gives you instant social proof in their eyes even if they didn’t know your brand existed until then.
But you shouldn’t just collaborate with anyone. Instead, find creators involved somewhat in your industry (without being a direct competitor of course).
Here’s a great example: When YouTuber Simone Giertz appeared on Adam Savage’s Tested channel.
In this instance, both creators like building interesting things. Where Simone creates crazy robots, Savage creates a mix of things from movie props to massive Nerf guns. Combine the two and you have a perfect collaboration moment.
5. Use the right tools
As the old adage goes: Work smarter, not harder.
Tools like Hootsuite allow you to publish YouTube videos and track your performance via a comprehensive analytics dashboard, which will save you lots of time when it comes to determining what kind of content your audience likes best.
Another great feature for YouTube engagement is Hootsuite’s YouTube comment moderation tool. It allows you to view all the comments on your video—and delete them if necessary.
It also allows you to see all the incoming comments on a specific video. You can then approve or delete the comments before they’re published, which is great for making sure you only engage with quality, non-spam comments.
The video below shows how the comment moderation tool works.
But maybe you’re already getting tons of engagement on your YouTube videos and want to repay the love by engaging on other people’s videos. Hootsuite has a solution for that too. Search for other YouTube videos in streams, and engage with other creators by liking, commenting, and subscribing to their content—all without leaving the dashboard.