In this episode of the YouTube Success podcast, I delve into the art of engaging with your YouTube audience, from generating more comments to making your subscribers feel truly connected with your brand. We explore the significance of engagement on YouTube, touching on why it’s a critical metric for your channel’s success and what it tells the algorithm about your content.
Engagement is the key to YouTube success, so join us for this episode to uncover the strategies that will take your channel to new heights.
Join the conversation video podcast of this episode on YouTube and share your own engagement tactics with us in the comments!
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Transcript
Matthew Hughes - King of Video: In this episode, I'm talking about the best ways
Speaker:to engage with your YouTube viewers.
Speaker:How can you get more engagement?
Speaker:How can encourage people to comment on your videos?
Speaker:All that kind of good stuff.
Speaker:And I'm also gonna talk about one super specific thing that you can do to make
Speaker:your subscribers, make your viewers feel more engaged with you as a business,
Speaker:as a brand service, whatever it is that you are delivering on YouTube.
Speaker:So don't forget, if this is the first time to YouTube Success Podcast, make sure you
Speaker:subscribe to it, follow it, download it, like it, share it, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:You know, I've, this is the sixth episode I've filmed today.
Speaker:I feel like I've just said this all the time.
Speaker:If this is your first time listening to it, you'll be like, Matt, why do
Speaker:you see seem so bored when you're telling me that I've gotta subscribe?
Speaker:What I'm talking about engagement here, I'm just giving up on that thing, right?
Speaker:Don't give up.
Speaker:It's important.
Speaker:if you want to engage with us more, then don't forget to go
Speaker:to youtubecommunity.co.uk and get yourself a free account and
Speaker:come and join the community.
Speaker:We're there.
Speaker:I know a lot of YouTubers go on Discord and they create Discord communities.
Speaker:I'm not gonna rule it out.
Speaker:We might do a Discord community, but I really love the YouTube community.
Speaker:I think it's a great platform and lots of good people in there.
Speaker:We're doing Shorts Challenges.
Speaker:We've got a YouTube Challenge, we've got courses, all sorts of good stuff over
Speaker:there that we can get you involved with.
Speaker:So definitely worth joining the youtubecommunity.co.uk,
Speaker:so youtubecommunity.co.uk.
Speaker:Alright, so why is engagement important?
Speaker:Let's talk about that for a second.
Speaker:Look, engagement in your video should be one of your priorities when it
Speaker:comes to YouTube because engagement is how you get people, well, it's
Speaker:how you tell first and foremost.
Speaker:It's how you tell the algorithm that you are content, that you are
Speaker:publishing, the content you are putting on YouTube is worthy of
Speaker:people taking some form of action.
Speaker:And I think other than views, people watching the video average view duration,
Speaker:all that kind of good stuff that we talk about often, I think engagement is just
Speaker:as important a metric for YouTube to say,
Speaker:actually, this video is getting loads of comments that it
Speaker:is creating a conversation.
Speaker:And so people are more likely to watch it.
Speaker:People are more likely to stay in and watch till the end.
Speaker:So if you can get engagement, if you can give YouTube some indication that
Speaker:your video is worthy of watching, that people are enjoying it, then
Speaker:that's gonna be good for you.
Speaker:It's gonna be good for your channel, it's gonna be good for your overall
Speaker:subscribers and that kind of stuff.
Speaker:Here's a couple of things that you can do for engagement.
Speaker:The first one, I'm calling out this first be just because I think actually it..
Speaker:You should probably not do this until you've got a thousand subscribers,
Speaker:I think a minimum of a thousand subscribers, and that is YouTube Live.
Speaker:So YouTube Live is a fantastic way to get engagement because you can create a show,
Speaker:create some kind of regular live stream, and once you've done that people will
Speaker:show up and naturally engage with you, because they're watching the live show.
Speaker:You can ask questions throughout a live, what's your opinion on this?
Speaker:What's your opinion on that?
Speaker:When they reply, you can then respond to them in real time.
Speaker:That is a brilliant way to get engagement.
Speaker:It's probably one of the best, but I think personally, I feel like you need some kind
Speaker:of audience in the first instance to be able to generate that kind of engagement.
Speaker:When I've done a show before, even when I hit my first thousand subscribers
Speaker:and we did a regular show, we did it for about three or four months
Speaker:on a Saturday morning, and I had a handful of people show up and they did
Speaker:engage with me, but it wasn't a great indication to the algorithm that it
Speaker:was worthy of that, but it's a good strategy if you can get those live
Speaker:viewers and you can get people on board.
Speaker:So you might have a good email marketing list, you might have some good way of
Speaker:promoting The livestream and then you can pull people to it at a specific time and
Speaker:then you could get that engagement going.
Speaker:I think livestream viewers and livestream engagement is probably
Speaker:the best indicator to YouTube.
Speaker:That engagement is gonna be good for your channel that, that
Speaker:your channel is worthy of that.
Speaker:So that's the first thing.
Speaker:Just the caveat of that, that you need to have a good established audience already.
Speaker:So some of the things that you can do, then you can ask for
Speaker:comments, likes, and shares.
Speaker:This is something you can do throughout your video.
Speaker:I could say, in this video right now, in this podcast episode, if you go to
Speaker:YouTube, my pinned comment is, what is the best way you've got engagement
Speaker:in your videos and you could go and comment on that video and now we talk
Speaker:about this stuff in the community often, but still on the videos if
Speaker:you have those pinned comments.
Speaker:Pinned comments are a bit of a hack really for YouTube because as long as you are
Speaker:always asking a question in that pin comment for your videos, whenever anyone
Speaker:watches it and they see the question, if the question's good enough for people,
Speaker:and when I say good enough, I mean it.
Speaker:Elicits some kind of response from them internally.
Speaker:They're going to want to share of it.
Speaker:And you can do that in multiple ways.
Speaker:You could do, what do you think about this thing?
Speaker:So they can give you their opinion.
Speaker:People love to give you their opinion.
Speaker:You can ask what's, how have you done this?
Speaker:When you're asking, how have you done this?
Speaker:They are responding and talking about themselves.
Speaker:People love to talk about themselves.
Speaker:You can ask a negative question.
Speaker:What's the worst thing you've seen about this thing?
Speaker:What should you not do if you're doing this thing?
Speaker:That's another way people like to point out.
Speaker:Or you could say, who's the worst offender for this?
Speaker:People love to dig people out as well.
Speaker:It really just depends on your channel and your content, but asking
Speaker:for comments and asking questions in order to get comments is a great
Speaker:way to get some engagement as well.
Speaker:When you're asking for like and shares, I often do on my channel.
Speaker:I've had the same intro for a while now, which we're kind of changing a
Speaker:little bit, and we've got this similar sort of intro on this podcast is that
Speaker:I will introduce the video, and then I always say, don't forget to subscribe,
Speaker:like, share all that kind of stuff.
Speaker:And that works fine, and it's been like a standard way of doing things.
Speaker:I think depending on your channel sometimes that people drop off at that
Speaker:point because they're fed up of hearing the same thing, so I get that as well.
Speaker:But what you could do is in the middle of the videos, say something like,
Speaker:don't forget to like the video in the middle or earlier on in the video.
Speaker:If you see your audience retention is generally like, 30, 40%.
Speaker:If you get that kind of retention in that 30 40% of the video, that's where
Speaker:you should say, 'don't forget to like the video' because you know they're
Speaker:gonna watch that amount of the video.
Speaker:You can ask for the engagement at that point, and then even if they
Speaker:don't watch the rest of the video, you still caught them and grab some
Speaker:engagement out of 'em at that point.
Speaker:And it might encourage the algorithm to share your content out to more people,
Speaker:'cause they can see the engagement.
Speaker:Another thing I wanted to talk about is to give them a reason to subscribe.
Speaker:So what is the promise that you're making to your viewers when
Speaker:you are creating your content?
Speaker:Why would they subscribe in the first place?
Speaker:If I was interested in how to edit and you've promised me that every
Speaker:week you are gonna show up and show me something new about editing, something
Speaker:I might not have known about editing.
Speaker:You might be keeping on top of all the trends when it comes to editing, and
Speaker:you're gonna show me that every week.
Speaker:If I'm interested in editing, I'm more likely to subscribe if
Speaker:you've made that promise to me.
Speaker:So with the YouTube Success Podcast, my promise is that I will teach you the
Speaker:new stuff that's happening with YouTube.
Speaker:I'll get some of the best YouTubers in the world and bring them and interview them,
Speaker:and I'll give you my authoritative educate edutainment kind of content as well.
Speaker:So I help you from the starting point, right up to becoming a
Speaker:regular and consistent YouTuber.
Speaker:And I need a better promise, I'm sure, but by making that promise, that if
Speaker:you subscribe to this podcast, if you subscribe to the channel, you're
Speaker:going to get that stuff regular.
Speaker:And I've made a commitment that we are gonna do this every week.
Speaker:We're gonna publish a episode every week.
Speaker:So, you know, whether you go on holiday for two weeks or you're out
Speaker:of the way for a month or whatever, you know, if you come back, you're
Speaker:gonna see those regular episodes.
Speaker:So that is also part of the promise.
Speaker:So give them some reason to subscribe, give them some reason to keep coming back.
Speaker:That's super important when it comes to engagement, because then
Speaker:you get loyal fans, loyal visitors, viewers, watchers, who are more
Speaker:likely to engage with you anyway.
Speaker:Another great way.
Speaker:Uh, let's talk about community first.
Speaker:I've mentioned the YouTube community, so youtubecommunity.co.uk.
Speaker:This is the community that we've got and a way where you can engage
Speaker:with us and engage with us offline, engage with us off platform.
Speaker:That's a better way to describe it.
Speaker:You can engage with us off platform.
Speaker:So I'm saying come to that community and you can chat with me.
Speaker:You can chat with the other people that are around me.
Speaker:And that's a way to, again, encourage eng engagement.
Speaker:You're encouraging the loyal fan, way of doing things by creating communities.
Speaker:I say creating a community is one of the best things you can do.
Speaker:Actually, YouTube have got the community tab, of course.
Speaker:That's available for people, who have reached the requirements for that, but I'm
Speaker:talking about an off platform community.
Speaker:I wanna own my own community.
Speaker:I want their email address.
Speaker:I want to be able to send messages to them when I want to.
Speaker:I want to tell them when I've got new videos, this is a way I can encourage more
Speaker:viewers from my loyal fan base who are more likely to watch all of the video.
Speaker:I can do all of that by creating this community.
Speaker:And my community is free.
Speaker:So you don't pay for it.
Speaker:So it's another thing that, where people don't have to make a big
Speaker:commitment, it's the commitment is just signing up for the community.
Speaker:Once they're in it, they get the value.
Speaker:And then of course I've got ways to offer, courses, programs, or that
Speaker:kind of stuff that makes me money.
Speaker:But for the most part, I just wanna bring those people together.
Speaker:That's what's important to me.
Speaker:And then off the back of that, so when we started the community,
Speaker:we were talking about like, how can we make this more engaging?
Speaker:So there's two things that we are doing inside the community that means that
Speaker:people are more likely to engage with us.
Speaker:One of them is in-person events.
Speaker:As it stands currently right now, at the time of filming this, we've got an
Speaker:event planned for the end of this month.
Speaker:And another one is online event.
Speaker:So we are saying you can come along, join our Zoom call and have conversations
Speaker:with us in the online events.
Speaker:Now we've got not got any plans for that right now because we think we're
Speaker:gonna do a paid version of that, but we've got the in-person event
Speaker:planned because we want to be able to create that sticky connection, right?
Speaker:Sticky connection.
Speaker:It sounds so weird, but it's about people becoming bigger fans, more loyal to you.
Speaker:And this is the best way you can create engagement because if you do that, if
Speaker:you create engagement in your community, they're more likely to engage with
Speaker:your content as well, and it's kind of a great ecosystem of engagement.
Speaker:And that's it really.
Speaker:I think that is all my advice when it comes to creating engagement.
Speaker:I'd love to hear both on the YouTube channel, if you're watching there; if
Speaker:you listen to the podcast and you go and check out the show notes, you can go and
Speaker:check that out on the website, and I'd love to hear what you think is a good
Speaker:way to get engagement on your videos, get engagement from your loyal fans.
Speaker:How do you build that all up?
Speaker:That's what we're talking about on this episode.
Speaker:My name's Matt Hughes, King Of Video.
Speaker:I realise I've not introduced myself at all in any of these videos, but
Speaker:I hope you've enjoyed this content and I'll see you in the next episode.