Live streaming on YouTube is a fantastic way to expand your online reach and grow your audience. Whether you want to grow your business or build a personal brand, YouTube live can help you achieve your goals, if done right. It takes time to grow your YouTube live stream audience, but with practical strategies and tactics you can set yourself up for success.
In this blog post, we’ve put together 11 tactics you can apply to grow your YouTube live stream audience.
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How to grow your YouTube live stream audience?
For some YouTubers, adding live video content to their channels has proven to be an effective strategy to expand their online reach and grow their audience. Others haven’t found the same success and can’t get many viewers to tune in live.
While videos on demand require heavy promotion after they are done and published, live streaming needs to be promoted before you actually go live. When you announce your YouTube live stream to your audience in advance, you get a much higher chance of viewers actually joining in while you’re live.
Publish a teaser video on your YouTube Channel
It’s crucial to let your subscribers know that you have a YouTube live stream scheduled, and there are many ways you can do that. One way that can be effective and engaging is to publish a teaser video on your channel.
Chances are, many of your YouTube channel subscribers don’t even know you are going live until they see your teaser announcing it. That teaser can also be used on other platforms as a promotional piece and even as social media ads.
SEO optimization
A few days before your live video, you can optimize your website and your YouTube channel’s SEO to the keywords from your video. It can help you improve your ranking on search engines and grow your YouTube live stream audience.
Everything from minor adjusts to entire content posts will help you increase your positioning and hopefully attract more viewers.
Announce on Social media
When you start promoting your YouTube live in advance, announcing on all your social media platforms is a no-brainer. Most likely, not all your Instagram followers are subscribed to your YouTube channel, as well as not every Facebook follower has seen you on Instagram or YouTube.
To promote your live stream on social media, make sure you:
- Publish multiple promotional posts, spread out amongst the days of the week
- Create each post according to the social media you’re in (i.e., Using fewer words on Twitter)
- Encourage people to share, like and comment on the posts
Get people to share your post
One of the most significant advantages of social media is its shareability. When users share your content, not only do you reach their audience but also you’re getting a personal recommendation, which speaks volumes in the online world.
Create incentives
There are many ways you can motivate your audience to share your content. Sometimes, a simple ask is enough. But, more often than not, they will need a bit more from you. For instance, offering incentives can go a long way. In exchange for sharing your post, you can offer them:
- Premium content
- Discount coupons
- Contest with giveaways
Partnerships
Leveraging business partners is also a fantastic way to grow your YouTube live stream audience. Perhaps they can share your promotion, and you can mention them in your live video. Though it’s an effective strategy, you shouldn’t reach out to all your partners every time you plan a live stream. It works best when used sporadically, to promote your best content.
Give them more reasons to join your live stream
Your audience needs to feel like your live stream is worth their time, which is their most valuable currency. How can you assure them your YouTube live will deliver tons of value? Apart from making sure your promotional copy really communicates the value of your live stream, you can also offer extra pieces of content exclusively to those who join you live. For example:
- Ebooks
- Audio files
- Templates
- Slide deck
Email your subscribers
Many YouTubers have already built an email list which allows them to communicate directly with their audience and notify them when they post a new video. If you have an email list, this is an excellent opportunity to engage with your subscribers and invite them to your live stream. Remember to focus on what’s in it for them.
If you don’t have one yet, it’s not too late to start one.
Create promotional graphics assets
Once you decide on the topic, date and time of the live video, go straight to creating all the visual elements you’ll need to promote it properly.
Visual elements:
- Thumbnail
- Social media covers
- Promotional images and videos
- Online banners
To grow your YouTube live stream audience, leveraging your online real estate is a must. In other words, you have a lot of free space online to advertise your live stream that should be put to good use, such as social media covers, website banners, email footer and so on.
Specifically, make sure your YouTube cover mentions your live streaming video with the date, time and information.
Partner with other YouTubers
If you’re just starting out with live video and you want to grow your YouTube live stream audience faster, partnering up with other YouTubers might be the best strategy for you. Doing video collaborations with other YouTubers can be highly beneficial. It allows you to tap into different audiences with similar interests and potentially get more subscribers.
Create a YouTube Live Show
Growing your YouTube live stream audience requires consistency. Maybe your subscribers didn’t get a chance to tune in that day, but they might be able to do so next week. Instead of going live once, think about creating a weekly or fortnightly live streaming show.
When you create a YouTube live show, it gives you time to build your audience and makes your efforts worthwhile.
Promote your live video during your vlogs
If you have a consistent YouTube live show, you can also promote it during your vlogs or regular video posts without worrying about it being outdated. At the end of your video, you can encourage followers to check out the teaser you published for your live stream.
The key to growing your YouTube live stream audience
Though all of these live video strategies and tactics can help you grow your audience, without high-quality content, they won’t be nearly as effective as they could be. Before you work on promoting your live stream, make sure the content delivers a ton of value to your audience.
Once you figure out the right content for your live streams, get to work on additional pieces that will complement it and start promoting it.
How do you get viewers to join your YouTube live streams?
Ready to take your live videos to the next level?
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