Music videos can be a massive asset when promoting new music, but only if you have an effective launch plan. Here we look at quick tips and essential features to incorporate into your release strategy to maximize your success.
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Guest post by Stephanie Kurse, Manager, Video Services at The Orchard, from The Daily Rind
A music video is a very important and useful asset to help promote new music. Get the best results and maximize your views with these new features and quick tips to include within your video release strategy.
Official Artist Channel
First and foremost, you want to ensure that your channel is set up as an official artist channel or OAC. This is a channel that rolls together all of your artist channels (such as Vevo) and official videos into one verified and official channel to best engage with your audience.
Cohesive Branding
Creating a cohesive brand identity on this channel (and perhaps across socials too) is imperative when preparing a new release. Having an avatar and banner that are clear, consistent, and have the proper resolution to be seen across desktop and mobile will be best.
Try to use these recommended formats for YouTube assets:
- Icon: JPG, GIF, BMP, or PNG file (no animated GIFs); 800 X 800 px image (recommended); Square or round image that renders at 98 X 98 px
- Banner: Channel art looks different on desktop, mobile, and TV displays — larger images may be cropped. For the best results on all devices, one 2560 x 1440 px image is recommended. File size should be 6MB or smaller.
Banner
Since your banner is one of the largest opportunities for advertising, consider adding the release date of the new video, tour dates, or when a new album or song is going to be released. Make sure to keep that graphic current and updated. Another recommended banner feature is to include links to social channels, merch, streaming services, new releases, and/or tour tickets. Seeing that there might be more traffic to your channel during the new release this could be a great opportunity to capture new listeners.
Thumbnail
Another key aspect of brand identity is the thumbnail chosen for your video. Creating your thumbnail to be striking, up-close, with text and a consistent brand logo across all of your videos can help users identify your content easily. Keep in mind, thumbnails should be an honest sneak peek of what it’s in the video; if not, viewers may abandon the video early, poorly impacting that video’s discoverability on the platform.
Engagement
Engaging with your viewers and fans can increase interest surrounding the release, which is why YouTube offers several options to do so. Posting in the community tab as a productive way to alert fans that a new video is on its way – use a poll, .gifs, text, a photo – anything to grab attention and allow followers to interact as they would on a social media platform. Once the video is posted, you can repost in the same tab to ensure your subscribers are aware of the new video. After its release, reply or “love” viewers’ comments, leave a top comment (with lyrics, a question, a blurb) to bring a stronger connection to your fans.
Search Optimization
When preparing to release a video, it is important to take SEO (search engine optimization) into strong consideration as that is how YouTube’s algorithm finds and delivers the video to its viewers. For titles, a uniform format such as “Artist – Title | Type of content (Live Performance, Official Music Video, Behind the Scenes, etc)” is ideal. For descriptions, it’s great to include links (to streaming services, merch, tour information, socials), but also keywords. The most important keywords (artists, song titles, albums, what people will be searching for) should be in at least the first two sentences of the description. Google Trends can also be a great tool to find what words people are searching for related to this content on YouTube. Including the lyrics to the song can also be helpful if, for example, people are searching for the chorus. Tagsare also very useful to ensure that you have all of the relevant keywords. It may be helpful to use common misspellings and alternate languages if necessary. YouTube has recently rolled out Hashtags, which can be included in the description can be clicked to find similar videos around a popular topic. For this, include less granular tags to foster discovery across these related topics.
Cross-Promotion
Make videos interactive and clickable to benefit both you and your viewers by using Cards during or at the end of your video to link the viewer to a page of your choice. Cards throughout the video (when clicked on the “i” in the upper-right hand corner) can take your viewer to merch, tour information, streaming services, etc.), while the end-cards give your viewer an option to click to a selected playlist or video, as well as subscribe to your channel. End-cards have a higher click-through rate and continue curating your viewers watch session. Similar to the cards during the video, having an an interactive watermark on all your videos makes it simple for your viewer to subscribe while watching the video and can lead to more engaged fans on your channel.
Once your video is released the task does not stop there. Continue to drive views by placing this video in the trailer position on your channel. It’s the main and first video viewers will see when landing on your channel and is set to autoplay on desktop. Always keep this placement on your channel relatively current since this is often a viewers first impression of your channel. Another spot to stay up-to-date is your playlist modules. With a new release, consider placing that video as the first spot in a popular playlist (Music Videos, New Music, Best of…, etc.), to potentially drive more traffic to previous videos as well.
Overall, stay up-to-date, consistent and make it is easy as possible for viewers to find your new content. Using these tips will keep your page professional, and help optimize the success of your video!