The Songwriter Forum - songwriting reviews, tips and chat
Songwriter Forum => Resources & Marketing => Topic started by: James Nighthawk on September 23, 2012, 07:36:48 PM
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Hey Guys and Gals
I have seen this mentioned on here before, so I am pretty sure there are people that can help!
I am new to promoting on Youtube. Are there any hints to increasing hits/playcount there? Tags seem to be key but I am new to this so all advice welcomed!
I am uploading a cover version soon which will doubtlessly get more hits than my original songs. Hopefully if viewers like it they'll stick around to check out my songs :-) That is the only "tactic" I have at the moment
Thanks in advance!!
Jxx
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FYI my tags as stands:
acoustic guitar music folk singer songwriter singersongwriter "Original Song" James Nighthawk martin finger-picking finger picking live recording studio male vocal vocalist "Singing (Professional Field)" "Rock Music" unsigned
Also
The quotation marks are the ones that I clicked on, suggested by youtube, rather than typed in. I assume the quotation marks themselves make no odds, right?
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James, i wish i could be of any help,
but my most watched you tube film didn't even reach 400 views yet
but perhaps, i can be of some help in saying, the tags you use are about the same as the tags i used, so my advice is get more and different onces....
i think you need totally out of the box onces on top of the onces you have, but without cheating
my thinking never got any further than that :P
hope other forum members can help
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I've not had much luck on YT so far, except with an acoustic cover of 'Walking in the air' , you know, that Aled Jones song from the snowman. Its not very good and has been on there a while but its got 2400 odd views, waaay more than anything else I've uploaded. My tags for this were..
Walking Christmas snowman john air guitar song live festive carol factor no.1 choir
Now I reckon it was mainly the song title that got the hits so your strategy of doing covers of popular songs might be a good way to hook people in, if you 'wow' them they may add you to favourites.
Maybe go for the seasonal route with the covers, that way, each Christmas, you get new people searching for the song you may have covered. Or just a song currently charting, but this will have a limited life in terms of popularity, and therefore a limited amount of people searching for it.
I'll be keenly watching this thread for tips :)
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Hi James,
I have had a bit of experience with this, I think the tags are important and also the title is very important too. You can put the name of the song somewhere else if it is not going to pull in the views.
Go to google adwords, You'll probably have to sign up, hover over tools and analysis and click on keyword tools. Choose keyword idea which is a bit further down on the page and type a word that is related to your music, for instance for my song I typed fathers day it gave lots of alternatives to this and shows you how many searches are made locally and globally - this helps you pick the best words for your video. Using my video as an example, you have to put each tag word or group of words in inverted commas i.e 'father's day' or 'father' etc.
After you have finetuned your tags, give it a week or two and see how it performs - you can use analytics on your video manager page on youtube to see where the song is most popular and really finetune it to its most appropriate market. Consider who is likely to listen to it. If it has a theme ie my song is called 'You're my hero' so people looking for father's day songs might be interested. Is yours suitable in a tribute to someone or for some other occasion or historical event, this might help increase your views. Also if you get comments, remember to reply or like etc make sure you interact with your viewers.
You can also use your video as a video response to other more popular videos on youtube - go to where you can comment on the video 'all comments' there is a little arrow, click that and it will say video response click that and choose your video. Some will let you instantly respond some will need approval and some won't let you at all! I have only discovered video response today whilst trying to help you so thanks for that!
Good luck and let me know if I can give you any more help!
x
I am no expert and there is still plenty to learn, but I hope some of this has helped!
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Hi James,
I have had a bit of experience with this, I think the tags are important and also the title is very important too. You can put the name of the song somewhere else if it is not going to pull in the views.
Go to google adwords, You'll probably have to sign up, hover over tools and analysis and click on keyword tools. Choose keyword idea which is a bit further down on the page and type a word that is related to your music, for instance for my song I typed fathers day it gave lots of alternatives to this and shows you how many searches are made locally and globally - this helps you pick the best words for your video. Using my video as an example, you have to put each tag word or group of words in inverted commas i.e 'father's day' or 'father' etc.
After you have finetuned your tags, give it a week or two and see how it performs - you can use analytics on your video manager page on youtube to see where the song is most popular and really finetune it to its most appropriate market. Consider who is likely to listen to it. If it has a theme ie my song is called 'You're my hero' so people looking for father's day songs might be interested. Is yours suitable in a tribute to someone or for some other occasion or historical event, this might help increase your views. Also if you get comments, remember to reply or like etc make sure you interact with your viewers.
You can also use your video as a video response to other more popular videos on youtube - go to where you can comment on the video 'all comments' there is a little arrow, click that and it will say video response click that and choose your video. Some will let you instantly respond some will need approval and some won't let you at all! I have only discovered video response today whilst trying to help you so thanks for that!
Good luck and let me know if I can give you any more help!
x
I am no expert and there is still plenty to learn, but I hope some of this has helped!
Great stuff Flossie, big hugs!
The adwords and the inverted comma part is all new to be so I'll check those out soon
Does it matter if I use ' or "....? Youtube insets " whereas you mention 'these'?
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Thanks again to flossie for getting me rolling on this. I found the following hint video from her push...
This seems to have some very useful and simple hints regarding the quotation mark system, and I have duly gone through my tabs and edited them.
Also, DO NOT USE hyphens (-). Search engines see them as negatives, and ignore the word after them. Good knowledge.
I'll wait a few weeks and see the results
My new tags are
"acoustic guitar" "acoustic guitar music" "folk singer songwriter" "folk singersongwriter" "rock songwriter" "singer songwriter" "Original Song" "James Nighthawk" "Not The One" "Martin guitar" "finger picking" "live recording" "studio recording" "male vocal" "male vocalist" "Singing (Professional Field)" "Rock Music" "unsigned singer" "unsigned songwriter" "Riverway Studios" "Songwriter (Profession)"
If you can think of obvious ones I have missed, let me know....
Also, of note
http://www.videobroadcastservices.com/why-is-youtube-no-longer-showing-tags/
I mostly agree with this, although, it is less helpful to my evil domination ways...mwah ha ha!
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No probs! I would add "beautiful song" "songs about relationships" "love song" "breaking up song" etc, etc, so describe the song as well, think about what someone looking for that sort of song would type into the search bar.
Obviously if it they have the title in mind they would type that, but many people are just looking for something different to listen to, or have gone through something and like many of us use music to accompany their joy/misery ;D Oh and make sure you use every last tag you're allowed to - that's important too in my opinion you may as well!
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No probs! I would add "beautiful song" "songs about relationships" "love song" "breaking up song" etc, etc, so describe the song as well, think about what someone looking for that sort of song would type into the search bar.
Obviously if it they have the title in mind they would type that, but many people are just looking for something different to listen to, or have gone through something and like many of us use music to accompany their joy/misery ;D Oh and make sure you use every last tag you're allowed to - that's important too in my opinion you may as well!
Oooh. Great ideas Flosster!
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you are great at this, Flossie! thanks for sharing your ideas and experience on this
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UPDATE
Only one week in, with granted some other variables, I seem to be getting 2-5 hits daily for my one video. This is good news, as all hits before were accountable via direct linkages!!
I will leave as is for the moment. NEXT week, I will be posting a cover version live video...lets see how this changes matters
JN
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hi james....
I've got 11 videos on youtube of cover songs that have views from 3000 to 14000 for each one of them!
My biggest suggestion for you if you want to cover songs and put them on youtube is: BE THE FIRST! I learned that myself after posting covers that only reached 3000 views in 6 months because there were already tons of other covers. For those were I was the first or the second to cover it I got something at around 14000 and 12000 views in 2 months.
When using tags, don't worry too much about your name and more about the information on the song your covering, because that's what people will look for. I usually use tags such as cover, acoustic, etc. try everything related to that song. For example, if I was covering Let it be by the Beatles I'd use tags like: the beatles let it be acoustic cover 'let it be' 'the beatles' 'let it be cover' 'the beatles let it be cover' 'let it be acoustic' 'the beatles let it be acoustic' 'let it be acoustic cover' 'the beatles let it be acoustic cover'
Another tip is to add the chords to the description of the video so that you can also add tags like: "how to play let it be by the Beatles" "let it be chords" "let it be tabs" "let it be lyrics"
But the most important thing for getting views with cover songs is, like I said, BE THE FIRST!
Hope that helps.
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Ohhh... Thanks Loey!
The chords idea is great, I'll be using that!
And I have just looked up my song. There only seems to be a few covers, a handful in fact, and most look very amateur. So I might have inadvertently taken your advice
Watch this space ;)
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I guess the secret is to see what's 'trending' and drop that into your title or tags .... but it's all pretty academic, sorry to be cynical. I have hit many times on songs because they were listed with a tag I was searching thus giving them another hit to add to the thousands they already had via the same route.
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Any progress James?
I'm keen to learn how to climb up the search results myself as I have a few video projects in the pipeline.
hab..
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No major break throughs regarding the tags.
However, and this is linked:
I have started whoring it a bit on "Google+"
Yes....the social network no one uses!
It is automatically connected with your Youtube account. And, it has communities. I have basically joined up a bunch of music communities, introduced myself, listened and commented to a few people, and then posted one of my youtube videos.
Doing this gained me: 25plays, one comment and three thumbs up - in 2 days.
My "refollow" ratio seems to be a healthy 15%
Yes.... This is all very cynical stuff. NOTE - Activity like this on FB, twitter, and of course on THIS website would backfire. This is how it should be, I am all for gentlemanly behavior (or ladylike, of course :D )
I think perhaps because Google+ is such a naff network, the rules of ettiqutte are up in the air. I act like a gentlemen on most sites, Google+ can be my bitch for now ;D 8)
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Yeah Google+, what's that all about?? Use and abuse that before it goes.. :D
Cheers James, I'd really like to figure out how to get higher (ie page 1, near the top) on YT searches. I'm sure some of it is related to previous number of views, how 'big' you are etc, I uploaded a video this morning and as yet, typing in it's exact title wont even bring it up ???
On the other hand, if you search 'Canal Warwickshire' my Tillerman video pops up as 2nd on the list (with only 53 views) so I'm a bit confused by the whole criteria issue.
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Tags and search engine optimisation are all very important but I do think people are starting to forget the "basics" of marketing in this digital age
I would suggest a little research in to some traditional "product" marketing strategies/approaches (with your song/video as the product)
Eg - a little research - what are people listening to and why
Identify the competition - who are you competing with
What is the USP (unique selling proposition) of your product compared to the competition - why should someone listen to you?
PR - have you contacted any magazines, online review sites, blogs etc. to get other people to say nice things about you
Do you have a load of testimonials that people might write/share for you - a "share" on facebook is great but this is nothing compared to someone posting on a forum something like "wow, have you heard this Habitat/James Highthawk guy - his stuff is amazing, check out this link"
I remember someone doing exactly this on this very forum (in the bar) about that Bernhoft guy - I must have shared it with a least 15 people, who all probably shared it as well, and I know at least 3 people that bought the album (which is amazing by the way!)
Most forums have the equivalent of a "bar" forum section so if you have an army of people doing this across lots of different forums - not just music ones, you may stand a better chance of "going viral" - you also need to be really good and have that usp
In the case of Bernhoft the video posted here was him doing amazing things with that looper pedal ( the usp) but it demonstrated his amazing voice and song. The album is much more "mainstream" but the usp of his youtube vids drew people to the album
It is also important to remember that "Promotion" is you bigging yourself up - "PR" is getting others to do it for you (eg editorials rather than advertising) and is generally more effective
Smaller review sites, magazines and local newspapers/radio are usually desperate for content - a well written, professional, press release will often get published without any changes as it makes the publication's life really easy
There is a real art/trick to writing press releases that I can share if anyone is interested and wants to PM me
These are just a few "off the top of my head" traditional marketing approaches that I think many people have forgotten about in the digital age and may help give you "the edge"
If I get a chance I will dig out some of my MBA stuff and perhaps I could put together a marketing strategy & plan aimed at new artists?
The key is to then integrate your different approaches into a planned campaign
There is so much that can be done for free without having to resort to "advertising" - where it is difficult to compete with the "big boys"
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I guess USP is the key to all success really, if it's boring, or the same as everything else, it wont rise to the top.
As it happens, it turns out that YT has a delay of about a day, from upload to search inclusion. My new video has appeared near the top of the search now, if you search for the right thing ::)
It always brings us back to the same question,
Do we aim for success, or do we just do what we enjoy, and hope for success along the way?
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My new tags are
"acoustic guitar" "acoustic guitar music" "folk singer songwriter" "folk singersongwriter" "rock songwriter" "singer songwriter" "Original Song" "James Nighthawk" "Not The One" "Martin guitar" "finger picking" "live recording" "studio recording" "male vocal" "male vocalist" "Singing (Professional Field)" "Rock Music" "unsigned singer" "unsigned songwriter" "Riverway Studios" "Songwriter (Profession)"
These look good. I'd suggest to you to start thinking like someone looking for your song. What would YOU type into YouTube, if you were looking for something like what you're playing. It's easy to forget to think that way sometimes :)
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Hey!
I would really love to go on Youtube but I a sooooo shy! any suggestions what I can do? :)
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please follows these steps to be top on you tube
Ten Youtube Marketing Tips
1. Be yourself – When making videos, don’t try to be Mr. Sales guy and woo people with your infinite knowledge. The best video is the one where you are speaking to your audience just like as if you were sitting right in front of them talking over a beer or something. Always, always be YOU, don’t try to be someone else. This is key, I recall when I made my very first youtube videos, I was reading a script, nervous and just not being myself, do you!
2. Post with a purpose – This is a big one that people make mistakes with all the time. Every time you make a video it should be for a reason. It could be just to provide value to your list, it could be for a blog post, or it could be for generate leads, but always be clear on your intent for the video, it can be the difference between success, and failure.
3. File name – Always before uploading your video make sure your file name is the keyword you are going after. This is very important because YouTube sees this, and can make a determination what your video is about. It’s a small detail, but makes a big difference.
4. Catchy headline – Make the title of your video catchy enough that your prospect will want to click on it and watch your video. A generic headline that doesn’t arouse curiosity will more than likely not get much traffic.
5. Keyword rich description – If you are targeting a specific keyword, make sure you have a good keyword rich description that reads natural. Don’t stuff keywords in your description, but keep it around 2-3% keyword density. Also, for better rankings, put a 500-word article in your description that provides value with your keyword throughout and adds to the user experience. How many knew this? I sure didn’t.
6. Utilize Time Stamps – YouTube has a cool little feature that allows you to put time stamps throughout certain parts of the video. These time stamps are like video bookmarks and are great places to explain what’s in the video and get your keyword in the description a little more. You can find out how to do this by doing a simple YouTube search.
7. Link Placement – This is a big mistake most video marketers make, they put out a great video but fail to put the link to their capture page or offer in plain view for people to see. It’s best to put your link as the first thing in the description followed by your keyword.
8. Strong call to action – Probably the most important part of any video is the call to action. Without a strong call to action, your prospect won’t do what you want them to do, and you will not get the lead. Tell them what to do next when the video is done, and most will do it. People are waiting for a leader, be that leader and you will see great results.
9. Ranking Factors – If you are looking to rank your videos in Google or YouTube, backlinks are always a factor. Learn how to do good backlinking using automated tools out there. Good keyword research, Good on-page optimization, and Good backlinking will always rank you high when done right, so roll up your sleeves and learn, it will pay off.
10. Ping your backlinks – Once you create your backlinks, you can take those links from your software program, and run on over to Pingfarm.com and ping all of them. Backlinks are great, but if Google doesn’t know they exist, they are essentially useless. A ping sends a little signal over to Google and says “Hey I am over here, come crawl me!!!!”
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honestly when it comes to tags its a gamble i have had videos with one 3 tags and get 20,000 views, then i have videos with 400 videos and 40 tags. but i think it is more about the words you use, pay attention to trending searches in youtube and google. its worked good for me.