In this article, I am clearly going to show you how to promote your music on YouTube.
With over 2.5 billion monthly active users, YouTube is one of the social media platforms an upcoming or independent artist can use to promote their music.
But the problem is that YouTube is designed for content creators who upload videos at least 3 times a week. Unlike music videos where musicians release within a long frame of time.
YouTube is not known to push artists unless already established ones who already have a fanbase that views their videos.
And it favors them the most because people are going to use YouTube search engines to look for their favorite artists and watch their videos.
So as an upcoming or independent artist, you must really get to know the best way to use YouTube to promote your music; else you are going to give up on using YouTube to promote your music when you realize you are not achieving the results you anticipated.
But nevertheless, if you can read and implement the strategies I am going to reveal to you in this article, you are going to achieve the needed success in using YouTube to promote your music.
How to use YouTube to promote your music.
Below are the ways you can use YouTube to promote your music:
- Optimize your YouTube account.
- Do keyword research.
- Create other content aside from music.
- Promote your music with a YouTube playlist.
- Use Ads to promote your music on YouTube.
Now let’s get the explanations to the above points one after the other.
1. Optimize your YouTube account.
So many upcoming artists only stop at opening a YouTube account, and immediately start to upload content without really taking the time to optimize their YouTube accounts.
The reason you need to optimize your account is so that the YouTube robots (algorithm), will immediately understand what your YouTube channel is all about.
And in doing so know the right places to push your content.
To optimize your YouTube account, go to YouTube Studio and click on settings; below are the most important things you should optimize in your YouTube account.
- About: Make sure you take the time to explain in detail who you are and most especially your genre of music. You need to make people immediately understand you are making the kind of music they love to listen to. Also, ensure you add your contact details like email and phone number, in case anyone wants to contact you for networking or collaborations, etc.
- Tags: Ensure you add all the tags that relate to your genre of music, and even your brand and mission. If you have a popular saying or signature word, include it here because once that saying or word goes viral, people will start searching for it on YouTube, and you will be the only one to pop up for such or related searches.
- Profile image: People should be able to clearly see your image once they check up on your YouTube channel. This could be your main clean photography shot, or even artwork of the current single, EP, or album you are promoting.
- You can also add an intro video that will stick to the top of your channel for people to preview every time they get in contact with it.
2. Do keyword research.
Imagine your music popping up for a trending keyword people are searching on YouTube, you can now visualize how many views that can really help you to get for your music on YouTube.
You want to make sure your video has a title that is actually or closely related to what people are searching for on YouTube.
Remember you are an upcoming artist and no one knows about you, and for that reason, no one is going to search for you or your music on YouTube.
HOW TO DO KEYWORD RESEARCH FOR YOUR MUSIC ON YOUR YOUTUBE.
Below are the ways you can do keyword research for your music on YouTube.
- Look for a song that’s trending on YouTube and uses the same title for your song also. You can even use the artist’s name for your song if it’s a name that relates to something. Or carve a title out of two or more songs that are trending on YouTube.
- You can also do cover songs for music that’s already trending and people are searching for it on YouTube. Because of a copyright claim, I suggest you use an original beat for the cover song or even do an acapella version or better still get a keyboardist or a guitarist to tune the song while you sing the cover song on it.
- Create a playlist that has a popular title, add songs that are already trending in your genre, and also add your song to the playlist. Make sure you run a search for popular playlists and use their titles to create yours. The more playlist you create and add your songs to, the more you will increase your chances of it appearing on YouTube search results.
3. Create other content aside from music.
When you go to YouTube you will realize that most of the music industry content creators are musicians themselves.
And this is what they do to stay relevant.
They create music industry tutorials, and in due time algorithm favors them, and their contents start to gain organic views.
As their views increase, so also do their subscribers. And when these kinds realize they have enough followership on YouTube, they start to upload their music and have a lot of engagements.
Now, this also helps a lot because it will help you to beat the YouTube algorithm of uploading at least 3 videos every week.
Unlike having to wait for three to four months before you will be releasing your next single.
So think of the kind of content you can create for YouTube, between the times you release your music videos; in order to start gaining dedicated followership on the platform.
Even if you don’t have the tools to help you make tutorials, you can even use your Android phone to make short motivating videos or share what you are learning in order to advance your music career, with others.
Or you can even do a narrative of something that gave rise to particular lyrics, chorus, or any part of your already released or upcoming song.
You can even be making videos of how you get inspiration and also get down to composing your songs.
Make sure whatever content you are creating is something that adds value to your proposed audience.
4. Promote your music with a YouTube playlist.
To promote your music with a YouTube playlist, you have to reach out to YouTube curators.
And there are basically 2 ways you can reach out to YouTube curators, and they are:
- Use SubmitHub to find YouTube curators.
- Searching for YouTube curators directly on YouTube.
1. USE SUBMITHUB TO FIND YOUTUBE CURATORS.
SubmitHub is a platform that connects music artists with curators, bloggers, record labels, and those who can really help them get great results from their music and career.
You can join the platform by simply signing up for a free account today, and using their free and paid options to really get your music to the right places.
Below are the things you need to do so you can use SubmitHub to find curators for your music on YouTube.
- Create a free account.
- Log in and go to the list of curators at the top.
- On the right side, you will see a filter by record labels, curators, bloggers, etc, now select curators.
- Below curators, check your music genre, scroll down, and under the type of curators click on YouTubers.
- You can then choose the curators you want that will help you promote your music on the YouTube playlist.
2. SEARCHING FOR YOUTUBE CURATORS DIRECTLY ON YOUTUBE.
To search for YouTube curators directly on the YouTube platform, use the search engine to type in your genre of music, and when the results pop up, open the filter and underneath it click on the playlist.
This will open a list of playlists for your genre, and at this point, you need to check for the playlist that is going to be a good fit for you to promote your music on YouTube.
Now click to view the playlist and look at the following things.
- Check the number of views that the playlist has and make sure it has hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of views.
- Confirm when the playlist was last updated. If it’s years then don’t waste your time contacting the curator because it is no longer relevant; no matter the number of views it has.
- Look at the type of music in the playlist and make sure it has current music which fits your kind of music and that’s trending in your country or globally.
When you see a playlist that’s cool, click on the channel list and go to the curator’s channel page to check its About section and see if an email is added.
If there is an email, then you can use it to reach out to the curator and ask him how you can be able to include your music in his playlist.
Make sure you send a link for him to preview if your song is fit for his playlist.
5. Use Ads to promote your music on YouTube.
You can also use Ads to promote your music on YouTube.
The Ads type you can use are Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube Ads.
For Instagram and Facebook Ads, all you need to do is connect both accounts and then share your music link from YouTube to Facebook and use the Ads Manager to boost that post, targeting an audience that matches your genre of music.
To set up YouTube Ads, you can go to Google Ads Manager, ads.google.com, and create your Ads account.
After creating your account, go to the Google Ads Manager dashboard and on the settings click on accounts, scroll down and you will see an option to connect your Ads account to your YouTube account.
Once you are done with that, you can begin running Video Ads on YouTube.
Good luck!
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