How to Make Your Audience Engage With Your Video Again and Again (and Again!)

We’ve all been there.

You upload a great video. Hours later, when you visit the comment section, you hear crickets. And, your views are barely increasing, too. 50 the first day. Maybe 80 the next. And then nothing, forever.

This is obviously not enough to propel your business. You need more views and comments. You need to attract new viewers and you need to re-attract your old ones. And you know that.  

But before you read fifty blogs (similar to this one) explaining 30 or so ways to increase your views and comments, understand why you’re facing this problem. Why are your likes and comments dwindling, while others are sprinting past you in the video world?

If there isn’t a problem with your video content (you’ve done your research and you know this is exactly what your viewers want), then chances are that you’re not marketing effectively. So, there are 3 major issues you need to look into.

• Do you have an effective cross-promotion strategy in place?
• Are you promoting your video on YouTube correctly?
• Are you bribing followers to come check out and engage with your video? No, it’s not unethical or illegal.

Let’s discuss each of these points and how you can overcome them.

Cross promote

You may not have a lot of subscribers on Youtube, but you might have a good amount on other social media platforms. Use them! Don’t just share your video update once and think that’s it. Constant strategic sharing is the way to go.

Save time and use scheduling apps

I know it’s tiresome to constantly share your video everywhere, so use a scheduling app like Buffer for Video. It saves time and you can share your videos all across the digital sphere with just one click.

Here’s a short tutorial taking you through the steps.

Ask your social media followers to follow you on other social media profiles, especially YouTube.

A little nudge is sometimes enough. With every post you upload on Instagram, SnapChat, Facebook add links to your other social media handles.

Cross promote all your videos on social media profiles.

Add snippets of your longer videos with just the teaser and post it on social media.

Try being as creative as you can. Use Facebook Live and Instagram’s Stories feature to share your videos.

Ask followers to engage with your video.

Sometimes, all you need to do is tell them to ‘come and say hi’ on your video. You can also ask them to use a particular emoji to show that they’re your snapfam or instafam. This will encourage your followers to engage with your videos again and again.

Highlight these people and thank them on social media to encourage further engagement. Build a relationship with them.

Also, give a shout out to some of your loyal followers on your clips. This helps build strong social relationships, too.

Make sure you promote older videos, too

Your new followers may not have seen your older work, so promote your old videos consistently, too. You can also add some new elements in your old videos and promote them as a new and improved version of those videos.

Be smart with off-site promotions

If you’re new on YouTube, the best way to invite your target audience to watch your video is through strategic off-site promotions. Make a list of social media groups, platforms, Quora and Reddit queries where your niche is being discussed. And then drop a link to your video there with a small explanation. It’s an underrated but a super-effective way of getting those extra views and comments.

Use the sheer power of influencer outreach to attract an even larger crowd.

TapInfluence partnered with Nielsen Catalina Solutions on a 2016 study that revealed that influencer marketing generates 11 times the ROI of traditional digital marketing.

And it’s pretty simple. If you’ve mentioned a brand or an influencer in your video, tag them, send them an email and ask them to promote your video. Here’s how you can find out their email addresses.

Here’s a great example shared by Tim at Ahrefs.

Harness the power of social media. Tag them on LinkedIn, Facebook and tweet them on Twitter. Share the video along with the post.

The video itself

Is your video fully optimised?
Not sure?

Read on and implement.

Organize playlists

Make sure that your other videos (especially the previous one or next one) are relevant and interesting. Keep videos in a 'channel' or 'series' or 'playlist' so that it doesn't go "really fun FAQ video" and then "really boring demo video". Keep all the FAQ videos in a playlist, all demo videos in a playlist, and so on.

When people are interested in a certain level of information, allow them to continue consuming that content easily.

End the video with a strong CTA

End your video on a strong note with a Call to Action. If you want them to engage with your video, you need to ask them. Simple. Ask them a question at the end, ask them to give you their suggestions or advice, or ask them to vote for something in a poll. Ask questions that they’ll want to answer.

Here’s Wistia’s Guide to Call to Actions in Video Marketing to help you nail that CTA and prompt fun discussions in the comments section.

Remind them to click the subscribe button

Make sure viewers subscribe to your YT video channel, or follow you on your social media profiles where you’re hosting the video. Remind them in every video with a little visual help.

Reply to each and every comment you receive.

Ask your friends and family members to start commenting to build a momentum. And when you start getting comment (or even a single comment), answer them and offer lots and lots of value in return. Spend time to craft a nice, informative replies to everyone who comments.

"Respond as much and as often as you can. Years ago, I heard the analogy that social media is like the new telephone. If someone calls your office, you answer the phone. My advice: Do the same when it comes to social media. Do your best to respond to everything. You never know where your next client, partner or friend may come from."

— DJ Waldow, Founder & CEO of Waldow Social

Address negative comments too (unless they’re spam)

"Here's a great example of how a brand turned an angry customer (me) complaining on them about Twitter into an evangelist for their brand. My company uses GoToMeeting for web conferencing.

One day we had a presentation and we couldn't get the online meeting to work. I made some snarky tweet about it and within 5 minutes, someone from GoToMeeting responded back on Twitter with a "hey, what's going on? how can we help?" I responded, they gave me a link to an online FAQ that addressed the problem (we had to change one of our settings), and I was able to fix my problem and have my meeting on time.

The brand became a hero to me.

In a 10-minute time span, they turned me into a brand advocate, but to do that took plenty of planning. Somebody was sitting there monitoring Twitter with a list of links to FAQs just waiting for a problem to solve. That took a lot of planning and a lot of resources, but it was worth it.

I've told that story dozens of times. The ROI of all that planning may not have been quantifiable, but it was very real.

How can you be a hero to your customers?"

— Adam Kleinberg, Traction

Make sure the audio and video quality passes muster.

Poor audio and video quality is a big turn-off. Take care of the basics like using lots of lighting (natural and through lamps), shutting off external noise, using a great editing software to professional edit your videos.  

Watch this amazing video on how to record audio to create top notch videos for your brand.

Don’t publish one-off videos, have a proper schedule.

Do you just publish videos when the mood strikes you? Or when you’ve got something important to say (or promote ;) )?

Bad idea.

Have a proper video posting schedule in place even if it’s only once a week. But have a specific day and time. Let your audience know about your schedule and what you’re going to talk about in the upcoming video beforehand.

It’s also a great way to boost your YouTube search rankings, and in turn increase your views.

According to an article by 3PlayMedia:

“Newly published videos get an SEO boost during the first week they’re published on YouTube, so publishing regularly ensures you’ll always have a video higher up in SERPs.

Regular views and repeated visits to your channel signal to YouTube that your content is valuable, and therefore deserved higher search rank."

Incentives

Now it’s time to bribe them. Just ask them to engage in exchange for comments. It’s a simple strategy, but can turn you into an overnight triumph if you do it consistently and strategically.

Run contests and giveaways

There are several ways you can use contests to increase your engagement.

The more people a single viewer tags on your video, the more chances of them winning. Or ask them to comment on the video, the one with the best comment wins. Offer a mouthwatering gift to tempt people into participating.

You can cross promote your giveaway on different social platforms to make it viral and reach out to a humongous crowd.

Here’s a great post explaining the nitty gritties of creating a successful YouTube giveaway.

Use your audience's comments, advice, experiences, or anything they share in your video.

When you get enough viewers/comments on your videos, do a FAQ or a viewers choice video.It makes people feel like part of a community.

You can also ask your audience on other social media platforms what they’d like you to cover next. Let them know that you’ll mention their questions with their name (and give a shout out to their brand if they have one) on the video. Everyone loves a little piece of stardom, so this is a great incentive.

Marie Forleo does a similar thing in her Q and A video series. Watch it for yourself.

Collaborate with others in your niche and create videos

Collaborate with others in your niche to reach out to their audience, as well. If you’ve got a big budget, you can also think about collaborating with influencers and celebrities.

Learn from Buzzfeed the master of strategic and super-successful YT collaborations. When it collaborated with Purina in 2014 it got over 19 million views. And they’ve got several success stories like that.

Start off by collaborating with smaller businesses and brands in your niche, and when you start getting views, go for the bigger fish.

Learn more about it in this post.

You won’t become successful overnight

But it’s okay. Success takes time, and you have to be patient. Work on these tips, make your video the best ever (content wise and marketing wise), and people will come to you.

And as James Bryant, Co-founder & Video Strategy Director of Skeleton, says,

"Know specifically what you want to achieve with video.
Be clear about your goals.
Know specifically what you want to achieve with video. And know what you need your audience to do to get you there.
What action do they need to take to ensure your meet your objectives?
And what mindset should they be in to enable them to take that action?
In other words: what should your audience feel, think and do
after watching your video content?
If you can solidify this in the planning stages
of video marketing you're on the way to success.”