How to: Gain More Video Views

A great video tickles our imagination and creates a great impact in our mind. If we find it interesting and worth the effort to share, many of us would not hesitate to do so through our blogs, Twitter and Facebook profiles. With more sharing, there will be more views.

Sounds easy? You will soon find that getting people to take action to spread your video is more challenging than getting your in-laws to like you. But don’t be dismayed as when there’s a will, there ARE ways. To create a video that at the very least yields a decent number of video views, take note of the things highlighted in this post.

1. Content

Content is important even for a video. Great videos with high viewer rates are either entertaining or informative. Extraordinary videos possess both qualities. Let’s take Susan Boyle’s video as an example. Clearly, it has entertainment value and contains a subtle message: Persevere when pursuing our dreams. That message certainly got into me when I first saw the video on YouTube. I sensed her innocent passion for singing and was given a great wake up call.

To produce good content, put yourself into the viewers’ shoe. Is your video worth viewers’ time? Get opinions from other people to make sure that your own assessment on the content quality is not biased.

2. Thumbnail

A good video thumbnail is like a magazine cover. The more attractive it is, the more your video would “sell”.

In the past, YouTube set aside 3 thumbnails, which are extracted at the frame exactly 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 through your video. Understanding the extraction time frame allowed users to manipulate and set the bit of the video they desired as thumbnails. The result of this? A whole lot of thumbnails with sexy bikini girls in them, flooding the YouTube page.

Now that YouTube has changed its policy, thumbnail control is officially history. The current policy, similar to the previous, allows you to choose 1 out of the 3 thumbnails. Just that the thumbnails are now generated through YouTube’s algorithm – systematic to them but random to its users.

Pick the thumbnail that reflects the content of your video best.

Tip: A great channel background might help too!

3. Title & Description

The title is normally the first few things people see. A clear title that contains a couple of related keywords should be sufficient to entice your potential viewers. Try not to be overly creative with your title. People might not understand what you are talking about.

Likewise, your description has to be clear and should have an inviting elaboration on your video content. Make sure that the description is closely related to the title you crafted. Limit it to 2 to 3 sentences because we all know how patient netizens are.