Are you a fellow aspiring YouTuber? Creating great content but having a hard time getting your videos in front of potential subscribers? Well, we feel your pain!

We’ve been traveling the world and vlogging our adventures for the last 8 months. Since we began, we’ve learned a lot about how to drive traffic to your YouTube channel when you don’t have a huge social presence or a large following.

But first, a disclaimer.

Your content has to be good. Naturally, when your channel is your baby, it can be hard to tell if what you’re producing isn’t very good. Try asking for feedback from all of your friends and family members before pushing your content out to the masses. Try to ask them to provide objective feedback. This may be impossible, but it’s better than nothing.

If there’s room for improvement, wait to promote your videos until you’ve reached a higher level of quality.

We didn’t promote our YouTube channel until we had already made almost 30 vlogs!

Disclaimer over

Without further ado, here are 10 techniques you can use to drive traffic to your new YouTube vlog.

Post on Reddit

While many subreddits are where content goes to die a horrible death, we’ve been able to generate quality traffic and subscribes from a few of them. Here are some subreddits where you can post your new vlog:

/r/vlog
/r/NewTubers
/r/vlogging
/r/vlogger
/r/vlogs

Twitter

Social media platforms like Twitter can be tricky to break into, but I still think it’s worth trying. Even if you only have 50 followers, you should still post your vlogs on Twitter. You never know when a follower might click, watch and subscribe.

But don’t stop at posting vlogs. Posting the same content all the time will cause people to eventually ignore your posts. Also try to post meaningful content that’s in your niche.

And make sure you take some time to reach out to others. Reply to their tweets, retweet them, post their blog content. The more you share, the more people are likely to share your content and follow.

Facebook

Facebook is pretty similar to Twitter. You want to post your vlogs consistently, but you don’t want to only post vlogs. Work on posting useful content within your niche. Before you’ll know it you’ll have a handful of likes and the snowball effect will begin!

Instagram

Instagram can be a bit trickier, but is nevertheless a great platform for generating YouTube views.

Firstly, always be hashtagging your photos so you can squeeze as much social juice out of each post as possible.

When you post a new vlog, post a screenshot from the video or the thumbnail and push users to check it out. There’s a caveat though. Instagram doesn’t allow you to include links within posts. Instead, put LINK IN BIO after your photo comment and make sure your bio links to your YouTube channel.

promote vlog on instagram

For bonus points, use bit.ly to track your bio link and see how many people actually click it!

Title and thumbnail your video properly

A proper title and an interesting thumbnail can go a long way in driving eyeballs to your videos. Watch time is the most important factor in determining a video’s quality, but a proper title, description and tags still help.

A simple trick you can use is to type relevant keywords into the YouTube search bar and see what it auto suggest. Presumably these are popular phrases people are searching for. So, if you include these phrases in your video title, it may do better in search results.

youtube search results

You can also try to title your videos similar to other similar and semi-popular YouTube videos. Keyword here is similar - not the same! This may increase the potential that your video shows up as a recommended video alongside these other videos.

related youtube videos

Comment on popular YouTubers’ videos

It’s true that the comments section on YouTube is often full of trolls, morons and other generally stupid people. BUT, it is still possible to have a normal discussion about the videos you’re watching.

Since our videos are travel related, we’ll often engage in discussions on channels like funforlouis or mrbenbrown. We’ve found that if you add to the conversation in a meaningful way, other commenters might click your username and view your channel. And if they find it interesting, they might even subscribe!

We’ve been able to generate consistent subscribers and views this way.

It’s important to make sure you’re interacting on channels that are relevant to yours. This just means it’s more likely their viewers might also be interested in your channel!

popular youtuber comments

Comment on smaller YouTubers’ videos

Commenting on smaller YouTubers is also a great way to generate views and subscribers. But the key here is quality over quantity. Always leave positive or helpful comments and never ask the YouTuber to view or subscribe to your channel. Trust me, if you leave a meaningful comment and have interesting content of your own, they’ll find their way to your channel page.

Finding smaller YouTubers is easy. Just search “first youtube video” or “first vlog” on Twitter. You can also view the subreddits I mentioned above to find smaller YouTubers to interact with.

smaller youtube comments

Post in yttalk forum

The Yttalk forums are full of other YouTubers of all channel sizes. And in addition to being a great place to find help with your channel and feedback on your videos, it’s also a great way to find potential viewers.

Most of your fellow YouTubers are YouTube viewers themselves. So the more you interact on the forums, the more likely it is that they will click your channel and possibly subscribe!

Post on empire.kred

Empire.kred is a place where you can post your content and push other influencers to engage with it. Based on your social media influence, you’re given a stock value in eaves (which is their digital currency). Other influencers can buy “stock” in you, which in turn puts eaves in your pocket.

Eaves can be used to create missions which are basically tasks that you give to other influencers, i.e. watch my latest video, view this tweet, view this photo, etc. But the catch is you can’t specifically ask for engagement, i.e. likes, comments, shares. Instead, it’s up to the user to decide for themselves how they’d like to engage with your content.

When someone accomplishes your mission, they are paid a sum in eaves that you decide when you post the mission.

I like that you aren’t specifically allowed to ask someone to subscribe to your channel in order to accomplish a mission. Presumably, this means if someone from Empire.Kred subscribes, it’s because they are interested in your channel and want to see more.

empire kred

Interact with every single comment you receive

The key to YouTube success is building a community. As your community grows, more and more people will return to your videos and interact with them via likes, shares and comments.

Try to respond to all of your video comments as quickly as possible. This shows your viewers that there’s a real person on the other end and will make them much more likely to engage with your other videos.

We’ve had some viewers that have been commenting on our videos since the very beginning. If we hadn’t consistently responded to their comments, they might not have become a regular viewer!

youtube-comment

Further Reading

Here are some other resources on our site to help you improve your YouTube Channel and make better videos:

There you have it, 10 surefire ways to get traffic to your new YouTube vlog. When you’re starting out on YouTube, it can be daunting trying to gain an initial user base. The key is to start small. Set a goal of 10 subscribers, then 50, then 100, then 500. If you’re consistently producing interesting content and using the techniques above, you’ll see consistent growth to your YouTube channel guaranteed.

If you’ve found this article helpful, I hope you’ll consider sharing it with your network. And if you have any tips of your own to add, leave a comment below or reach out to us on Twitter

Thanks for reading!

If you want to follow along on our journey, you can subscribe to our YouTube Channel or subscribe to our blog. Thanks for reading, we'll see you on the road!

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