A few months ago, Brian Peters at Buffer gave me a call. Buffer wanted to grow their YouTube channel. But nothing they tried seemed to make a dent.
They tried:
-Publishing more often
-Creating short videos
-Trying explainer videos
-Promoting their videos on social media
But nothing worked.
So I gave Brian Peters a few suggestions. And MAN did he implement them.
In fact, he took many of my suggestions to the next level (especially when it came to keyword research).
In the end, Buffer boosted their subscribers, views, and YouTube rankings significantly. (In fact, their monthly subs increased by 59% in 30 days. Not bad.)
I know a lot of peeps here at GH are looking to get into video.
So I thought this case study would help those folks a) avoid common mistakes and b) learn some new strategies that are working right now.
So yeah, that's it. Let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to answer them here.
Aaron Orendorff
Okay, three things:
1. Damn it … is there NOTHING you're not amazing at?
2. That URL is killer: https://backlinko.com/grow-youtube-channel (you are the king of evergreen URLs)
3. This quote from Brian Peters summed it up perfectly: "The biggest mental shift we made with our YouTube strategy was to stop looking at YouTube as a social media site. Instead, we started treating YouTube like a search engine (similar to Google)."
Brian Dean
1. You've clearly never seen me dance :-)
2. Thanks :-)
3. Absolutely. Having a chance to get to know Brian Peters recently has been awesome. He's incredibly smart.
Aaron Orendorff
Did that start with the same webinar we hung out on?
Brian Dean
Yup, the famous banana webinar, LOL!
Brian Dean
Actually, we had chatted before. But that webinar was the first time I "met" him.
Toland Lawrence
Great post! Lots of awesome insights!
Brian Dean
:-)
Alex Birkett
Love this! YT is a huge search engine, but in the past when I've tested video marketing, I never looked at it like that. It's an interesting paradigm shift, especially when you add in nifty tools like TubeBuddy
Brian Dean
Absolutely, Alex. YouTube isn't really "social media" in the traditional sense. It's much more similar to Google than something like Twitter.
Tad Chef
Awesome Brian! You know you made it when you are showing social media experts like the Buffer team how to thrive on YouTube. Social SEO is a widely neglected part of Internet marketing these days IMHO.
Brian Dean
Hey Tad, I 100% agree: social SEO is HUGE.
Mick Meaney
This is solid.
It confirms some of what I suspected caused an increase in retention, and it's given me plenty of new ideas too.
Bravo!
Brian Dean
Happy to help, Mick
Jeremy Ellens
Great post as always Brian!
Brian Dean
Thanks man
John Simpson
Great post on youtube growth as it is so important not just for SEO lately but just traffic in general. People are using youtube more than google these days and the trend is only increasing going forward.