This post on YouTube Video Marketing Secrets is a continuation of last week’s post entitled “YouTube Video Marketing and Optimization Tips – Part 1 of 2” (making this Part 2 of 2, until I realized just now I’ll need to continue again next week, because, well, I talk too much 
–so now it’s 2 of 3), in which I publicly share my critique of YouTube user Mike Stokes’ YouTube Channel.
Today we are going to cover Adding Friends and Gaining Subscribers on YouTube, NoFollow & DoFollow links within YouTube, and posting YouTube videos as responses to other highly-viewed videos in your niche as a way to expand your audience and gain new fans.
In Part 1, most of my suggestions for Mike had to do with branding and laying down the foundation for optimizing his YouTube Channel–something one should do before even beginning to focus on how to optimize each YouTube video separately.
I’d like to begin Part 2 of my response to Mike by reiterating the four (4) main reasons businesses need to include YouTube as part of their overall online marketing plans. While everyone makes a big deal about Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, I would certainly add YouTube to that list of “MUST HAVE” social & new media marketing profiles (and therefore strategies) due to the following…
A YouTube Channel & Video Strategy Is CRUCIAL for:
- Online Lead Generation and List-Building (Driving Traffic Back to Your Own Main Website/Blog)
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for YouTube AND Google Search
- Viral Video Distribution Potential
- Social Media Networking Benefits
…Add in that online video is one of the hottest marketing tools around right now, and that, in comparison to all the other video content-sharing sites out there, YouTube is BY FAR #1 (in terms of traffic, ability to rank in Google, and for opportunities that now exist to access YouTube from mobile devices and home entertainment systems), and you’ve got an undeniable force in online marketing today.
BUT, although many marketers have heeded this advice and are beginning to create and upload content to YouTube, where most go wrong is in assuming that the old adage, “build it and they will come” is going to work for them. Sorry folks, but not in today’s social media landscape…
Stop wasting your time, energy, and possibly even money in creating videos that you’re only going to toss up on YouTube and expect to gain an audience without any additional effort! You need to learn how to MARKET your YouTube videos so they can be found, watched, and ACTED UPON by your target audience. (Otherwise, what’s the point?)
Back in Part 1 of this post, I listed seven of my original suggestions for Mike on how he could improve upon his existing YouTube marketing efforts. Today, I pick up with Tip #8 (which, if you’ve been following along, was originally Tip #3 when I first posted my reply to Mike’s blog comment a few weeks back):
My Original Comment to Mike:
(Mike), I see you only have 288 subscribers to your Channel. [Note that since I posted this original response on May 28th, Mike’s Channel is now up to 329 subscribers, which is a huge increase in such a short period of time.] I find it shocking the number is that low given how great your content is. Get out there and add some friends, Mike!
Tip #8: Gaining more friends on YouTube will lead to more subscribers. It’s like magic. Yet you must have a strategy for whom you choose to invite. Mike, I suggest you spend a little time searching around YouTube for Channels similar to your own (if not Cajun food-related, then perhaps Southern cooking, or just some other niche specialty cooking Channels), and send friend invites to THEIR subscribers and friends lists.
New Comments to Mike Regarding Adding Friends/Gaining Subscribers on YouTube:
[I'm ditching the italics for awhile for better readability, but this all directed to Mike]:
For example, here’s a Channel with over 2,000 subscribers:
http://www.youtube.com/user/cookingfordads
Those 2,000+ subscribers are people who have expressed interest in “cooking how-to” information, and therefore they may take an interest in your Channel, (Mike).
What you then want to do is send YouTube friend requests (invites) to as many of this similar niche Channel’s subscribers as you can. (And despite what some self-appointed “YouTube police” will tell you, sending a friend request is NOT SPAM…Bulk YouTube emails, yes. YouTube friend invites, no.) Upon seeing the friend request, the likelihood that those people will come over to see who YOU are and check out YOUR CONTENT is very high (certainly higher than if you never reached out at all). This can lead to more subscribers, again, so long as you are being strategic about who you are inviting.
Tip #9: When sending friend requests, even if those people don’t end up subscribing to your content, if they at least click over to your Channel, that counts as a Channel view; and on YouTube, more Channel views raises the “profile authority” (my term, but think of this as “pagerank”) of your Channel. This is one of the socialization tactics, or “community factors,” I teach in YouTube Secret Weapon that count when optimizing your Channel.
And yes, it has been shown that how many Channel views you have is a factor to how well your videos do in the rankings. So, the more people who’ve expressed interest in your content by clicking over to your Channel (among other community engagement criteria), the better your videos will do across the board.
This takes us back to YouTube Marketing Part I, Tip #2 where I discussed the need to choose a strategic Channel name (a.k.a. username). The more intriguing or interest-piquing your Channel name sounds or appears when it turns up as a friend invite in someone’s YouTube Inbox or on a Channel or video comment, the higher the likelihood that people will click over to see what you’re all about.
You also want your Channel name to be niche-focused and made up of a major keyword or two, if possible. In other words, Mike, the username “CajunRecipes” is going to be a helluva lot bigger draw for people interested in cooking than, say, oh, “mikestokes1.” (I’m just sayin’.)
Other things you can do to attract attention from your potential audience in terms of tracking them down via similarly niche-focused Channels is to:
- Watch and Comment on Their Videos
- Leave Comments on Their Channels
- Subscribe to Other High-Traffic Channels Related to Your Niche that Really Are of Interest to You (don’t play the “Sub 4 Sub” game–it’s Spammy)
Allowing people to see your Channel name (preferably an intriguing and niche-focused one) in more places is setting the bait for more traffic, but also:
NoFollow & DoFollow Links Within YouTube
Tip #10: YouTube Channel links are NOT “NoFollow” links (nice double negative there, huh?); rather, they are “DoFollow” links. (For more on this subject of what YouTube links are or are not “NoFollow,” I encourage you to read the post “Is The YouTube SEO Guy Smoking Crack” by Andrew Shotland of Local SEO Guide. You’ll need to look up “nofollow links” if you are unfamiliar with this SEO term.)
Essentially though, the more your Channel username link appears around YouTube, say, attached to your comments on other Channels or as a recent Subscriber to other Channels (such as in the image below), the more the “DoFollow” link on your Channel username will pass link juice back to your Channel, and then on to your most recent video (also a “DoFollow” link).
All puple-blue highlighted links above are "DoFollow" links, and this includes each username of the YouTube Channel profiles. This is why commenting on and subscribing to other highly-ranked YouTube Channels will help raise the PageRank of your own Channel (link juice gets passed back), which can then be passed along to your most recent video(s).
As you’ll see below, Channel name links are also “DoFollow” (purple-blue highlighted links) in the Related Videos section of video watch pages, but like the actual video links are “NoFollow” (pink highlighted links) in the Comments section:
The above image of a YouTube video watch page shows that Channel username links are "DoFollow" (puple-blue highlights) in the Related Videos section to the right, but are "NoFollow" (pink highlights) in the Comments section. Do not misinterpret this to mean leaving comments is no longer a good thing to do, for it still is for other reasons. As for how to get in the Related Videos section, YouTube Secret Weapon has an entire section on this.
Okay, so that was a MAJOR tangent. (I will save my additional “PageRank” and “NoFollow” advice for another time…For YouTube Secret Weapon owners, this was covered in the new Disc 3 of YouTube Updates and Advanced Strategies that came out June 1st.)
- In the meantime, Mike, here’s another Channel you’ll want to scour for users you can reach out to: http://www.youtube.com/user/cookingcom
- And another: http://www.youtube.com/user/KraftCookingSchool (a YouTube Sponsored channel, so don’t be intimidated by the cool background and auto-playing videos…they paid a lot to have that!)
- And yet another: http://www.youtube.com/user/cookingrecipes (note this dude’s clever profile pic–it’s a GIF file…and an attention-grabber at that)
Tip #11: (Mike), to make it even easier to tap into the subscribers, friends, and even video commenters for these Channels I suggest above, you might think about getting a tool that we recommend to all YouTube Secet Weapon students. We use it ourselves: It’s automated friend-adding software.
I know that sounds “Spammy,” and yet it does NOT violate the YouTube Terms of Service (and many of the YouTube Secret Weapon students use it religiously around-the-clock with only positive results). The reason it is not in violation of the YouTube TOS (see 4-H) is that it works on a time-delay system so that it is not sending out friend requests faster or more frequently than a human could otherwise do manually. The time delay also insures that you don’t violate YouTube’s restrictions for how many friend invites can be sent in a given time period.
[Note: We only recommend using such automated software to send friend invites. We warn our YouTube Secret Weapon students NOT to use it for comment posting or for sending bulk emails, as to us, that is SPAM. YouTube has been cracking down on such activities recently, too. As for sending friend invites though, they are legit, they do work, and we wholeheartedly recommend doing it using friend-adding software--with a time delay, of course.]
The Friend-Adder we recommend is called Tube ToolBox. It does cost $7.95 a month and has a $19.95 activation fee, but Paul and I forfeited our commission on the activation fee in order to give YouTube Secret Weapon owners a $10 discount. Now, it’s just $9.95 to sign up, and I’m happy to pass that savings along to all of the readers of this post.
Just visit http://TubeTrafficStrategies.com.
Again, the tool is called Tube Toolbox, and that link will take you to the page featuring our discount. By ordering there, you will initially only pay $17.90, which is the $9.95 activation fee, plus $7.95 for the first month. I recommend trying it out for a month, and cancel if you don’t feel it was totally worth the $7.95/month fee.
Mike, I can almost guarantee that if you put a little strategy behind its use in terms of where you are finding targeted friends to add, you’ll gain 50-100 new subscribers in 30-days. You will have to let it run as often as possible though to do this…Not to worry, as the software can run quietly in the background, hidden in your tray, as you go about your daily work–it doesn’t bother a thing.
And I repeat: Time-Delayed Automated YouTube Friend Invites are NOT SPAM according to YouTube’s Terms of Service.
In the end, if you still have a problem with using automated software, just do it manually (or pay a young person an allowance to add you so many friends per day). To send an invite, simply visit an individual’s Channel and look for the “Add as Friend” link in their “Connect with…” box:
When you add a friend, regardless of who has sent the invite, you are privy to the same information on one anothers’ Channels based on your privacy settings. Be sure to also check your own account Inbox for invites that have been sent TO you by others:
I’m not going to get into all the additional advantages of having targeted prospects on your YouTube Friend List, but know that there are MANY beyond just a potential Channel view and the hope that they’ll subscribe to you.
Meanwhile, On To More Tips for Mike…
Tip #12: (Mike), start posting your videos as responses to other highly-trafficked videos in your niche. Your videos don’t have to be purposely a response (in other words, videos you made solely as a response to another). Rather, the videos you target could just be cooking demonstrations for great food accompaniments to your own dishes OR something to do with the Cajun tradition/music/lifestyle. The connection between the two can be very loose (in fact, I often see people post videos as responses to other videos where there’s no connection at all…but that I don’t recommend).
The main idea here is NOT to assume that people who will enjoy your videos know to look for them. You’ve got to put yourself out there where you can be discovered. Find related videos that are already getting traffic to connect yourself to and try to borrow from their audiences. The more similar you are to that content, the more likely the viewers who click over will have an interest in what you have to say.
Below is an example of a video I posted one of my episodes of TheBoaters.TV as a response to that helped my video earn a few extra thousand views from an audience interested in water-related activities:
My TheBoaters TV episode (on the right beneath the main player above) posted as a video response to another highly-viewed video on a related subject.
Here’s another example from when I was assisting Internet marketing expert Brad Fallon’s team in marketing Brad’s daily “FreeLine Report” episodes on YouTube:
I posted an episode of Brad Fallon's FreeLine Report where he discussed the iPhone 3G as a response to a video featuring Steve Jobs' Keynote at the Apple WWDC 2008 (Brad's video is the one on the far right with the green background above). By posting this within the first 24 hours from when the Steve Jobs video was released, Brad's video shot up over 2,500 views in 48 hours, and continued to climb to over 5,000 TARGETED views.
Posting videos as responses to videos that are closely related in topic to your own is not only going to help you to attract an audience that is already PRE-QUALIFIED to have an interest in your content, but it’s also going to increase the likelihood that your video will come up in the “Related Videos” section alongside that chosen video. There are a number of reasons for that, just as there are a myriad of other methods for getting your videos to come up in a Related Videos section next to videos you think will have a good target audience for you…
…HOWEVER, I can’t spill all the beans here (pun intended for Mike) and besides, this post is already novella-length, so I’m going to save the remaining Tips for next week anyway.
Be sure to check back next week for Part 3 where I’ll cover YouTube Insight, creating inbound links to your videos AND your Channel, and the benefits of YouTube Playlists (along with a few hints to master those).
Until then, Happy Tubing!
~JP
P.S. I apologize for all the bright colors, but I’m an over-formatter. Sunglasses recommended when reading my posts. 
UPDATE: Part 3 of this series is now posted: YouTube Video Marketing and Optimization Secrets – Part 3 of 3