Running a YouTube channel isn’t easy work, especially if you feel the results aren’t measuring up to the effort you’re putting in. But there’s a way to make the work worth it. Try promoting your YouTube channel on Facebook to get the unique advantages that come with the latter social media platform.
Here are a few tips to get you started.
1. Post channel videos on your Facebook page
Posting videos from your channel to your Facebook page increases viewership of your content.
If you want to ensure your YouTube and Facebook content is different from each other, you can post clips of your YouTube videos on Facebook instead. This bite-sized content has the benefit of getting your audience excited about your videos, which drives viewership and serves to promote your YouTube channel.
Keep a few things in mind while posting videos to your page.
- Follow Facebook’s recommendations for video length. Facebook recommends capping your videos at one minute for short-form videos, while stories have a 15-second limit.
- Use the recommended video dimensions to post content that is consumable by everyone. You can find the recommended dimensions here.
- Facebook recommends making your videos ‘searchable’. This means making sure that your title, description, and thumbnail are all accurate, meaningful, and eye-catching. Here, it would be a good idea to research SEO-optimized keywords for your content so you can provide exactly what your audience tends to search for.
- Add captions to all the videos you post, since people are more likely to watch videos with the sound off.
Cross-promoting your YouTube channel videos on Facebook has a few added advantages.
- A potentially fresh audience for your videos apart from your subscribers/viewers on YouTube. These new people can then be driven to your channel if they find your promotion enticing enough.
- More options to interact. Facebook comments are generally more interactive than the YouTube comments section, as the former can use reacts and photo/GIF replies. Posting your YouTube videos on Facebook will not only allow you to interact more flexibly with your audience, but they can also interact with each other and drive engagement on your posts.
- With Facebook reels growing at an astounding rate of 50% between May and October 2022, and with 140 billion reels played every day, you definitely want to promote teaser clips from your channel videos on this platform.
Promote YouTube videos on Facebook to increase your engagement and following on both platforms simultaneously.
2. Customize your Facebook page
Customizing the appearance of your Facebook page to promote your YouTube channel suggests overall brand cohesiveness. This makes your channel look more ‘official’, making it more likely for people to trust it
The YouTube channel Numberphile does a great job of customizing their Facebook page to fit their YouTube channel theme. They use the brown toned colors, numeric elements, and logo in their Facebook cover photo and profile picture, immediately bringing to mind the channel.
Customize your own Facebook cover photo and profile picture to fit your channel theme. You can do this by using professionally designed Facebook cover templates from PosterMyWall to create content corresponding with your own channel theme.
Apart from this, you can add links to your channel and other social media in the About page, and pin a post to the top of your page that gives an overview of the channel, or features your most popular video.
3. Host a giveaway to promote your YouTube channel
Giveaways tend to get more attention than usual promotional posts, because of the possibility of winning a prize. Giveaway posts also receive more engagement, especially if they are tag-a-friend giveaways.
Host a giveaway on your Facebook page to promote your YouTube channel. You can add fun prizes in return for people watching a video and commenting on their favorite part, and add caveats like them having to follow your channel to enter.
4. Discuss channel ideas and updates on Facebook
The educational YouTube channel Philosophy Tube does this by creating posts that are specifically meant for their Facebook followers.
When you keep your Facebook followers in the loop by discussing potential future ideas and decisions regarding your YouTube channel with them–no matter how small–they feel an affinity towards your channel. This may drive up your engagement and create a more responsive community.
Similarly, you can create a short summary of each new video and post it as a caption to the YouTube link for that video on your Facebook page, like Abigail from Philosophy Tube has done in the example above. This gives people an idea of what to expect from a video and even serves to create hype around an upcoming video.
5. Use paid Facebook advertising
If you have the budget for this, Facebook ads are highly effective in boosting post performance and helping you get subscribers to your channel.
- Boost posts: Begin by boosting posts that already have high engagement. These can be any of the kinds of posts discussed earlier, like a giveaway, a channel update, or an upcoming video. Make sure to include a link to your YouTube channel or videos in the caption. You can also create and boost an entirely new post, one that is catered to be a Facebook ad. To achieve this, you can use Facebook ad templates that catch the eye and are convincing.
- Video ads: Video is all the rage these days, and for good reason. Video ads have a nearly 25% higher impression rate than static ads. Use Facebook video ads to create fun, impressionable videos that stick in your followers’ minds.
- Auto-subscription link: Another way to use Facebook advertising to promote your YouTube channel is to buy an auto-subscription link and get Youtube subscribers from Facebook. This works by automatically prompting the user to subscribe to your channel when they click any link to the channel on your Facebook.
Using Facebook paid advertising has double the benefits: attracting followers to your Facebook page and growing your YouTube channel.
6. Make a Facebook group for your channel
As mentioned before, people like to feel included in discussions about something in order to remain excited or care about it.
A Facebook group allows you to do this by forming a loyal relationship with your followers. Facebook groups are less rigid and formal than pages, allowing people to speak their mind about your content more freely, and even engage with each other.
If you stick with it and remain consistent, this strategy will go a long way to build a dedicated fanbase for your YouTube channel.
Use Facebook to its full potential to promote your YouTube channel
Facebook as a platform is brimming with unique possibilities to grow your YouTube channel, and these ideas are just some of them.
Take your time to explore and take full advantage of this platform, and grow your following not only on YouTube, but on Facebook, too.If you’re looking for more ways to promote your YouTube channel, check out this article for further strategies.
Qasim is a senior editor at PosterMyWall. Qasim is a reader and writer during and after work, and likes to explore a wide range of topics and niches. Outside of work, he likes to meditate, listen to good music and journal.
