It's critical to find fresh traffic sources for your VOD platform.
The more people who come to your platform, the greater chances you'll have of gaining new subscribers or viewers. More traffic sources mean more 'eyeballs,' which means more money in the long run.
There are various ways to get traffic, but in the streaming market, the majority of individuals stick to YouTube and social media. They're both incredibly successful traffic generators, but most VOD firms exploit them to their advantage, making it difficult for you to distinguish out.
We'll continue to discuss YouTube and social media strategies in this post because they're vital, but remember to diversify your traffic sources to get the best results. To improve viewing, it's far preferable to use a variety of traffic sources, especially ones that your competitors aren't using.
You'll learn about the following golden traffic sources for acquiring customers and clients in this article.
- YouTube
- Social Media
- Email Lists
- Search Engines
- Other High-traffic Websites
- Visits from YouTube
On YouTube, five billion or more videos are watched every day. It's no wonder, therefore, that the social video-sharing site is now the world's second-largest search engine.
How to Increase the Number of Views on YouTube
YouTube is always changing, improving, and growing. Thankfully, organic reach on this page is still really good. With more video views, you'll have more chances to direct users to your VOD platform.
Here are a few key characteristics that can help you enhance readership and, as a result, traffic to your website, as well as how to employ them.
Because every video you upload to YouTube generates a web page, they are frequently indexed by search engines. You've probably seen videos appear in search results before.
The Title
Keep the following in mind while creating YouTube video names.
Users should be drawn in by the titles of your videos. It should not deceive the audience, but rather pique their interest.
It should be no more than 70 characters long.
The target keyword — the major search term people would use to find your material on YouTube – should be included in your title.
If at all feasible, start your title with the target term. This usually improves the relevancy of your material to the search query, resulting in a higher ranking position.
Image Thumbnail
A visually appealing video thumbnail can help you stand out amid the countless videos that show as search results and related video recommendations. As a result, you should see a considerable increase in click-throughs.
Thumbnail images of high quality have something appealing that ties to the video's title. It could be in the form of text or a graphic representation. For example, including the word "free" on the thumbnail of a how-to video can increase click-throughs.
The thumbnail image size that works best for YouTube is as follows.
The platform suggests a resolution of 1280x720 pixels with a minimum width of 640 pixels and a file size of no more than 2MB (GIF, JPG, or PNG). Use a 1920x1080 pixel image (16:9 aspect ratio) for the greatest results, since it will improve visual quality without being too large a file.
Description and tags:
Description:
- Make sure your keyword is in the first 25 words of your video description.
- At least 100 words should be included in the description copy. To improve relevancy, aim for 250 words or more.
- If the text is shorter than 100 words, the target term should occur at least once. On a 250-word copy, no more than four times.
Tags:
- The number of tags you can use on a YouTube video is unlimited. There is, however, a character limit of 500 per video. If it makes sense, use all 500 characters; otherwise, avoid adding superfluous or redundant tags.
- To increase relevancy, use the primary keyword as the first tag.
- To increase YouTube related video suggestions, add your brand name as the second tag. When someone watches one of your videos, the algorithm is more likely to suggest other videos from your channel.
- Social Media Platforms as a Source of Traffic
Social media, like YouTube, has a lot of potential as a traffic generator. Getting visitors to visit your site through a social network like Facebook, on the other hand, is quite difficult. This is because social media platforms do not want their consumers to abandon their platforms. Every year, they spend millions of dollars to keep consumers on their platforms.
Even yet, with the correct strategies, you may still gain visitors from social media organically. Understanding what distinguishes each platform is crucial (more on this to come).
Because organic reach on social media is declining, your marketing efforts must be laser-focused on each network. If you want to increase organic traffic from social media to your site today, you must meet two prerequisites. The following are the details.
Choose a few social media platforms where your target audience can be found.
To urge action, elicit emotional responses.
Selecting Platforms
Trying to engage an audience on too many social channels is a common blunder. Choose one, two, or three networks that serve your target demographic and concentrate on them. Examine your resources to ensure that you can market on each network in a long-term sustainable and successful manner.
Marketing is a process that takes time to get traction in most circumstances. That is why you must maintain a high level of speed and quality.
Using Emotional Reaction to Motivate Action
People do not use social media to watch advertisements. As a result, any content that appears to be an advertisement is frequently ignored. People who use social media platforms are often more concerned with their desires. That is why capturing someone's attention on these networks is so difficult.
It is, nevertheless, doable, and the key is provoking an emotional reaction. Consider your audience's interests and identify strategies to elicit an emotional response without deceiving or manipulating them. Consider what kind of emotion you'd like to elicit.
- Email Lists as a Source of Traffic
Email is a vital communication route that many organisations utilise to foster client relationships. It's a unique method to communicate with your audience. It also develops trust and loyalty, which drives people back to your VOD platform when used properly.
Building a list is the best approach to use email as a traffic source.
While it may take some time to grow your email list, it is worthwhile, and it is never too late to begin. Because it is permission-based, the email list is easily one of the most important sources of traffic on the internet. When someone subscribes, they are indicating that they wish to stay in touch with you.
- Search Engine Traffic
Every day, Google handles about 5.5 billion searches. That's a lot of searches.
For many of us, search engines are our preferred web portal. We use them on a regular basis to locate what we want or want. There are two ways to get traffic from search engines. SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay-per-click) advertising are two examples.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You've probably heard of search engine optimization (SEO). It's perhaps the most important strategy to get organic visitors to a website. You can boost your VOD platform's internet presence with the correct SEO strategy. This means more search engine traffic and more conversion opportunities.
Because SEO is one of the more difficult traffic sources, it's usually best to hire a professional. Knowing the fundamentals, on the other hand, might help you boost the search performance of your platform. To learn the fundamentals of SEO, read Google's SEO starting guide.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
You pay search engines for visibility when you use paid search. They let you place adverts on relevant search results pages and charge for each click. It's a pay-per-click (PPC) bidding system (PPC).
- Websites with a High Volume of Visitors
Websites with a lot of traffic may be able to send some of it your way. The key is to participate in those sites in a way that is both inspiring and motivating. This should entice some of your target audience to visit your website.
Here are two methods for generating traffic from high-traffic websites.
Participate in Forums geared toward certain audiences.
Forums dedicated to a specific genre might deliver high-converting traffic to your website. If your VOD platform offers science fiction films, for example, sci-fi film fan communities are a goldmine for potential clients.
If you're spamming a forum, the moderators will notice, so don't do it. Instead, pick three to five forums, participate actively in each, and mention your name in each.
Here are some suggestions for interacting with forum members:
- Choose forums that cater to your target market.
- Wait at least three months before you start plugging in your products on a regular basis and softly.
- Request input from forum members about your website, content, and other relevant topics.
- Use the signature link provided by the forum to direct visitors to your material with a value-added call-to-action.
- Use a username that corresponds to the tone of the forum. If the majority of the people on the forum are professionals, for example, you should use your real name.
Final Thoughts
That is all there is to it. You can utilise a variety of traffic sources to bring customers to your VOD platform. However, you should not rely just on one strategy. It's typically best to utilise a combination of free and paid marketing strategies to create a self-reinforcing marketing flywheel.
This entails putting together a group of techniques that can function together and get stronger over time as momentum builds. For instance, you may concentrate on combining SEO and social networking. Both tactics can complement one another.
Finally, consistency is essential since your plan will break apart without it. Maintain consistency in your marketing efforts, and you should notice a shift in the effectiveness of your techniques, as well as outcomes, over time.
