6 Tips to Make Your Video Trending on YouTube

If creating YouTube videos is your main content strategy, you want to make sure that you’re putting out trending videos. Otherwise, you’re not taking advantage of opportunities to build your brand reputation, audience engagement, or even monetary channels. You shouldn’t just create videos for the sake of creating videos. You should be trending.

There’s a lot that comes into play when creating a trending YouTube video. It all boils down to YouTube’s algorithm, which takes into account:

• Watch time: This includes the number of views, the number of session starts, session duration, and more.
• Video length: It’s a general observation that longer videos tend to outperform shorter videos in YouTube’s algorithm because there are more opportunities to keep a viewer on your video.
• Channel consistency: YouTube wants to promote channels more than individual videos. If a viewer finds a good video, chances are that they’ll click on the channel page to view more related content.

Why does all of this factor into making one video trending? YouTube is looking for content that will both attract new viewers and keep them on YouTube for as long as possible. Follow our tips to set up your videos for success.

6 Ways to Make Your YouTube Video Trending

1. Create long-form video content
2. Promote your video quickly
3. Use an engaging thumbnail
4. Optimize meta data for better search and visibility
5. Be a consistent YouTuber

1. Create Long-Form Video Content

As we mentioned earlier, longer videos do better than shorter videos. A recent study by TubeFilter suggests that 8-minute videos do 350% better than 5-minute videos.

There seems to be a correlation between video length, view session duration, and total number of views in a video’s lifetime. Ask your commercial video production agency to create a meaningful and focused video content for at least 8–10 minutes if not longer. This would automatically increase the duration of your views. 

However, you need to find a topic that’s engaging enough to your video’s length. Take inspiration from this simple YouTube video about building a swimming pool by using primitive tools. It’s at least 13 minutes long and has more than 1 million likes and nearly 10 million views.

2. Promote Your Video Quickly

If you are investing in promoting of your YouTube video, make sure you do it in the first 3 days of releasing the video. The goal is to make as many people watch the video in the first 48–72 hours.

This can be through your social channels, your blog, or through related video ads. Whatever it is, your goal is to get as many views as possible in the beginning for your video to pay off. Once you get that, you can serve your targeted audience later.

3. Use an Engaging Thumbnail

The video thumbnail image, the bit of the video that shows when hovering on your video, and the headline all factor into your video impression.

Your thumbnail has to be attractive enough to make people stop dead in their tracks and click. Avoid thumbnails that are simply attractive but are not part of your actual content. You will scare away viewers permanently if you did this.

A thumbnail is also an excellent way to showcase a brand personality. For examples, YouTube videos from influencers such as Jesse Driftwood or Jordon Taylor often include an image of themselves in the thumbnail along with something eye-catching.

Their thumbnails are signature yet different each time, which helps sustain their brand personality while still attracting new views.

4. Optimize Meta Data for Better Search and Visibility

Video production alone is not enough for your company or agency. It’s vital that you optimize the meta description of your YouTube videos. This includes your title, your tags, and description.

The goal is to write something compelling without revealing everything in the video. Describe in detail what the video is about but don’t go overboard.

Don’t forget to include call to action links in your description – remember that’s the whole point of your YouTube marketing. Finally, never ever fill your description with tags. There’s an actual field for the tags.

5. Stick With Your Brand’s Image

If you are not sure of a certain video content, ask your video production agency or production company to modify it to suit your channel or audience. Don’t experiment for the heck of it because bad videos hurt your channel.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t try to keep things fresh. However, your videos are a part of your brand, so you want to make sure the messaging is consistent. That way, you won’t scare off the audience base you’ve built.

6. Be a Consistent YouTuber

On that note, it’s safe to say that consistency matters in getting more views to your entire channel rather than just one video. When a viewer lands on an appealing video, they’re more likely to check out more videos from that channel — a.k.a. long-term viewership.

That’s why YouTube’s algorithm favors channel promotion over single video promotion. How do we know this? That’s because 50% of the recommended videos are from the same channel, 40% are from partner or related channels, and 10% and less are for related trending videos.

Fix up your frequency based on your video production budgets but make sure you follow your timelines consistently.

Set Your Videos up for Success

A good YouTube video marketing strategy can keep your brand on the top of your audience’s mind. Create longer, engaging content to maximize your view duration, focus on meta descriptions and eye-catching thumbnails, and finally upload on a regular cadence.

Your videos are an extension of your brand, and you want to promote them as effectively as possible. Highlighting your video within the first 4 days of uploading is critical to be featured as trending.

If you’re struggling to craft a clear content strategy, turn to a video production company for support.