Are you using YouTube to its full potential? For many artists, YouTube is a secondary thought. Lots of musicians will simply put their music, music videos, and vlogs up on YouTube without much thought and then forget about them.  If they get a lot of views it will be a nice surprise, but many don’t do anything to help their music and videos get those views.

The truth is, like everything in the music industry today, you need a plan if you really want to get the most out of YouTube. Figure out what kind of videos best fit with your image and brand as an artist. Do a little experiment to see what your fans like watching. Release 2 videos on the same day, promote them equally, and see which gets the most views after a set period of time. Depending on your music, personality, and fan relationship you could focus on cover songs, original music videos, vlogs and behind-the-scenes looks into your life and musical career, instructional videos, or live footage from shows.

Here’s some misconceptions many musicians can have about YouTube and how to fix them to create a great strategy:

1. YouTube is a secondar, tertiary, or more like septenary focus.

Most times when we’re talking to creators, they approach YouTube with a “set it and forget it” mentality.  They upload their videos onto the platform (“set it”) and forget any strategy around how to amplify viewership.  

You can absolutely build an audience with new music videos, but there are countless ways to help increase views.  Your keywords, metadata, and release strategy all play a large role in discovery.  Don’t tag things you think will get you views, only relevant keywords.  And use every space!  Fill in as many sections of the metadata as you can: album title, song title, ISRC, UPC, etc.

When you finally get through the upload process, tell people about it!  Tweet it, post it on Facebook, share it with your Circles on Google+, and send it to any blogs or journalists who’ve written about you in the past.

 

2. Artists under estimate the power of the audience on YouTube.

Not only does YouTube have an enormous and rabid community, but they have a fan base incredibly eager to discover new content of all kinds, especially new material from talented musicians. Think of YouTube as the modern-day equivalent to CBGB, Troubadour, the Fillmore, or the Roxy, except potential fans are behind a screen at any given moment instead of hanging around by the bar.  

And, who knows, maybe there’s a young, longhaired Rick Rubin looking to lay down some bass on your punk band’s new single. Remember that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world and people want to discover your music.

 

To read the full article and learn about the other 3 misconceptions, visit Digital Music News.

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