YouTube is the 2nd most searched website after its own parent search engine, Google. A vast amount of content is uploaded daily on the platform. People use YouTube to watch video-based content on various subjects ranging from complex mathematical problems to music videos and movie trailers. It is a great tool to market one’s brand and build an identity for yourself online.
Users can utilize platforms’ various features to their advantage to create engaging and entertaining content. One of the features available on the platform that allows us to connect on a one-to-one basis in real-time with our users is YouTube Live. Live streams are a great way to connect with your audience and offer an unfiltered look at your content, broadcast events, share updates and collaborations. Live streams help in building trust and community.
Are you wondering how you can hold successful live streams? Do you want to know the ways you can achieve a higher number of people on your live streams? Then, stick around because, in this blog, we will focus on strategies you can use to increase live viewership. So, let’s get started;
How to Increase your YouTube Live Viewership: Tips and Tricks
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Create Anticipation Through Pre-promotion on Other Platforms
One of the ways you can divert traffic towards your live stream is through posting about it on other social media platforms. Share the link and timing and tease the followers about what you might be discussing there. Many musicians teased about their YouTube lives on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook before the release of music videos and albums.
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Establish a Regular Live Streaming Schedule
Cross-promotion on platforms would be more helpful to users with already an established following. If you are new to YouTube as a creator and developing your online presence, having a consistent live-streaming schedule would be of great help. Many successful reaction channels have a consistent posting schedule like music reactors consistently do life on YouTube every Friday to cover the new music released. Consistency is the key to being successful on any platform.
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Alert your Subscribers About Upcoming Live Sessions
You cannot just start a livestream and expect your audience to hop in magically. To successfully launch anything, it is important first to make its presence known in people’s consciousness. To boost number of people tuning in to your live, it is important to inform them about it in the community posts, tease the countdown to the stream, and make notifications and announcements popping up in their feed will result in running in of a large crowd.
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Engage with Chat and Comments
The whole idea behind doing a YouTube live is to get to know your audience better and develop a close connection with your audience. Engaging with chat and comment is a great way to deliver traffic towards your live as it makes the audience feel they are being heard and gives them the feeling that they can get your attention. Many times, people make the mistake of using live just to come and deliver their message and hop off; this comes off as promotional. Interaction with the audience is key to delivering more traffic and hosting successful live streams.
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Collaborate with Fellow Creators for Joint Live Sessions
One of the ways to boost the traffic towards your Live sessions on YouTube is by collaborating with fellow creators. Collaboration brings twice the crowd and introduces both creators to each other’s audience. Tease the collaboration to generate hype for the collaboration. You can do a series of joint live streams if there is a high demand for collaboration with a certain creator. You can buy likes on posts to tease the collaboration to a larger crowd.
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Utilize Social Media Promotion
Social media is a great tool to promote your live stream. You might not be big on YouTube, but you can have an immense following on other platforms that, to your advantage, sharing Live info will drive traffic towards your Live. Do not feel hesitant, shy, or weird about promoting on other platforms. Tease the upcoming streams and collaboration through countdown stories and entertaining posts on other platforms.
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Optimize Video Titles and Thumbnails
One of the first things anybody sees on their YouTube homepage is the thumbnail, and then proceed to read the video title. Video titles and thumbnails should be engaging enough that it makes people not want to miss the live. Rather than putting any title, optimize the title and thumbnail using tools like TubeBuddy, YouTube Analytics, or Google Analytics. If it is a collaboration, make your collaborator’s name and face are visible in the title and thumbnail.
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Utilize YouTube’s Notification Bell
Bells have been used for centuries in everyday life to capture the attention of people, like children in schools or church bells. The social media equivalent of that bell is the notification bell. Make sure to tell people to press that bell icon in every video and then use it to tease them about the live and send them a notification when the live begins.
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Hold Live-exclusive Giveaways or Contests
One of the tested and tried ways to gain an audience on any platform is to hold giveaways and contests. To boost the live stream crowd, hold live exclusive giveaways and contests. Make sure to use this event to grow your channel and maintain an audience by putting the condition that only subscribers who have pressed the bell icon would be eligible for the prize. Tease more giveaways and contests in future to retain the audience.
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Conduct Interactive Q&A Sessions During Live Streams
People are generally curious to know more about themselves on a human level other than the voiceless words or crafted videos on social media. Offering candid tell-all and Interactive Q&A sessions on YouTube Live is a great way to establish and gain audience trust and build a community. Live streams with the sole agenda of an interactive Q&A session attract crowds, resulting in higher live numbers.
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Use YouTube Analytics to Track Your Live Stream
To learn and grow continuously on a platform, you can use YouTube Analytics to see which of your live streams are successful, which portion of the live stream gathered a larger crowd, where the crowd lost interest, and which collaboration gained more eyeballs. YouTube analytics is a great way to learn about your viewer’s behavior. It can help customize your stream to cater to your audience’s interest.
FAQ’s
Q: How do I increase my YouTube live viewers?
A: To increase YouTube live viewers, share the live-streaming link on other platforms, engage with chat and comments and tease live exclusive giveaways and contests towards the end to retain the audience.
Q: How do I attract viewers to my livestream?
A: Plan and promote your content, share on social media platforms, use hashtags keywords and optimize titles and descriptions, conduct Interactive Q&A Sessions, and tease live exclusive giveaways and contests.
Q: What is the best time to livestream on YouTube?
A: It is between 6-9 pm, Monday-Friday.
Q: Who has the highest live watching on YouTube?
A: ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 launch live stream on August 23, 2023 gained 8.06+ million views.
Q: Can you promote a live stream?
A: Yes, you can promote on social media before, during, and after the event.
Conclusion
To sum up, YouTube is one of the biggest platforms to build an online avatar and market your business. YouTube Live feature, which allows one-on-one interaction in real-time on YouTube, can be utilized to be transparent and build trust and long-term relationships with subscribers. To boost your live crowd, one must plan the stream and be consistent, promote your live stream across social media platforms, optimize titles and thumbnails, collaborate with a fellow creator, engage with comments and replies, hold live exclusive giveaways and contests, conduct interactive Q&A Sessions and utilize YouTube analytics to improve in future Livestreams. So, good luck, and thanks for reading!
