How to Use YouTube to Increase a Band's Fanbase

YouTube is an extremely effective method for connecting with current and new fans. By maintaining a channel with weekly videos, a band can increase its exposure well past the limitations of other social networks.

Types of Videos to Publish

Here are some types of videos your band can publish weekly to build your channel.

Music Videos

The idea of publishing music videos can be intimidating, but publishing them doesn't have to be an expensive or time consuming endeavor. You don't have to have Vevo-ready slick and highly produced videos necessarily.

While videos shot and produced by a professional are optimal, your band can shoot basic videos using your cell phone, or in a pinch produce a video slide show of band photos.

Lyrics Videos

Don't forget to engage fans by publishing lyric videos. No need to get dolled up for the camera, just display some basic text on the screen.

You can link this video to its related music video to increase its exposure.

Behind the Music

Engage fans by shooting videos that expose your methods for writing, recording and performing. For instance, shoot videos that tell how a song concept was developed and written, or take the camera with you to the studio and show the process for recording your songs.

Shoot the band relaxing in the greenroom before or after a show, or have a cameraman follow the band while you go shopping for stage clothing and gear.

Record the band practices and also make a bloopers video from any goof ups to connect on a comedic level with your fan base. The ideas for which you can showcase the personal side of the band are endless.

VLOGs

Keep fans up-to-date with weekly videos informing them of upcoming performances, plans for new songs, new press coverage, the success of the most recent gig, and anything else that is coming up for your band.

This is a great way to build hype about shows as well as another method to sell tickets to upcoming shows.

Shout Out Videos

Shout out to your favorite fans who are sharing the band out the most. Get fans involved by doing a weekly video showcasing the ones who shared your posts on Twitter, Facebook and any other social network the most.

How to Gain Subscribers & Views

You can gain subscribers and video views by organic methods as well as paid methods.

Organic methods includes sharing your links on your social media, mailing list blasts and website. Additionally your videos need the proper meta data for SEO (search engine optimization) including using the right tags, description, and title.

There are multiple paid methods to increase views and subscribers, with some being more of a risk to harming your channel than others. Some methods use bots to drive views which puts the channel at risk for suspension.

YouTube Ads—Safe

You can pay YouTube to promote your videos which is completely safe and will not risk your account being suspended.

You can read more about YouTube ads at https://www.youtube.com/yt/advertise/.

YouTube SEO Software—Safe

In order to be seen in the searches both on YouTube and in Google you must optimize videos with the right tags and other parameters.

There are a few reputable applications such as TubeBuddy that work inside your browser and allow you to see things like competitor tags, suggested tags, where your video ranks in searches, and other factors that will allow you to optimize your video meta.

Social Media Shares—Safe

Use all of your social media to increase your views as well as subscribers. You can post videos directly to networks including Facebook, Tumblr, ReverbnNation and other.

For image sharing sites like Instagram, you can cross promote by using a screengrab from a video and place a link to the video in the description of the image.

Get Involved in the YouTube Community—Safe

One of the best ways to get more views and subscribers to your channel is by getting involved in the YouTube community.

Subscribe to other channels that are similar to your bands including other similar bands, fans of the same genre of music, music VLOGs and magazines and other music related channels.

Just like other social networks, a certain percentage will subscribe back to you.

Channel Automation Software—Mostly Safe

An example of YouTube automation software is TubeAssist, which allows you to mass subscribe, unsubscribe, send messages, make comments and extract users on the platform with ease.

This software has safeguards in place to help you avoid being flagged as a spammer, however you can still overuse the software and cause a suspension if you aren't careful.

Subscriber Exchange Networks—Safe (But Ineffective)

Website, such as SubHub ,allow you to exchange subs for subs with other channels trying to gain exposure.

While these are mostly safe, these subs often will not be engaged with your content and may not stay subscribed to your channel very long.

Paid Views & Subs—Not Safe

There are several resources where you can buy views in packages of 1000-100,000 and more.

Some providers will also offer likes and comments as part of their service. While it can be tempting to inflate your numbers in the beginning in attempt to become viral, it is very risky to the health of your channel.

Most of these providers use bots to generate views.

YouTube uses sophisticated techniques to measure not only the amount of views but also the engagement of those views, so if you use these services on your videos you will likely get caught at some point and may risk the suspension of your channel.