Just about everyone with an internet connection has viewed at least one video on YouTube over the last 7 years, especially those looking to learn how to play guitar.
While YouTube is full of funny cat videos, live concert bootlegs and old TV shows that you enjoy, you might not know that you can use YouTube to grow your online presence, increase your followers online and recruit more students to your guitar teaching studio.
In this in-depth article, you will learn how to set up a Guitar Teaching YouTube Channel, how to grow your subscribers and potential students, how to record and edit videos, as well as discover how to properly use tags, descriptions and playlists with your YouTube channel.
Setting Up a YouTube Channel – The Basics
Before we dive into learning how to post successful YouTube videos, grow your followers and spread the word about any new video you post on your Youtube Channel, let’s take a look at what you’ll need to do in order to set your Channel up in the first place.
Guitar Teaching Youtube Channel Name
When choosing a name for your YouTube Channel, make sure that is directly related to all of your other online presence, such as your Facebook Page, Twitter Page and Homepage.
If you use a business name online, such as “Frets on Fire Guitar Lesson,” then that should also be the name of your YouTube Channel, rather than your first and last name.
By keeping things unified in this way, you will help allow people to find you as they could be searching for your YouTube videos online, and if they happen to stumble upon one or your videos without searching for it, they’ll know exactly what it is and who it’s by right away.
Guitar Teaching Youtube Channel Photos
You will also need to upload two photos to your Channel homepage when first setting up your YouTube Channel.
What I would recommend is using the same photos that you use for your other online social network home pages, such as your Facebook cover and profile pictures.
By doing so, you will again maintain consistency across your online pages, allowing fans and followers to recognize your pages right away just from the pictures you use, rather than maybe causing confusion by using different photos for each page you have online.
About You Description
One of the biggest mistakes I find when visiting my client’s YouTube channels, is that the don’t have any text in the description section of their channel.
When someone likes a video on your channel, they will often go straight to your About section in order to find out more about who you are and what you do, and if you don’t have any text in this description you could be losing out on potential gigs and students.
So, make sure to put a short, but descriptive, bio in this section. Have it describe your teaching and performing background, and a bit about what people will find when viewing the videos on your channel.
This one little item can make a big difference when making a good first impression for anyone who finds your channel online through search, or from a link on a social network.
Social Network and Website Links
Again, if you have a Facebook, Twitter or Google + page, make sure to put those links on your Facebook Channel.
While some people who find your channel might want to subscribe to you on YouTube, others will prefer to connect with you on a different social network, so giving them the chance to easily click over to your other pages is a great way to allow people to make that connection right from your Channel page.
Welcome Video
The last must-have item on your YouTube Channel is a welcome video. This is something that is only shown to non-subscribers to your channel when they visit your homepage.
This video is a great chance for you to play a little bit, talk about your teaching, and let people know about what they will find on your channel, which is basically a video version of your About section.
Make sure to keep this video short, as it’s only an intro to what you do, so 2-3 minutes is plenty of time to welcome people to your channel, ask them to subscribe, and give them a brief intro to your playing and teaching.
Good YouTube SEO Practices
One of the biggest mistakes I see with people that come to me for help with their YouTube channels, is that they are putting a lot of thought into the videos and video content, but are then just popping the video up on YouTube with no description and a boring title.
Because YouTube uses titles, video tags and descriptions in order to derive search terms and help show your video in relative search results, these three items are key when posting a video on YouTube that draws consistent and effective search results for years to come.
Choosing Video Titles
The first thing that you’ll want to do is pick a related and descriptive video title that explains what the video is about, while providing YouTube with search terms at the same time.
Google looks at the first three words in any title first when exploring a video for search terms, so make sure you think carefully and use proper search terms in the first three words to give your video the maximum chance of showing up first in search results.
An example of this would be writing a title such as the following for the search term “guitar majors modes.”
“Fingerings for Scales on Guitar – Major Modes”
This is a descriptive title, but if you switch things around a bit, you can get your search terms right at the start of your title like so.
“Guitar Major Modes – Learn Common Fretboard Fingerings”
As you can see, the titles say the same thing, but you have altered the second version to fit the search term you think would directly apply to this video.
When posting a video, write down a few search terms that you think people would use when looking for a video of this nature.
After you have that list, pick the one you want to rank for in search and then use those three words at the beginning of your title.
If you already have videos on YouTube, you can go back and change the wording of those titles in order to increase your chances of those older videos showing up in new searches as well.
Adding Video Tags
Just like titles, people often don’t put much thought, or even use, tags when uploading videos to YouTube. But, these tags are very important in letting YouTube and search engines know what your video is all about.
When recording any video, write down 8 to 10 keywords that you think would best describe your video content, using two-word combinations as well as one-word descriptions.
An example of this for the video title in the previous section might be:
- major scales
- guitar scales
- major guitar scales
- guitar major scales
- guitar scale lesson
- guitar video scale lesson
- video guitar scales lesson
- playing guitar scales
- learning guitar scales
- scale fingerings for guitar
As you can see, there are a number of related terms in there, but by rewording them into a few different ways that people might use in search terms, you can widen your net when trying to reach people searching for similar content.
Adding tags only takes a few seconds when uploading any new video, but they can make a big difference in the long run when it comes to directing relevant search results to your videos.
Writing a Secure Video Description
The last piece of essential information for any YouTube video is the description text. While some people suggest that you post a transcript of what you are saying in the video in the description box, I don’t think you have to go that far when posting descriptions in the About box.
For me, I think a 1 to 2 sentence description is enough to give people the gist of the video, as well as provide you with another chance to insert some key search words into the text of any video.
So, try writing short descriptions that use your key search words, such as the first three words or your title, and then below that you can include a link back to your Facebook Page, Twitter Page, related article on your site or your newsletter subscription page.
By using these links in the description section of any video you post, you allow interested people the chance to follow you further through your website, social networks and newsletter, which is always a bonus to posting videos on YouTube.
Sending Out to Subscribers
Lastly, when you post a new video, YouTube gives you the option to send a note and link to that video to your subscribers, as well as post out to your social networks.
When doing so, make sure to post a little note to your subscribers telling them what the video is about, and inviting them to check it out, rather than just sending out a blank link to the video.
Building your subscribers on YouTube is important for just this reason. If you have a few thousand people subscribed to your channel, this can give each new video you post an initial boost in traffic, shares and comments.
When this happens, YouTube will see that your video is doing well and is engaging viewers, and in turn they will begin to rank it in searches and on the sidebar for related videos, sending you more traffic to that video.
So, the next time you post a YouTube video, make sure to send a little note to your subscribers and invite them to view that video, it can go a long way in giving you a nice burst of traffic right from the first day after uploading a new video.
Spreading the Word
After you have posted a video to your YouTube Channel, you will get some views generated by people searching on YouTube for a topic related to that particular video.
But, when you first post a video, you will need to tell people about it in order to generate those first views, which will in turn tell YouTube that people are interested in your video, and if they give it a “like” or a few “shares” this will also help push your video up in search results when they do a search for a related topic in the YouTube search bar.
So, here are a few ways that you can use social media, email and your website to let people know about your latest YouTube guitar video.
As we have seen in a previous article, “How to Build an Effective Guitar Teaching Facebook Page,” growing your following and maintaining a presence on Facebook is essential for any guitarist or guitar teacher in today’s environment.
Facebook is also a great place for you to post links to your YouTube videos, as it will provide exciting and engaging content for your followers to check out, but they can also “like” and “share” that post, allowing their friends to see the video and possibly follow your Facebook and/or YouTube pages as a result.
When posting a video link on Facebook, make sure to post a bit of text at the top and not just the video itself. Something like this is always effective:
“Do you struggle with memorizing major scales? Check out this video lesson for a fun and quick way to learn all the major scales for guitar. If you enjoyed this video, share it with a friend!”
Something as simple as asking someone to share your video will provide you with a surprising amount of shares and likes on your posts, so always make sure to put a “call to action” with any YouTube video you post on your Facebook page.
While you should really only post a link to a given video on Facebook maybe once per month, as Facebook tends to look down upon duplicate shares from the same page, you can post your new video on Twitter as many times as you want and still reach the maximum amount of people possible from your page.
The only thing you have to be careful of, is that Twitter will prevent you from posting the same text more than once every 24 hours.
This means that if you want to post a link to your new video at different times during the day, to reach different time zones for example, you just need to change the text of the tweet each time, but the video link can remain the same.
An example of this could be posting a video twice in one day, but with two different texts, such as:
“Learn your major modes today!”
“Quick video lesson on the major modes that you won’t want to miss.”
By using different texts for the same video, you can reach different groups of people on Twitter who like to check their feeds at different times during the day, expanding your reach for any video that you produce and want to share to your Twitter followers.
Google Plus
Though not as popular as Twitter and Facebook, Google Plus is becoming more populated and more important when it comes to building an online profile each year.
As Google owns Google Plus, they take into account the number of likes and shares Google+ posts get in regards to how they rank in searches, so having a Google+ profile, and posting regularly including new YouTube videos, can help you reach people with your new videos, and generate better search traffic to those videos over time.
As odd as this may sound, especially with all of the buzz around social media these days, sending out an email is still the best and most effective of reaching people with your news, new videos and other information about your career and output.
Building an email list is an important part of any guitar teacher’s development, and we’ll be discussing this further in next month’s email newsletter.
In the meantime, if you have an email list going, try and send out one email per month, with links to all of the new YouTube guitar videos you have posted during that time frame.
People won’t mind getting email updates from you, that’s why they signed up to your email list in the first place, but if you send something out every time you have a new video, lesson, gig or news announcement, you can overdo it fairly quickly and lose subscribers.
So, each month keep track of the videos that you post, and then send them out in one email at the end of the month so that you reach all of your subscribers, but don’t put them off by sending a ton of emails each month.
Links on Website
The last important way that you can spread the word about your YouTube guitar videos, is to either post them on your site in a section called “Videos,” or more preferably, link them in a blog post where you write a bit of text about the video and maybe add some tab or notation to help in the learning process for the material covered in that lesson.
This will allow you to build your search traffic, drive people to your YouTube channel, and you can link back to your site from the “About” section of the YouTube video, which will help turn people on to your homepage and what you do as a teacher and performer.
You can then take this blog post and share it on Twitter, Facebook and Google+, giving you a second chance to reach more people with the same video lesson over time.
Do you have any questions or comments regarding this article? Post your thoughts on the RGT Facebook Page Wall or the RGT Twitter Feed and we’ll be happy to help out.