how to promote yourself as music producer or dj on youtube

We all know that social media can play a big roll in the growth of a music producer or DJ.
 But when we zoom in on YouTube, how can we promote ourselves on YouTube?
 What can we do to get more views and more subscribers?
This takes some elbow grease, so if you are lazy, this article is not for you.

1. research topic

Research your topic before making a video.
By researching your topic, you can make sure the competition is not too big, otherwise you won’t rank for it and nobody sees your video.
 Especially in the beginning: focussing on search is the best thing you can do to grow quick. 
Pick niche topics that you have the ability to rank for.

When I have a idea for a topic I type it in the YouTube search bar. I see what comes up:

how many videos are there in total?  10K or 10M? 10M is could be too competitive.
how many views do the top 10 videos have?  1000 views or 100K views? 1000 views is not a good target, 100K is.
how many subs does the creators of the top 10 videos have?  More or less than my sub count?  Less: make the video! More than 1 million? don’t bother.

My free daw video was made by researching my analytics.
I found in my YouTube analytics that many people came over from a free daw video to my commercial DAW video.
I checked the term “free daw” out, I saw a channel with next to no subscribers and a huge amount of views. 
I knew at that moment that the topic was gold.

That free DAW video took me 4 weeks to make, because I wanted to have a better video than the video that ranked number one, so it had to be longer because of the watch time minutes (I talk about this later).
How can you make a video longer? By making more content.
He had ten DAWS or so, I put at least five more in mine.
But four weeks for making one video is way too long. 
So I thought: how can I make this more worthwhile?
I made multiple videos out of one batch of content. 
I made the original, a top 5 and separate videos about every DAW.

To research topic ideas, you can use YouTubes own search bar. 
The auto-complete function predicts what users may type. 
These are common used search phrases.
Type your search term and press the space bar. YouTube will auto complete your search query.

You can take this research approach even a step further by using the alphabet.
Type in your search query, let’s say “best plugins”.
Then type the space bar and type “A”. 
YouTube will auto-complete the search phrase combined with all the search phrases with “A”.
YouTube will suggest: “Best plugins after effects”, “Best plugins adobe premiere” etc. 
You can do the same thing with “B”, “C” etc.

I made my CDJ 2000 videos this way, I made the course and uploaded teasers to YouTube only of topics that people are searching for.
I also deleted the videos that didn’t stick, in order to upgrade the value of the course.

2. comments on youtube

The comments on YouTube can be a gold mine to grow your channel.
BUT DON`T SPAM! Don’t say things like “come over to my channel”. 
Provide actual value to the viewers of the video.
If you spam, the youtube algorithms filters it out and your comment doesn’t even show. Also, don’t put links in there for the same reason.

I have disabled the links in comments, because YouTube wants people to stay on the platform. YouTube will penalize me (in the form of less promotion) for making viewers leave the platform. 
It is an intentional decision if I send people away via a link. I have to benefit from that, either via submissions up to my email list or to buy my product.

 3. increase watch time minutes

Watch time minutes are the single most important metric for YouTube that promotes your videos to more people. 
Youtube uses watch time minutes as a measurement of how good your content is. 
If people watch longer, they are interested.
Youtube rewards that because their goal is to let people stay longer on the platform.

What is the ideal video length?
As long as you can make it without getting boring.
At least 10 minutes. But … I have to add, some topics don’t have more content in them, don’t make them longer for the sake of making them longer. With videos 10 minutes or longer you have a good chance of getting more watch time minutes (or watch time hours as YouTube calls it nowadays).

How can you increase watch time minutes on YouTube?

 get to the point quickly, preferably within 30 seconds. 
Look at your audience retention graph in YouTube Analytics and see where people are dropping off. What did you say, do or show that makes viewers want to leave. 
Use music under your videos. It can set a mood and people are getting bored less quickly. Make sure it’s copyright free music. 
Use jump cuts. YouTube made jump cuts famous, on television it’s (still) a no go area.
Use b-roll footage. Talking head videos are boring to watch. If you talk about a certain DJ controller, show the DJ controller. If you are talking about a DAW, show the DAW.

4. Audience retention

Both audience retention and watch time minutes are important. 
The audience retention is the amount of the video that viewers watched your video in percentage.
 50% means that half of the people made it to the end of the video. Audience retention above 50% is good, below 30% is bad.
 But that depends also on the video length: a video of 60 minutes with an audience retention is of 30% is good.
A 5 minute video with 30% is bad.

 5. Websites

What?? You are talking about YouTube! Hear me out! A website that supports your YouTube channel generates free traffic to your videos. 
A simple free Wordpress website to put your videos on, will suffice.

 Let’s take a look at my Dexxter Clark website.
I put all my videos on there.
 People find my videos via Google, because people search on a topic, go to my website and see the video.

 I took another approach with this website: learnhowtoproducemusic.com
I script all my videos, I convert that script into a full blown blog post. The content of that blogpost get’s indexed by Google. 
People that are searching for that content, can read the blogpost, but if they are lazy (which I’m counting on), they watch the youtube video instead.

So two websites are generating search traffic that feeds back into my YouTube channel.
 It’s all for only a couple of dollars per year that I pay for hosting.

YouTube rewards external traffic to a YouTube video and punishes the creator when viewers are leaving. 
By doing it this way, I put something back into the jar I also take away from when I say: “go a subscribe to my mailing list”.

There is another issue that nobody talks about that is solved by a website: you don’t own YouTube.
 If the algorithm doesn’t promote you anymore for some weird reason, bad luck.

If YouTube decides to close your account, bad luck.  You own your website, it’s 100% yours. It’s going nowhere. 
You can build a business from your website, keep in touch with your fans via your website and switch to another video platform if you want.  
A website is just the smart choice, because it’s a heck of a backup.

More resources 

If you are interested in promoting yourself or your business via YouTube, you should check out my book: What big Tubers don’t tell you (click on the link for more info).
It tells you all about YouTube promotion, cross pollination from other platforms like mailing list, how to do proper topic research etc.  
The book has also an optional addendum for DJ’s and producers.

If you are serious about DJing and want to take it to the next level on the CDJ,
you should check out my CDJ 2000 video course.

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Author

Dexxter Clark
Music Producer / YouTuber

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