10 Ideas to Keep Your Audience Engaged and Coming Back for More
Keeping your audience engaged on YouTube can be a tricky business. With billions of hours of content already available on YouTube, finding a way of being unique and capturing your audience’s attention is tricky. So let’s look at some ideas you can use to engage your audience and convince them to keep watching your new content.
YouTube engagement is a fantastic way to attract new sponsors.
Keeping your audience engaged on YouTube can be a tricky business.
You know it is important to create valuable, engaging, and unique content, but sometimes that is much easier said than done.
Sure, you probably get a great idea for a video every so often that seems to do better with your audience engagement, but it is hard to come up with new and creative ideas for videos.
With billions of hours of content already available on YouTube, finding a way of being unique and capturing your audience’s attention is tricky.
If you are successful, more engagement can lead to more views and more subscribers, which in turn can lead to better sponsorships and more income.
So let’s look at some ideas you can use to engage your audience and convince them to keep watching your new content.
YouTube Engagement Rate Explained
YouTube engagement rate is based on several factors.
In simple terms, YouTube engagement rate is the percentage of how many people who watch your content also interact with your channel. Interactions include comments, likes and dislikes, subscribes and unsubscribes, shares, and views.
YouTube engagement is a fantastic metric to help you establish whether your audience is enjoying your videos, and it also allows sponsors to establish whether or not they should work with you.
The more engagement you have, the more likely a brand is to make an impact on your viewership with a sponsorship.
What’s a Strong YouTube Engagement Rate?
On average, YouTube engagement rate is much lower than TikTok.
This figure will depend entirely on what niche you focus on with your content. There are certain niches that tend to see more engagement than others. Gaming videos, for example, have an impressive engagement rate of just over 5%, whereas music videos sit just above 2%.
Engagement tends to be much higher on other platforms, such as TikTok, so don’t get disheartened if you have a strong following on both platforms, but your engagement is much higher on TikTok.
How to Keep Your Audience Engaged
There are plenty of things you can do to increase your audience engagement.
Collaborate
How do you keep your audience engaged while simultaneously attracting new people to your channel? By collaborating with other YouTubers.
Collaboration allows you to access new audiences while also keeping your content fresh and entertaining for your existing viewers.
Collaboration should get viewed as a win-win for YouTubers, as it offers a wide variety of content options, keeps content fresh and engaging, and allows both of you to access new viewers.
Clever thumbnails
The thumbnail is quite possibly the most important part of your video. With so much competition for viewers’ eyes, it is important your thumbnail helps you stand out from the crowd.
Think of a YouTube thumbnail in the same way as an email subject line. If the email subject line is not captivating, you won’t click through on the email. Therefore, it doesn’t matter how great the content is inside that email. If you don’t open it, you can’t see it.
The same can get said for YouTube thumbnails. Don’t spend hours and hours creating an incredible video only to let it down by creating a poor thumbnail.
To get the best engagement from your thumbnails, don’t get scared to try new things. That doesn’t mean moving away from your style guidelines regarding font, for example, but instead, try out different images and titles to see what works best with your audience.
Chat with your audience
Another key aspect of audience engagement is interaction. Many YouTube content creators only see their videos as one-way conversations. They create the video, their audience watches it, and then repeat it.
It is easy to think like this, but this mentality will not help you increase your following in the long term. Instead of talking “at” your audience, try walking with them. During the video, ask them to answer questions in the comments section, drop a like, or share the video with a friend.
Not only will these comments provide you with better engagement statistics, but they will also provide you with feedback on your current content and ideas for the future.
You should also respond to as many comments as you can, especially on your most recent videos. It can be hard to keep up across many videos as your audience begins to grow, but viewers like to see that you are active in the comments, and it motivates them to leave comments themselves, as they know you read them.
Create a Reddit thread for your channel.
Engaging with your audience shouldn’t just be on YouTube. Another excellent way to curate your community is to create a Reddit page for viewers to discuss video content and share relevant information.
This option also creates plenty of video content to engage with your viewers, such as reacting to their posts.
Jump on trends.
Joining in with a trend is one of the easiest ways to keep your audience engaged and also increase your audience.
Not only that, but it means you don’t have to think of another unique video idea! Finding new ideas for videos can sometimes be hard, so take advantage of popular trends to ensure your viewers remain engaged, and your channel stays relevant.
YouTube Shorts.
YouTube Shorts are a fantastic way to further engage your viewers and encourage them to check out your longer-form videos.
YouTube also makes it easy for you to cut down the long-form video into Shorts, making it quick and easy for you to do.
Utilize pop-ups.
YouTube info cards are essential for continued engagement with your viewers. You can use these cards to direct your viewers to more of your content and keep them engaged with your channel.
Do giveaways.
Don’t get me wrong, giveaways are certainly not the cheapest way to increase engagement, but the impact could be long-lasting and likely will make you money in the future as your following grows.
Rather than simply asking people to leave a comment to enter your giveaway, why not add a small easter egg in the middle of your video?
Not only will this feel more rewarding for your viewers, but it will also increase your average watch time.
Editing.
One easy way to keep your audience engaged is by using editing to reduce fluff and add entertainment to your content.
If you are not confident editing yourself, you can find a cheap video editor on sites like Upwork or Fiverr.
Work smarter, not harder
On the face of it, all of that sounds like quite a lot of stuff to do, and you might worry about not having enough time.
That is where the value of tools and freelancers comes in. You can use tools to schedule videos for you and freelancers to help edit your videos and thumbnails. A good freelancer won’t cost much, but the results could be incredible.
Karina Gandola was born and raised outside the city of Charleston, in the beautiful mountain state of West Virginia. Karina loves writing about the influencer marketing space and an area she is passionate about. She considers her faith and family to be most important to her. If she isn’t spending time with her friends and family, you can almost always find her around her sweet yellow Labrador retriever, Poshna.
YouTube engagement is a fantastic way to attract new sponsors.
Keeping your audience engaged on YouTube can be a tricky business.
You know it is important to create valuable, engaging, and unique content, but sometimes that is much easier said than done.
Sure, you probably get a great idea for a video every so often that seems to do better with your audience engagement, but it is hard to come up with new and creative ideas for videos.
With billions of hours of content already available on YouTube, finding a way of being unique and capturing your audience’s attention is tricky.
If you are successful, more engagement can lead to more views and more subscribers, which in turn can lead to better sponsorships and more income.
So let’s look at some ideas you can use to engage your audience and convince them to keep watching your new content.
YouTube Engagement Rate Explained
YouTube engagement rate is based on several factors.
In simple terms, YouTube engagement rate is the percentage of how many people who watch your content also interact with your channel. Interactions include comments, likes and dislikes, subscribes and unsubscribes, shares, and views.
YouTube engagement is a fantastic metric to help you establish whether your audience is enjoying your videos, and it also allows sponsors to establish whether or not they should work with you.
The more engagement you have, the more likely a brand is to make an impact on your viewership with a sponsorship.
What’s a Strong YouTube Engagement Rate?
On average, YouTube engagement rate is much lower than TikTok.
This figure will depend entirely on what niche you focus on with your content. There are certain niches that tend to see more engagement than others. Gaming videos, for example, have an impressive engagement rate of just over 5%, whereas music videos sit just above 2%.
Engagement tends to be much higher on other platforms, such as TikTok, so don’t get disheartened if you have a strong following on both platforms, but your engagement is much higher on TikTok.
How to Keep Your Audience Engaged
There are plenty of things you can do to increase your audience engagement.
Collaborate
How do you keep your audience engaged while simultaneously attracting new people to your channel? By collaborating with other YouTubers.
Collaboration allows you to access new audiences while also keeping your content fresh and entertaining for your existing viewers.
Collaboration should get viewed as a win-win for YouTubers, as it offers a wide variety of content options, keeps content fresh and engaging, and allows both of you to access new viewers.
Clever thumbnails
The thumbnail is quite possibly the most important part of your video. With so much competition for viewers’ eyes, it is important your thumbnail helps you stand out from the crowd.
Think of a YouTube thumbnail in the same way as an email subject line. If the email subject line is not captivating, you won’t click through on the email. Therefore, it doesn’t matter how great the content is inside that email. If you don’t open it, you can’t see it.
The same can get said for YouTube thumbnails. Don’t spend hours and hours creating an incredible video only to let it down by creating a poor thumbnail.
To get the best engagement from your thumbnails, don’t get scared to try new things. That doesn’t mean moving away from your style guidelines regarding font, for example, but instead, try out different images and titles to see what works best with your audience.
Chat with your audience
Another key aspect of audience engagement is interaction. Many YouTube content creators only see their videos as one-way conversations. They create the video, their audience watches it, and then repeat it.
It is easy to think like this, but this mentality will not help you increase your following in the long term. Instead of talking “at” your audience, try walking with them. During the video, ask them to answer questions in the comments section, drop a like, or share the video with a friend.
Not only will these comments provide you with better engagement statistics, but they will also provide you with feedback on your current content and ideas for the future.
You should also respond to as many comments as you can, especially on your most recent videos. It can be hard to keep up across many videos as your audience begins to grow, but viewers like to see that you are active in the comments, and it motivates them to leave comments themselves, as they know you read them.
Create a Reddit thread for your channel.
Engaging with your audience shouldn’t just be on YouTube. Another excellent way to curate your community is to create a Reddit page for viewers to discuss video content and share relevant information.
This option also creates plenty of video content to engage with your viewers, such as reacting to their posts.
Jump on trends.
Joining in with a trend is one of the easiest ways to keep your audience engaged and also increase your audience.
Not only that, but it means you don’t have to think of another unique video idea! Finding new ideas for videos can sometimes be hard, so take advantage of popular trends to ensure your viewers remain engaged, and your channel stays relevant.
YouTube Shorts.
YouTube Shorts are a fantastic way to further engage your viewers and encourage them to check out your longer-form videos.
YouTube also makes it easy for you to cut down the long-form video into Shorts, making it quick and easy for you to do.
Utilize pop-ups.
YouTube info cards are essential for continued engagement with your viewers. You can use these cards to direct your viewers to more of your content and keep them engaged with your channel.
Do giveaways.
Don’t get me wrong, giveaways are certainly not the cheapest way to increase engagement, but the impact could be long-lasting and likely will make you money in the future as your following grows.
Rather than simply asking people to leave a comment to enter your giveaway, why not add a small easter egg in the middle of your video?
Not only will this feel more rewarding for your viewers, but it will also increase your average watch time.
Editing.
One easy way to keep your audience engaged is by using editing to reduce fluff and add entertainment to your content.
If you are not confident editing yourself, you can find a cheap video editor on sites like Upwork or Fiverr.
Work smarter, not harder
On the face of it, all of that sounds like quite a lot of stuff to do, and you might worry about not having enough time.
That is where the value of tools and freelancers comes in. You can use tools to schedule videos for you and freelancers to help edit your videos and thumbnails. A good freelancer won’t cost much, but the results could be incredible.