5 Ways to Promote a YouTube Channel That Don’t Work (Personally Tested)
YouTube Growth Myths: 5 Viral Promotion Hacks That Actually Failed
I spent months testing "magic" formulas from gurus so you don’t have to waste your time
I run several YouTube channels and regularly read promotion tips. I constantly read about ways to promote a channel better. Furthermore, I have personally tested many of them. Alas, the result is zero. Only wasted time and a bit of irritation.
I am sharing five methods that didn’t work in my case. Perhaps I will save someone hours of testing and false expectations.
Method #1 — Add hashtags of popular bloggers
I came across this advice in several videos — add names of popular influencers in your niche to hashtags. Let’s say you have a cooking channel, and you add hashtags of the chef #GordonRamsay, #JamieOliver, etc. Supposedly, this will attract a “similar” audience.
Tested it on my main channel about unpacking. Added it and started waiting for a miracle to happen… And nothing happened. No traffic surge, no increase in subscribers.
Verdict: doesn’t work. The algorithm is not that naive.
Method #2 — Write hashtags in several languages
The essence of the method is to increase the reach due to the multilingual audience. I tried writing hashtags in several languages. I conducted a test on several videos, and this again did not give a result. It did not work at all, neither increasing the reach nor the views.
YouTube algorithms don’t really promote hashtags these days. Hashtags just help with navigation. The result was predictable: no change in reach or engagement.
Conclusion: outdated technique.
Method #3 — Description in several languages
Since hashtags don’t work, maybe the description will help, I thought? I started duplicating descriptions for videos in several languages, which I thought were more popular. Result? No difference, still the same: stable, but average views. Missed again!
Conclusion: Don’t waste time translating the description, unless you’re doing separate subtitles and voiceovers.
Method #4 — Hidden stickers — words on video
There are rumors that stickers on videos that contain words are popular now. For example, insert a caption with the desired word and make the text the same color as the background, so it’s invisible to viewers, but still detectable by the algorithm.
For this, I installed the CapCut application. It took some time to figure out how the interface works.
Result: the algorithm didn’t notice my efforts, but I learned how to use the new app.
Method #5 — Post videos every other day
One of the most common pieces of advice is to publish regularly and on a schedule — the algorithm is known to favor consistency. More specifically, I published every other day at the same time. I released 10 videos according to this schedule. Everything is like a textbook. Guess what happened? Nothing.
Result: the algorithm favors regularity, but if the content doesn’t hit, then the schedule won’t save it.
The Internet is full of “magic” recipes for promotion. In reality, most of the advice is outdated, superficial, or simply mythical. I suspect that such advice is given by bloggers who simply want to increase the reach of their videos, and nothing more.
If all this worked, I would write an article titled “5 ways that blew up my views.” But the reality, alas, is more modest.
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Share your experience in the comments — what have you tried and what really worked? Is there a secret "magic pill" for the algorithm, or is it all just about luck and high-quality content?
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