Using YouTube For Greater Author Visibility

YouTube can be a wonderful place for authors to connect to their readers or find
their audience, to have a presence, build their platform, and promote their brands. You can essentially do anything on YouTube, as long as it’s within YouTube’s standards and policy, of course. If you haven’t created a channel yet because you’re not sure what kind of videos to post, or you have but need ideas, check out my guest post on Literary Rambles: 10 Things You Can Do on Your Author YouTube Channel
After you have content ideas and have created videos that are ready to publish, there are a few things you can do as an author to encourage more views from
readers.

1. Authorly/Book Tags
When you’re uploading a new video, you can enter a bunch of tags (keywords and phrases) to describe your video that’ll help it to appear in search results.
Consider these authorly/book tags:
- Authortube
- Booktube
- Bibliophile
- Booklover
- Bookgeek
- Bookworm
- Booknerd
- For Authors
- For Writers
- Book Reading
- Author Reading
- Book Marketing
- Publishing
- Editing
- Amreading
- Writing Tips
- Amwriting
- Writers
- Authors
- Readers
Also add your name/pen name, book’s title, series’ title, publisher’s name, and your book’s genre/categories.
If you do how-to videos tailored toward writers, use phrases to describe the content as tags with the words “how to:”
- how to market a book
- how to publish
- how to write…
- how to create an author newsletter
- how to ANYTHING Fill up the tag box with any and all keywords and phrases you can to increase your video’s visibility.

2. Create Playlists
As you add new videos, create playlists for them, especially if you plan to upload a series of videos with the same subject matter. For example, if you do a video recording of a book and also have other videos discussing that book in-depth, you can add them all to a playlist titled after your book. You can do the same for videos about the books in a series.
If you venture over to my YouTube channel, you’ll find a playlist titled Disaster Crimes Series, featuring videos for my books Hurricane Crimes, Seismic Crimes, Tsunami Crimes, and Flaming Crimes. You’ll also find playlists for single titles like Ghost of Death and 30 Seconds.
That way, if readers come to your YouTube channel to see one video about your book or series, they can find other videos easily.

3. Use Your YouTube URL on Goodreads
Once your video is up and you share the link to it everywhere, go to your video and copy the full URL, then head on over to your Goodreads author profile. On the side bar, beneath your friends, is a section for videos. Click “add a video.” A new page will pop up where you can insert your video’s URL, a title, a description, keywords (like the ones mentioned in #1), and select a video type (reading, speech, other) and one of your book titles. Once you hit “save,” that video will not only be visible on your Goodreads author profile but also on that book’s Goodreads page, so whenever a reader is visiting your book’s page to find out more about it or to leave a review, they could come across your video(s), too. After all, these videos are for your readers—those established, new, or waiting to be found.
For more tips on Goodreads check out:
 Three Things You’re Probably Not Doing on Goodreads but Should
 Three More Things to do on Goodreads
With anything you do, especially in terms of marketing, you should have fun with it. I truly enjoy recording my YouTube videos. Posting and sharing them isn’t a chore to me, either, although I still have to write a reminder for me to do it. In one afternoon, I can record three to five videos! (One of my tricks is to put on a jacket or some sort of cover over my shirt after a couple of videos to make it appear as though I didn’t do them all in one sitting.)

So, I want you to enjoy it, too. If it ends up not being for you, that’s okay. Those videos will still come in handy for readers who go searching. You could even post your videos to your website without YouTube, although you won’t be able to do the things mentioned above. However, you could still upload them to your Amazon author profile for readers to discover. This is always a smart and strategic practice.

SHARE:
Do you use YouTube? Will you in 2019?
If you do currently, what are your YouTube tips for authors?

BIO: Chrys Fey is the author of Write with Fey: 10 Sparks to Guide You from Idea to Publication. Catch the sparks you need to write, edit, publish, and market your book! From writing your novel to prepping for publication and beyond, you’ll find sparks on every page, including 100 bonus marketing tips. Fey is an editor for Dancing Lemur Press and runs the Insecure Writer’s Support Group’s Goodreads book club. She is also the author of the Disaster Crimes series. Visit her blog, Write with Fey, for more tips.

Image credit: Pixabay.com