Are you planning to reach out to international markets with your YouTube channel? There’s a strong case to do so, with more than 122 million daily active users scattered across the planet, watching more than a billion hours of YouTube every day.
The majority of YouTube videos – 67% of them – that popular channels post are in languages other than English. In short, the appetite for multilingual content on YouTube is massive. But before you rush out to start translating your videos, take a step back and think strategically about how best to promote your channel and how YouTube fits within your wider marketing campaign. Start with the tips below.
People in different countries can have vastly different attitudes about what does and does not constitute acceptable content. Before you engage a translator to start working on delivering your channel to new audiences, first undertake some cultural research to ensure your videos won’t cause offence – or simply fall flat because you’re targeting a market with very different priorities, a different sense of humour and so on.
The better your understanding of the culture you want to promote your channel to, the more likely you are to be able to succeed in engaging those audiences and garnering more likes and subscribes.
Don’t end up down a rabbit hole of researching the best microphones and trying to find friends of friends who speak other languages. If you’re going to record voiceovers for your channel in order to promote it to international audiences, do it properly, using a professional service.
Say you want to crack the Italian market. That means it’s time to collaborate with Italian translation services to deliver word-perfect transcripts that a professional voiceover artist will use during recording sessions. A professional team specializing in English-to-Italian translation will be able to provide this due to their years of experience, which will show in the quality of the outcome of your videos.
How much does it cost to hire a translator? Well, that depends on the language(s) you need and the nature of your content. If your channel has a medical focus or delivers specialist legal or financial content, for example, you will need a translation service with particular expertise in that area. That means paying for their specialist knowledge as well as their language skills.
Just as it’s essential to get your voiceovers right, it’s important to pay due care and attention to your subtitles. Sticking with our Italian translation example, that means engaging a translator with top notch skills – someone who can transcribe your content as part of the Italian translation service they offer, as well as understanding how to subtitle the dialogue appropriately and timestamp the copy so that you can easily apply the Italian version of the subtitles to your videos.
What is the most accurate Italian translator? When it comes to subtitles, the most accurate Italian translator will be a human one. While machine translation is fast and free, the quality isn’t consistent enough for you to entrust it with the success of your international channel. When it comes to accuracy with your Italian translation, always engage a professional.
Another key step when it comes to successfully promoting your YouTube channel to international markets is to analyse who is already leading those markets. That means finding out not only which channels are the most popular but also looking at a range of other metrics.
You need to examine the sort of content the country’s most popular YouTubers are producing, which videos have earned the most likes, how frequently they post and what strategies they are utilising in-video to encourage people to like and subscribe. It’s not the fastest research to undertake but it can provide some valuable insights when it comes to developing your own strategy to conquer the countries you’ve set your sights on. What do they do that you can imitate and work into your international expansion plans?
Finally, remember that it’s important to produce content that is aligned to what’s important to your local audiences. That could mean making videos focused around the secular and/or religious holidays that are meaningful for your target markets, for example. Whether it’s Christmas, Eid, Diwali or anything else, there’s scope for you to engage international audiences by connecting with them at a local level.
Just be sure that your content and how you promote it is tasteful and respects local customs and traditions. This is no time for commercially minded cultural misappropriation. That could do far more damage to your YouTube channel’s reputation than any potential benefits that such content might deliver. After all, building trust with a new audience can take a long time, but you can knock that trust down in mere seconds if you misjudge your content badly enough.
Promoting your YouTube channel to international markets can be an incredibly exciting venture. It can also, as with any new venture, be fraught with hidden pitfalls. Key to getting things right is to avoid making any assumptions – whether about culture, language or anything else. Instead, undertake detailed research that can inform a clear, focused strategy laying out a path to your international expansion goals. Be sure to include targets in your strategy too, so that you can track how well it’s progressing.
Finally, be sure to choose the partners you work with carefully. There is plenty of choice when it comes to translators, transcriptionists, multilingual voiceover artists and other linguists who can help you promote your channel. Again, it’s important to do your search and find the services that are right for you – those that come within your budget, that are well-reviewed and that deliver the accuracy and quality you need to start expanding your YouTube empire abroad. With the right team behind you, your international YouTube channel promotion should run more smoothly and deliver better results.
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