How To Drive Views To YouTube From LinkedIn with Rob Balasabas of TubeBuddy

Last updated on June 15th, 2024

Did you know that there are good and bad ways to promote your YouTube videos on LinkedIn? Rob Balasabas works at TubeBuddy, which a YouTube video optimization and channel management tool. But actually one of the things he’s doing is using LinkedIn to promote YouTube. He tells us the best ways to do this, and offers tips on native LinkedIn, too.

GUEST: Rob Balasabas from TubeBuddy. Check him out on YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter.

SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by our affiliate partners, including: TubeBuddy, VidIQ, MorningFame, Rev.com, and other products and services we recommend.

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TRANSCRIPT

Dane Golden:
It’s time for the Video Marketing Value podcast. This is the podcast where we help marketers just like you get more value out of your video marketing efforts. My name is Dane Golden and I work at VidAction.tv where we help you up your game on YouTube and transform your business. And I also work at VidTarget.io where we help you stop paying for wasted views on YouTube and better target your customers along with my cohost, she’s the powerhouse video marketer from San Francisco. It’s R-E-N-E-E-T-E-E-L-E-Y, Renee Teeley from Video Explained. Hello Renee.

Renee Teeley:
Hello Dane. I always love the intro. Thank you. I am ebullient to be cohosting this podcast with you.

Dane Golden:
Why are you not just plain thrilled?

Renee Teeley:
Who says I’m not just plain thrilled? I’m thrilled. I’m ebullient. I’m delighted and you know why? Because this episode is going to be so much fun. I love all of our podcasts, but I’m especially looking forward to this one because it’s really relevant for my business.

Dane Golden:
And Renee, what do you do at Video Explained?

Renee Teeley:
So many things, but at Video Explained really we create videos and provide consulting services to help you leverage the power of video for business. Our sweet spot is creating weekly video shows to drive strategic business results, but we work on a variety of different types of videos for business

Dane Golden:
Very well. And today we have a special guest, Rob Balasabas of TubeBuddy. Welcome, Rob.

Rob Balasabas:
Hey, Dan, how’s it going? Hey, Renee. Good to be here with you both.

Dane Golden:
We’re excited to have you. You are with newly with TubeBuddy and you’ve been doing some amazing things on LinkedIn to drive views to YouTube. Ironically TubeBuddy is for growing YouTube on YouTube, but you’re actually using LinkedIn to grow YouTube, is that correct?

Rob Balasabas:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean LinkedIn has been a game changer for really my personal brand and my career. It’s opened up a ton of doors and it’s definitely something I’m leveraging to grow my YouTube channel.

Renee Teeley:
So how are you currently using LinkedIn and YouTube together?

Rob Balasabas:
Yeah, good question. Good question. It’s kind of a, a tricky thing and it’s something I’m always testing and learning because I have to respect both platforms, right? I can’t just link my YouTube videos on LinkedIn because of course LinkedIn is not going to like that. LinkedIn is a platform on its own that has native video upload features, also has live streaming features. So it is something. Video is something that they are trying to also grow on their platform, video content. So for me to be just sharing my YouTube video links and telling people to go watch my videos on YouTube from LinkedIn is not something that they’re going to like, the algorithms and all those things, because I’m pulling people away from LinkedIn and bringing them off LinkedIn into another platform.

Rob Balasabas:
So there’s a couple things that I like to do to make sure that I’m respecting LinkedIn as a platform, making sure that I’m also creating certain videos and certain content that I upload directly to LinkedIn as native videos on LinkedIn that they may not find directly on YouTube, but it is specifically for LinkedIn. Putting things like even when I do have a YouTube video that I just launched or published that I’m sharing that on LinkedIn, but I’m sharing the thumbnail as an image post and then putting the link to the video in the comment.

Dane Golden:
Let’s break that down real good for people here and go through it step by step because I think that that’s important. So some people think, oh well if I share something somewhere I’ll just put a link to my YouTube video in a particular post, done, move on. But you’re saying no.

Rob Balasabas:
Yeah, I’m saying no. So what I would do is there’s a couple of things and I try to… One of the things that I’m finding working from you really well is trying to use all the different types of posts on LinkedIn. So what that means is that you can post text posts, you can put images, you can put articles, which is basically like a blog post. You can also post documents. You can post a PDF that has multiple pages and it kind of becomes like a little slideshow that people can kind of scroll through. So there’s different types of content formats.

Dane Golden:
That’s fine. But let’s just talk about the most common thing, which is a LinkedIn post.

Rob Balasabas:
Sure.

Dane Golden:
What’s the best way of getting people to come to a YouTube video from a LinkedIn post? How do you structure that?

Rob Balasabas:
Yeah, so the first thing is, I would say for me it is an image post. So I would share. The easiest thing is to share your thumbnail, right? The thumbnail has already been designed to get attention on YouTube. So it should theoretically also work to get attention on LinkedIn. So I shared a thumbnail, it’s an image post, and then I put a caption there that says something that is relevant to what that video is about. So posting a question, something intriguing, something maybe polarizing, something that my audience wants to learn that video answers. So similar to what you’re doing with the YouTube video itself, thinking of the title and the description and all those things.

Rob Balasabas:
But with LinkedIn of course, only the first three lines of your text captions shows up. So there’s little things that you can do. You can make sure that maybe it kind of cuts off on the third line and they have to read more. But basically image posts with a thumbnail, with a caption that tells them something intriguing that makes them want to watch this video and then putting the link to the video in the first comment.

Dane Golden:
Okay. Go ahead.

Renee Teeley:
Yeah, that’s a really interesting approach. So I’ve experimented a lot with LinkedIn video myself and figuring out ways to drive traffic to YouTube, and I sort of go back and forth between uploading videos natively to LinkedIn and also linking to YouTube. I know many people say not to do that, but there are some tricks that kind of help with that. I haven’t actually experimented with image posts. So uploading just… I mean I’ve done a lot of image posts but not an image of my thumbnail to try to get traffic to YouTube that way. So that’s a really interesting approach. Do you find that that works better than linking directly to YouTube?

Rob Balasabas:
I find that it does, yeah, because I always pay attention to how many people each of my posts is reaching, the comments, the likes, the engagement with each of those posts. So I do find that when it is like a straight up just putting the link to the video, that YouTube video in the post, it gets less reach. I mean we will talk about this, but one of the other things I do like to do is if you have time to is take advantage of uploading a native video. So what that means though is that most of my videos on YouTube, just because they’re mostly tutorial videos, ranges from I would say five minutes to 10 minutes long. But within the tutorial video, naturally there’s usually different specific points of it.

Rob Balasabas:
So let’s say it’ll be the five ways to get more engagement with your LinkedIn videos. So what I would do is then create micro content, little short clips of that long form YouTube video, and then upload each of those points to LinkedIn as a native video. And then at the end have a little sort of call to action within the video to watch the full video on YouTube. And then it’ll usually say something to the effect of full video on YouTube link in the first caption or first comment right at the end.

Dane Golden:
And what about-

Renee Teeley:
So I love that approach because basically you’re taking one video, the main video that you’re using on YouTube, and you’re repurposing it into multiple videos so that you can get even more exposure. So instead of posting one video on LinkedIn, you’re posting five videos on LinkedIn. And so each of those posts will have their own audience, which is great.

Rob Balasabas:
Exactly. And you’re satisfying sort of what LinkedIn wants, which is native videos. At the end of the day, if you can provide any of the videos out of all the things, I know we’ll talk about LinkedIn Live as well, but between live content on LinkedIn for me and also native uploaded videos between the two types of videos on LinkedIn, native upload videos by far has a longer shelf life, more reach, more engagement for me for sure.

Dane Golden:
And explain for our listeners, Rob, why would LinkedIn favor a native upload and what a native upload is. I know people have been talking about this on Facebook for some time, but it seems like LinkedIn operates in the same way. What is a native upload and why is that so important?

Rob Balasabas:
Yeah. A native upload is really just a video that you’re uploading directly to LinkedIn. You’re not embedding it. Meaning if you do this and if you’re listening, just take a YouTube video, like the link to a YouTube video and then put it into a text, a post, pretend you’re posting it and put it into the caption. What LinkedIn will do is it’ll populate like a preview of your YouTube video on your post. So that is basically embedding a video on LinkedIn, versus a native upload means that basically you’re uploading the actual video file directly to LinkedIn. So yeah, I mean it’s really important because again, going back to what’s LinkedIn’s goal with your content, right? They want you to create content so that they can share it so that other people will be interested to watch it and they will stay on LinkedIn longer, right?

Rob Balasabas:
It’s like really any social platform out there, whether it’s Facebook or Twitter or even YouTube. There’s definitely opinions on how many links should you put in a YouTube description and in the comments and stuff like that because you don’t want to necessarily always be driving people away from YouTube and viewers away from YouTube. So it is, yeah. So that’s basically what that is. I mean that’s really why it’s important. You don’t want to always be telling people to leave LinkedIn, right?

Renee Teeley:
Yeah, I mean that really is the goal of every platform these days is keeping people on whatever platform it is. So if it’s LinkedIn or keeping people on LinkedIn, if it’s YouTube, they want to keep people on YouTube. So it makes it a little bit difficult for a content creator to cross promote different content. In terms of keeping people on the platform, one of the things that LinkedIn is doing now is they offer LinkedIn Live. I know it’s not rolled out to everyone, but you do have access to LinkedIn Live. I know it’s something that you’ve been using. Can you talk a little bit about how you’re using LinkedIn Live and how that applies to your YouTube videos?

Rob Balasabas:
Yeah, that’s a good question. So LinkedIn Live is I think it’s still officially in beta as we record this. So you can apply for LinkedIn Live access. It’s been a really awesome tool for me to have. It’s basically a tool that I use to create consistent content, but also a couple of other things. One is to just grow community. It’s cool. It’s just like YouTube Live or any live stream content out there. There’s so much chat happening during your live between the audience members and the viewers that it’s just a place for me to build community. It’s a place for me to have conversations with people that I want to connect with and perhaps even partner up with and those things. And so shining light on them, that’s really the best place for me to do that in a really easy way. It’s just we’re having candid conversations.

Rob Balasabas:
So right now there’s a show that I do sometimes once a week at least, sometimes twice a week. This week I’m doing three LinkedIn lives and interviewing different people. Renee, you joined me the other day. That was super fun. But yeah. I do that to build community and really that’s it and just to connect with people, connect with the guests and connect with the other audience members and kind of provide a bit of a different experience with LinkedIn. It’s something that they’re pushing out. So it’s something I want to support.

Rob Balasabas:
Obviously LinkedIn, it’s always been in the back of my mind that really LinkedIn is trying to get into videos. Everybody, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, all the other social platforms, they have really good video features and LinkedIn is trying to get up on that as well. And so yeah, if they’re pushing out features like this, then it’s something that I want to support because LinkedIn has been an amazing platform for my own brand.

Renee Teeley:
Yeah. Well I’ve heard a rumor that video can be pretty powerful for business.

Rob Balasabas:
Who said that?

Renee Teeley:
Only a few people out there, yes.

Rob Balasabas:
Absolutely.

Dane Golden:
So what about the LinkedIn blog posts? Now the LinkedIn blog is different than a status update. Years ago it used to be called LinkedIn Pulse, but everyone sort of knows it as an article or a blog.

Rob Balasabas:
Yeah, it’s something that’s super under utilized I think. Some people have blogs. I mean a lot of people have blogs on their websites and things like that. I myself don’t have a blog. I don’t even have a website to be honest. So my website, whenever people ask me when I do interviews or anything and there’s always a website column, I usually would either put in my LinkedIn profile or my YouTube channel and that’s kind of my website. But yeah, LinkedIn articles, yeah, it’s basically a blog post. And so I will typically repurpose my videos if it’s a good video. If it’s a good YouTube video, what I’ll do is I’ll create an article, typically those sort of list type videos where it’s like, hey, here are five things or here are seven things to do to grow your LinkedIn profile or LinkedIn channel.

Rob Balasabas:
So I’ll usually turn those videos into a LinkedIn article because those articles, although they may not get as many views, if you kind of compare them to the content that’s on your feed, which is content that you’re trying to disrupt somebody else’s, their patterns when they’re scrolling, you’re trying to stop them from scrolling and watch your feed, LinkedIn articles will come up when people are searching for specific things.

Rob Balasabas:
So one of the best articles that I’ve created so far was last year when I first got LinkedIn Live is I created an article and a video on YouTube on how to get LinkedIn Live access. And so within that article I have the five steps to get LinkedIn Live access, my own experience of getting LinkedIn Live access, what you need once you get access, all those things. And then I also embedded the YouTube video of me explaining how to get LinkedIn Live access. And so it’s there. So now I’m getting a view traffic. I’m getting YouTube traffic from the article from LinkedIn. I see this because of the analytics on YouTube and yeah, it’s a good way because people are searching. Especially for trending topics or things that you know people are looking for, then creating a LinkedIn article is a good way to again extend the shelf life of the content you’re creating and repurpose it.

Renee Teeley:
Yeah, that seems like a really good way to use LinkedIn articles especially because sometimes videos on LinkedIn have a relatively short shelf life and so LinkedIn articles can kind of help you with more evergreen sort of content and keep that relevant. So you mentioned that when you’re doing LinkedIn articles, you typically do an article around a video that’s already performing well. So have you noticed a difference between what performs well on LinkedIn versus YouTube? Is there different types of content that perform well on each platform?

Rob Balasabas:
Yeah, that’s good. That’s a good question. On my channel anyway, different channels, different things, but on my channel it’s definitely, yeah, the tutorial content. People love tutorial content. This is something I’m doing with my own channel now is I’m trying to… I’m still putting my personality into the videos and to the content itself, but it’s very much get in, teach the tutorial, the three things or the five steps and then get out of the video. That’s something I’m learning now is that really people have such hyper, hyper limited attention spans that it has to be that way for me anyway. Maybe other channels as you get more established then you can spend a bit more time with the introduction and outro and things like that. But for me it’s just like, hey, in this video I’m going to teach you the five ways to get LinkedIn Live access and then here’s step one, two and three and four and five and then that’s it. And then see you in the next video. And then that’s it.

Rob Balasabas:
So I’m testing that. Less calls to action, less calls to action to go and register for my free course or anything like that. I’ll still do that. But probably maybe one in every five videos. I’ll do a call to action like that. And then on LinkedIn, LinkedIn is the same repurposing the content that I have on YouTube, but there’s just more community thought that’s put into it because again, it’s a social platform. It’s not necessarily a video repository like YouTube is where people are just searching. They may not know me. Whereas on LinkedIn it is that. People are still looking to learn. That’s still the same content that I have. I’m still trying to teach and be coming from an educational point of view with LinkedIn, with my content.

Rob Balasabas:
But there’s also relationships and there’s also community building that’s happening on LinkedIn. And so there’s private messages and connections and things like that that are happening behind the scenes that is helping to build and open up opportunities for me. So it’s not just a place to make sure I get a lot of reach and views. It’s also a place where you can build that relationship with other professionals that are on LinkedIn that want to learn from you.

Dane Golden:
And what about captions? How important are captions on LinkedIn video and how do you do them?

Rob Balasabas:
Yeah, there’s a number of ways to do them. I think they’re super important just because the stats are out there that a lot of people, the majority of people are watching and scrolling through LinkedIn and really social media without the volume on. So if your video has captions, then it just makes you stand out and helps to stop the scrolling.

Rob Balasabas:
So for me, what I use, I use different tools out there. There’s tons of different tools, but I use a tool called Quicc, Q-U-I-C-C. And yeah, I just upload my videos to Quicc. It will auto transcribe the video. It’s not perfect like any other caption tools out there. There’s still a bit of correction that I need to do. But yeah, I’ll caption it. I’ll bake the caption into the video so it actually becomes part of the video file. It doesn’t have to be a separate, what’s called an SRT file, a closed caption file. So it’s baked right into the video. I download the video from Quicc with the caption embedded or baked in and then I upload that as my LinkedIn video, my LinkedIn post.

Dane Golden:
That’s it.

Renee Teeley:
Go ahead.

Dane Golden:
Your turn.

Renee Teeley:
So, when you’re posting videos on LinkedIn, I know that it’s important to respond to comments right away or typically. So can you talk a little bit about how you treat comments on LinkedIn and maybe how that differs for your approach on YouTube?

Rob Balasabas:
Yeah, really for both… Actually, no. Sorry, let me rephrase that. For YouTube, ASAP, as quickly as I can, I’m responding to comments. What I’m learning and what I’m hearing is that the first 24 to 48 hours of a YouTube video is very critical. View velocity and all these things, so it’s really important to make sure that you’re engaging with comments so that that just increases your views. Whether or not that’s true, that’s how I’m practicing. I’m doing it on YouTube and seems to be working. With LinkedIn, same thing.

Rob Balasabas:
Something that I’m trying to do though, so that again, I’m always looking with LinkedIn and how do I extend the shelf life of my content, my videos on LinkedIn. And it seems to be that naturally the way that video content is with LinkedIn, that LinkedIn really gives it priority. So there’s some videos that I uploaded almost two weeks ago and it’s still getting served to new people. There’s still comments coming back and forth, and as long as I’m commenting back in and keeping that conversation going and at the same time getting to know and build those relationships with the people that are watching the videos, the shelf life is really long naturally on its own.

Rob Balasabas:
But what I find is I’m testing a ware, maybe I don’t respond to all the comments. I respond to maybe the most immediate comments right away. And then maybe some of the ones that are not so immediate, the ones that are like, “Oh thanks” or like “Good video,” those kinds of things, those kinds of comments, I’ll leave for the next day. That way again when I comment on those tomorrow, then again it just kind of sparks I suppose the algorithm the platform to feed that video again to notify the people that I’ve commented and engaged for that video another time and sort of have another wave of people to come back to that piece of content, right? So it just kind of lengthens the shelf life that way.

Renee Teeley:
I’m totally going to borrow that from you. I think that’s a really great approach and I haven’t thought about doing that before, but it really extends the time that you can have those conversations with people as opposed to doing everything right away, which is typically my approach. So I really love that.

Dane Golden:
Rob Balasabas, incredible tips today about LinkedIn video and how to use LinkedIn to promote YouTube and how can people find out more about you and TubeBuddy?

Rob Balasabas:
Yeah, so if you want to just go over and you can connect with me on LinkedIn or Facebook or YouTube, I’m happy to connect. Send me a message, send me any questions. I’m always looking to hear how I can help. You can also just connect with me on with YouTube with TubeBuddy as well. Just add TubeBuddy really everywhere and I’m behind the scenes there as well. And if you want to check out TubeBuddy, just go to tubebuddy.com/rob, and you can get a free trial and test it out with your YouTube channel.

Dane Golden:
Excellent. Thank you, Rob Balasabas. Renee, how can people find out more about you and Video Explained?

Renee Teeley:
Well it’s pretty easy to find out more about me. I’m the only Renee Teeley, so if you Google me, anything that comes up is pretty much me. But the easiest way is you can go to Reneeteeley.com. And if you want to connect directly with me, just reach out on LinkedIn.

Dane Golden:
And we will spell that for you. She’s R-E-N-E-E-T-E-E-L-E-Y, Renee Teeley. We want to thank you, the listener, for joining us today, don’t we, Renee?

Renee Teeley:
Yes, absolutely. And we hope you love the podcast just as much as we do.

Dane Golden:
So we want to invite you right now to review us on Apple Podcast or the app you’re listening to right now, because that helps more people find out about us. So we can help even more folks do business better on video, in places like YouTube and LinkedIn even. Renee and I do this podcast and our various other YouTube videos and our speaking and all the other projects because we love helping businesses like yours do YouTube and video marketing better. Until next week, here’s to helping you help your customers through video.