Can I use a playlist to increase YouTube views for a video?

[subversiveasset]

As JesusGreen mentioned, playlists are a great way to increase your "session" watch time (which, as far as I know, isn't really directly observable from youtube analytics, but it is something that Youtube definitely pays attention to, in addition to watch time from your own videos.) My understanding is that your session watch time can even "count" videos from other people's channel that people watched as a result of watching your video...so even if you can't fill a playlist only with your videos, if you have a playlist that includes your videos and others' videos and people watch through multiple videos in that playlist, then that still helps *your* session watch time. (I'd love it if anyone had more data on the mechanics of this, but it seems to me that a lot of the guides online confirm that interpretation of session watch time.)

From an SEO perspective, playlists are another opportunity to optimize SEO metadata to get your videos seen by people. Unfortunately, i don't think that most people take advantage of playlist descriptions, titles, and so on. (I know that I still need to work on this -- I have one playlist that I explicitly added descriptions, optimized titles, etc., for, and that one started performing MUCH better after I did that...but I haven't really gone ahead and made the changes to my other ones.)

If your video gets included in other people's playlists, that can also help you -- as long as people are watching through your video. This can be a double-edged sword, however. I recently found that one of my videos was included in a rather popular playlist...my view count for that video has increased considerably over the past few days, but on the other hand, audience retention for that video has plummeted because the people watching the video via that playlist aren't necessarily looking for that specific video.

 

[binky VS bunson]

Use all the tricks... don't underestimate the power of SEO

 

[Sk Jony]

Playlists are VERY useful, however perhaps not in the way you imagined. Yes it's true, your channel might get some views from people who were searching playlists and found your awesome music playlist - but unless the entire rest of your channel is also awesome music of your own, it's not going to get you any subscribers or views.

However, using playlists for your OWN content works great. One of the things that YouTube measures when deciding how to rank your channel and videos is the overall watch time your videos generate. Now this isn't just watch time on one video, but across your channel, and as YouTube as a whole. So as a content creator it is in your best interests to encourage people to binge watch your channel and watch several videos/episodes in one session, and then even after they're done with your channel, to keep watching YouTube for hours.

Now when someone finishes a video, the video is winding down and they're in that stage where they're like "Hmm what now?" and they might see some videos in the sidebar to watch next, so they might get distracted and leave your channel - but if you linked them to the video embedded in a playlist on autoplay, then as soon as one video finishes, the next starts, so they don't have to do anything to find more of your content, and can keep watching a bunch longer.

It's a great way to stop people getting distracted and leaving your channel earlier. It also converts more subscribers since some people aren't convinced after one video alone and need to see a few to really determine if you're someone they want to continue to watch.

Now these playlists should be useful. There are two kinds of playlists you'll commonly see on channels. Category playlists, where videos of a similar category are all grouped together (say your channel does both How To tutorials and Vlogs, you could have one How To playlist, and one Vlog playlist) - and then Series playlists, where you've created a whole series.

Series playlists kind of do better because they infer a continuation from one episode to the next, and so people are encouraged to watch the whole series so far rather than just watching one episode. In fact this is something I've just started on my channel, I've just started a series where I'll be going through the things I want to teach right from the beginner basics all the way to super advanced stuff down the line - all in sequence. Once the series has 10-20+ episodes that'll encourage new viewers of the series to just watch the whole playlist, so it's a great way to get people to watch more of your content.

Thanks for your valuable comment, I learn more important things from your comments. Great tips for me.