Did you know YouTube gets over a billion sets of eyeballs every single month?
Most belong to what Google & Nielsen are now calling the The C Generation who care deeply about creation, curation, connection and community. 80% were born from year 2000 on, known as millennials are YouTube’s core audience. Since YouTube is mobile friendly too, its content is consumed throughout the day. The other 20% are increasingly consuming video online.
Effective use of YouTube for Business
If you’re not targeting teens with silly videos, how can you use YouTube to help your business?
Here are our Top Ten Tips for YouTube
1. YouTube is a Tool.
Study what is working for similar brands by looking at their engagement level in comments and likes – rather than views which may have been paid for.
Your YouTube content should support the main goals of your business and focus on the presentation of valuable content to your followers and prospective customers. Video has an increased engagement and conversion factor so prioritise its creation – it’s your secret ingredient your social media campaigns.
2. Make Content, Not Ads.
Traditional ads don’t work on YouTube – you have to be more creative to engage your audience. The Dollar Shave Club intro video is still a favourite examples of an intro video to a company.
Storytelling helps integrate a product in an authentic and relevant way.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=pii4G8FkCA4
https://youtube.com/watch?v=WPQmhlbxP-4
The shareability factor is just as important as your idea and the execution of it in video form. This is an art not a science.
3. Become The Face of Your Business.
Someone in your company should become the face of your brand to build relationships.
Pick the best ambassador to appear in most of your videos, to be included in your channel header and possibly show up on video thumbnails. You don’t want this person in every thumbnail though unless they’re a born presenter as everyone likes a bit of variety.
Your company is no longer just words, but a multi-faceted person that they can relate to.
You can do behind-the-scenes videos to attract attention and show your integrity.
4. Everyone Starts From Scratch
Focus on creating the best quality and most valuable content you can for your audience. It takes time to build a following, so don’t give up when your first few videos don’t go viral. Many successful companies channels generate business for them without ever going viral.
Announce it on your website, blog, email lists and all social platforms using buttons above the fold (first visible screenful of content on a laptop screen). Respond to any comments they post and comment on their channels as well.
5. Leverage the New One Channel Design.
While the new channel design is a step in the right direction for utilising YouTube for business. The design is now responsive so your channel will look good on all mobile and tablet devices.
The two things your business needs to do to really get the most from the new design is:
1. Create a quality channel header as it’s the only place you can graphically brand your channel and you want it to look amazing.
2. Create a channel trailer that will only show up for non-subscribers to introduce your channel and showcase your brand in a fun and engaging way. Add a call to action asking the viewer to subscribe to your channel at the end of the video.
6. Push People To Your Website.
First, build your audience but asap encourage the transfer/conversion over to your website:
1. Include a link to your website in the first line of each video description so the viewer doesn’t have to hit the ‘more’ button.
2. Include links to your site in the “about” section and in the header of your channel.
3. Release YouTube content that’s split in value. You could offer a blog entry on registration on your website, linked to yours. Or you could produce parts with part 1 on your channel and the 2nd on your site, or part 1 is a cliffhanger to be continued on your site.
7. Utilize Paid Views.
There’s a form of Google AdWords called Trueview which you only pay for if the viewer watches your video for more than 5 seconds so skip the company graphic. Produce a how-to perhaps.
8. Collaborate.
Finding creators with a huge audience, for example 100,000+ subscribers who could appeal to your target audience. Pay them to appear in your video or talk about your product in theirs and link over to your channel. If it’s an authentic fit they will be happy to be a part of it.
9. Leverage YouTube Videos For SEO.
Google is the biggest search engine, then YouTube. A YouTube video with proper tags, title, description etc is more likely to rank higher than a blog post; it will even be listed with a catchy thumbnail.
Try using Google Adwords Keyword tool shows how popular keywords are – these are the ones to use in the titles, tags and descriptions of your videos.
Then embed them with surrounding text in blog posts.
We love WordPress and would recommend Yoast’s Video SEO plugin to generate video sitemaps and help with your search engine rankings.
10. Call To Action.
Now you’ve engaged your audience you could as them to:
- subscribe to your channel
- go to your website for full details or more information
- ask a question
- like the video or forward it to their friends.
- prompt the user to comment below regarding a certain topic discussed
- offer some sort of contest or prize to motivate them.
