YouTube for Small Businesses-Are You Missing Out?

If you’re not making use of YouTube in your marketing, it’s time to embrace it. With over a billion (that’s not a typo, I promise) monthly users watching over 600 billion hours of video every month (Entrepreneur), YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, with up to 30 million visitors each day. (SocialMediaExaminer)

According to HubSpot, the majority of audiences expect companies to be on social media. While Facebook and Twitter are the top two channels people expect your business to be active on, it may come as a surprise that YouTube came in third, beating out Google, Instagram, and Pinterest. (Entrepreneur)

By creating an active YouTube channel, you reach an eager, and younger, audience and your business also stands to gain more influence on Google (bonus!). Comments on YouTube are tied to Google+, which means creating and posting content on YouTube increases your visibility and credibility with Google’s search engine, if you can engage your audience.

Both Google’s and YouTube’s search engines weigh the number of views your videos attract, plus how long viewers stick around to watch it, how many positive ratings the video garners, and the number of comments, subscribers, and favorites the video attracts. (SocialMediaExaminer) The more engagement, the higher your content appears in the rankings.  The most popular YouTube channels are consistently updating the content they offer, so you should plan on posting 1-2 times per week to maximize YouTube’s potential.

If your business is on social media you probably already have a content strategy; adding YouTube to your social media channels doesn’t have to be difficult. Using the same concepts and adding a personality and video camera increases your potential to reach the millions of people who prefer to receive information via video content over reading.

Get Started-There’s no time like the present!

• Create a Google account, if you don’t already have one. Then sign up for YouTube and customize your account page to reinforce your brand identity.
• Use your brand’s colors, logos, slogans; whatever you have that creates a unified look with your other social media channels.
• Create your content. Webcasts and webinars can be broken up and posted as a series. Short how-to tutorials for your products, showcasing your employees, and behind the scenes creation processes are some good ideas to branch off from.
• Craft a compelling title for your video, aiming for specific description. Product Demonstration won’t attract a lot of viewers, but “How to Save 15 Minutes Every Morning With [brand name]’s [product]” is going to pique some curiosity.
• Choose strong keywords. YouTube has a keyword planner that can help you research words to best describe your video. Resist keyword stuffing and use natural language to grab viewers’ attention. The video’s title has the most weight for search results, but don’t neglect the video description and tags.
• Speaking of tags, aim for around 10 including category, content, location, and the names of people featured in the video. Relevant tags help potential viewers decide whether your video is worth their time. (Social Media Examiner)
• Link up your accounts. Include a link to your website in the video description, write a blog post and link to your video, tweet the link, post it on Facebook, and embed the video on your website. Being shared tells search engines that your content is popular. Spread the word and people will start looking for you on YouTube. (Business 2 Community)

Ready to Make It Even Better?

Enable subtitles. There are millions of people with hearing difficulties that you could be reaching by using subtitles, it will be greatly appreciated and they’re optional-viewers – those who don’t like subtitles don’t have to see them. Make sure you review and edit for accuracy!

Be a storyteller. Really figure out your mission and how you came about creating it. There is passion there-use that to resonate with your audience. What is your target audience passionate about? Find the connection and the content you should be making will become clear.

Strengthen your brand. Earn links naturally by discovering the interests of your target audience that can be intersected with topics around your product or service, and create content around those topics. (Search Engine Watch)

Create custom content that allows for the personalities showcased to connect and build a relationship with viewers. Repurposing TV ads might seem like a good idea, but custom content results in more than double the amount of daily views and subscriptions. (Entrepreneur)

Encourage interaction. Monitor your comments and respond to feedback from viewers. Show the viewers you want to be engaged with them, and reap the rewards of an interactive audience; increase your visibility, boost your search influence, and inspire loyalty in your audience.

Measure Your Success (through YouTube Analytics)

• Compare numbers for different content to figure out what your audience is most interested in.
• Check the retention report and look at user drop off rates. See if you can find patterns-this can help guide your content or editing.
• Monitor subscriber numbers. Watch closely and you can see how efforts affect the number of increases or losses-do more of what works well and quickly squash what’s driving audience members away.
• Discover traffic sources and understand where your viewers are coming from. How is your audience finding you? This can help you hone your promotion strategies.
• Learn where your content is being shared. YouTube’s social sharing report allows for better understanding of what social media networks you may want to focus on-that’s where your audience is. (Adknowledge)

Starting a YouTube Channel may initially seem daunting, but creating engaging video content can significantly boost search influence, increase brand awareness, instill loyalty in your audience, and boost engagement with your customers.