Sometimes YouTube videos look so easy… Grab an iPhone or a GoPro, start recording, and upload waiting for the views, likes, and shares to roll in. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always happen that way.
Here are 5 YouTube best practices to help increase your chances…
1) Remember – YouTube is social media
This might sound obvious but here’s the real truth. YouTube is a platform designed to engage with an audience through two-way dialogue (comments, sharing, and other social proof).
Most brands that turn to YouTube to harness the platform do not have a desire to engage their audience at this level of communication. They don’t have a strategy nor do they allocate any resources ($$) for audience engagement.
If you’re going to use the platform, come armed with a plan:
- What’s the tone you’re going to take with your audience?
- How much manpower are you willing to invest?
- What’s your budget? Did you include any advertising dollars?
Engaging with your audience in a meaningful, genuine way is one of the most effective ways to achieve critical early growth.
Pro-tip: Be useful, significant, and genuine.
2) Organize & optimize your channel
Organization is the key difference between contemplating your marketing plans and continually stomping out fires. Stop what you’re doing and do it now! It’ll never be easier to set and keep a plan and organizational structure that leads to scalable marketing strategy.
Insurance isn’t a market that normally get people excited, but this industry is filled with heavy-weight marketers. Check out the Progressive channel. They’ve worked hard to organize their videos and have laid out a UX in a way that shows you exactly what they want you to see the moment you land on their channel.
Progressive can teach you a lot:
- Test the best performing videos and present them to your audience.
- Feature those winners and put them right above the fold.
- Link to other social networks allowing your audience to easily discover your social network.
- Play upon your success. Who hasn’t heard of Flo? Notice how prominently placed her branded image is front and center?
3) Cross-channel integration
We’ve spoken about the importance of understanding your audience and targeting your message to them. YouTube is the perfect platform allowing you to easily create multiple (and specific) “channels” to get your message out.
Creating targeted content is a great idea, but DON’T be afraid to share your best content across multiple networks (like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.). You’ll be far more successful leveraging your content.
Here are a few easy tips you can do to leverage your message:
- Embed videos into posts on your blog.
- Share videos across different networks like Facebook and Twitter.
- Highlight and feature your best content (most popular) on your website.
- Interlink your YouTube videos to give your audience the opportunity to pick out and play your next piece of relevant content or risk losing them to the Google/YouTube sidebar.
- Consider rebroadcasting relevant content on Google+, Tumblr, or LinkedIn.
Pro Tip: Invest the time learning how to setup and run Facebook video programming. Those 1.65 billion users will give you nearly 10x the viral reach of videos posted natively vs. external YouTube links. You can run Facebook video program parallel to your YouTube distribution plan.
4) Use video tools
As marketers discover news ways to use video, new tool sets are built to assist with those uses. Keep these “tool tips” in mind as you publish videos:
- Use YouTube Cards – These call-to-action placements will help get your audience pointed (and clicking) in the right direction.
- Properly optimize your uploads – Your “About” section is an important piece of content that Google can read and index (organic search). Using keyword rich titles, full descriptions, targeted keyword tags, closed captions or uploaded transcripts and hyperlinks will play a huge roll in getting your videos found outside of YouTube.
- Tracking with YouTube Analytics – Want to learn more about your audience? Knowing when an audience stops watching your videos, the proper length, and other key elements are available within a few clicks. Video content is time-consuming and expensive to create. The more information you have, the better armed you’ll be to take control over your content distribution.
5) Consider including paid advertising
Businesses are typically created to make money – it’s no different online.
It’s been predicted that the future of online marketing will shift to a “pay-to-play” model. It’s upsetting for those that started early and have grown their platforms organically, but that’s progress.
Most networks are already restricting your organic reach while your competitors are using paid to buy up that additional reach. If you’re not including paid to boost your engagement efforts, you’re probably limiting your growth before you even begin.