Social media has changed the face of marketing and online video, YouTube in particular, is a big part of that. Here are 5 critical YouTube strategies for businesses so you can make the most of this opportunity, and it’s an extraordinary time: Today, 87% of Internet users watch video content each month, and that percentage is growing. Every minute 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube, and that number is growing. YouTube streams more videos in 24 days than ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and FOX have streamed in the last 24 years, and it’s growing.
Here are 5 great ways to get into the game:
1 – Create and Customize your Channel – Start off on the right foot, first set up a custom YouTube channel, it’s not as complicated as you might imagine and it’s worth the effort. You should add your company branding or at least customize your channel colors to reflect the look and feel of your company and take advantage of the opportunity to add information and links to your main website. By setting up a channel, you establish a home base for your videos on YouTube, making it easy for people to find more of your content and subscribe to your channel so they get notified when you post a new video. Once you’ve set up your channel, simply log in and you’ll see a “Themes and Colors” tab. Click on it to customize its colors and give it a personal touch. Click “Advanced Settings” to upload a photo or graphic; this probably requires a bit of experimentation; it has a maximum file size of 256 kb with an optimal size of approximately 2000×2200 pixels. Remember, YouTube is going to center your graphic behind your channel content, so place the interesting part of your image to the right and left of that 960px center column. Again, it’s not as complicated as it may seem, but if you want to start with custom colors and all the information, go for it and come back to it.
2 – Get found in YouTube search – People are looking for videos to watch, make it easy to find yours. Your video title can now be a 120 character title, which is obnoxiously long, don’t use all of it, but use enough to have a catchy, catchy title, your branding, and even the web address (you won’t have a hyperlink from the title, but put it there so that if people want to go to your site they can easily copy and paste it into their browser). The description box now allows you up to 5,000 characters; that’s room for more than just a few details. Start with your URL (using the http:// so you’re hyperlinked) and then recap the information you’re providing in the video, tell the story of the video, tell the story of your business, blend keywords naturally throughout the copy and link to specific pages on your website or blog where applicable. Just because you can type 5000 characters doesn’t mean you should, but use the space effectively…and end up with another link to your website for good measure! Add the tags; now you have 120 characters available here too, think about details, details and add all the relevant keywords you can think of – be creative but stay real and on topic. When using keywords to help people find you, be consistent in your filename, video title, description, and tags.
3 – Add subtitles (avoid annotations) – Adding subtitles to your videos is quite simple and opens up access to your videos to hundreds of millions of hearing impaired people around the world and offers an extra layer of engagement for anyone watching. This is especially effective with sales and training videos, it allows people to see you deliver the information, hear you speak and read, triggering multiple learning modalities all simultaneously! With advances in speech recognition, adding subtitles is now a breeze. Two easy solutions are to go to the Capture Tube website or use the built-in transcription feature on YouTube. This is how: go to your videos, choose one, click the “Edit” button, then the “Subtitles and Subtitles” tab and you will see the download “Subtitle Tracks Available / English: Automatic Transcription” and follow the instructions reasonably simple. Incredibly cool. Remember though; this is a machine, transcribing your voice, into a video, over the Internet. You must review, edit and correct. It’s amazingly cool, not magical. The subtitles are great, the annotations, on the other hand, are not that great. Annotations are a fairly new addition to YouTube (addition, not improvement). Annotations allow you to add graphic comments on top of your video, often looking like cartoon balloons; don’t, it distracts from your content and looks amateurish and unprofessional. If you really have to add something to your video, re-record it or use some editing software like iMovie and get it right.
4 – Promote your YouTube videos elsewhere – YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google, but that doesn’t mean you should just post and hope for the best: every time you add a video to your channel, post it to Facebook and Tweet about it (you can set this to happen automatically), then write a blog about it and post the video to your blog with the embed code (in fact let others embed it, why not? The more views the better and when someone posts your video on your blog, you’ll reach a whole new audience. ) link to it from your email and include it in your newsletter.
5 – Grow your channel – Unfortunately, many companies create a channel, post a couple of videos and forget about it. Do not do that! Nothing says “boring” like “last video posted a year ago.” Video is a key part of social media, perhaps the most critical and effective element, and it’s growing every day. Stay connected to your channel, organize your content, engage with the YouTube community, respond to comments (and delete the inevitable spam posts), keep up with friend requests and favorites, and generally show your love. by YouTube. Keep adding videos when you can; remember, we are not all George Lucas or Steven Spielberg; sometimes we’ll make a big production and sometimes a video that’s pretty good is good enough – don’t post crap, but don’t overthink it. A behind-the-scenes look at your business could be quite interesting, informative, and effective, even if you film it on your iPhone.
Remember; The world of marketing is changing faster and more profoundly than ever before in history – the future is now and video is a key part of your success – embrace it and have fun!
I hope you have found some value here for your business. I would love to hear from you; on our blog you will find all kinds of great resources, ideas and training about social media for your business, you will find us at SocialJumpstart.com