YouTube is one of the largest social platforms online and the top video site in the world. Over a billion hours of video content are watched on YouTube daily, that’s a lot! It justifies 2 growing trends, YouTube marketing and video marketing. YouTube has already interrupted the television industry and shows no signs of slowing down.
More than half of the world’s online traffic is driven by video. This is a trend we’ve seen coming for years. While YouTube and video has grew substantially over the past few years, we’ve not seen YouTube be leveraged as I first thought.
If you or your business is not using video, you won’t be able to compete against competitors that do.
Video is the world’s top content type and shows no signs of slowing down. If you want to grow a brand and business today, YouTube is one effective platform you can use.
Best Marketing Practices For YouTube
I’m going to assume you know you’ll need video and you need to create a YouTube account (use your Gmail account). Forget what you’ve heard about YouTube in the past, I want you to learn the right way to use YouTube to grow your brand and business.
Both online and offline businesses have a purpose to be using YouTube. Google owns YouTube, so YouTube works a lot like Google Search.
Videos rank in YouTube’s search engine based on specific algorithms that we’re always trying to fully understand. Fortunately for you, I understand these search algorithms well.
Creating Video And Content
Most of you likely don’t have much or any experience creating videos. That’s fine, you’ll learn as you go. I get a good laugh at my first videos, you will too. It’s a part of the growing pains. As you record more videos, you’ll get better, your pitch will get better and your content will get better.
The type of video content you choose is up to you. You’ll need to test the waters at first, see which content works best with your audience. You can pay attention to the views, engagement, comments and analytics to see which of your videos are doing the best.
If you have a market competitor using YouTube, research their videos to see which content topics has worked best. Chances are, you’ll find a few videos that do far better than the others.
I’d recommend having a content calendar so you can properly prepare to build videos.
There’s a number of different purposes for content, such as;
- Building your brand
- Lead Generation
- Build readership
- Increase authority and trust
- Increase direct sales
- Affiliate marketing sales
YouTube Works Like Google Search
You likely know about SEO and keywords. YouTube reacts in the same nature.
Due to this, you need to make sure you’re using keywords properly in your videos.
Knowing that, here’s a few things you can do to start choosing the right keywords.
- Research your competitors’ YouTube videos and see which keywords they’re targeting.
- Use YouTube’s search feature. As you begin to type keywords, YouTube will show which keywords are popular.
Consistency Is Vital To Success
I get a lot of questions asking, “how often should I publish videos?” My reply, “how long do you want to take to get results?”
You want results now, right? We all do, the way to make it happen is posting your YouTube videos daily.
That may be a tough task at first, but at the least, you should be publishing videos once a week. You want to make sure you publish on the same day every week. In your videos, let your audience know when to expect new content. This way, they know when your new content will be available.
YouTube Marketing Strategy
It’s essential you have a marketing strategy and plan for YouTube. One of the common mistakes is just “doing it.” A lot of people make that mistake, you need to think your plan through.
Here’s what you need to consider;
- What type of audience are you trying to attract?
- Who’s your ideal customers?
- What types of content topics will you be covering?
- What’s your priority goal for using YouTube?
- How are your competitors using YouTube?
- How do you expect to engage with your audience?
Engage With Your Audience
A lot of marketers and entrepreneurs tend to forget real people watch these videos. The comments you get are from real people, for the most part.
My point, your audience is vital. If you’re wanting to build a personal brand, engaging with them means everything.
If you’re just publishing videos hoping to get YouTube rankings and traffic to a landing page, good luck with that approach. If you want to reach the type of success I know you want to reach, you have to build an audience. That means you have to do 1 of these 3 things great;
- Educate
- Entertain
- Humor
- Purpose
These are the 4 characteristics most successful YouTube channels have. If your YouTube content can fall into 1 of these 4 categories, it’s going to give you a better chance to see success.
Should I Have A YouTube Channel?
YouTube channels give you the platforms you need to grow a niche based business or brand.
I recommend using channels because your ideal customers or readers are likely specific to what you do.
If I’m a singer, I want a YouTube channel that’s specific to singing. If I’m a dentist, I want a channel that’s specific to dentistry. You want to make sure your content and channel is niche specific.
This way, YouTube will fully understand your channel. You want YouTube to understand what your channel is about so it can show your videos to the right audience. If you’re creating video content covering a wide range of topics, it’s going to be very difficult to grow a YouTube channel.
Sure, there’s a lot you have to consider with your YouTube marketing. However, if you take the tips and strategies I’ve discussed today, I know you’ll get off to the best start possible with your new YouTube channel.
Proper YouTube Video Format
Another common question I get all the time, “how do I format my videos?” In other words, how should I structure my YouTube videos to get the best results?
There’s really no right or wrong answer here, but how you structure your video matters and will effect your results.
I recommend watching the video below from two guys I highly respect when it comes to YouTube videos. That would be Derral Eves and Tim Schmoyer, They can tell you the rest of what you need to know.
