You’ve seen at least 200 cat videos go viral on YouTube, and countless video parodies of the NFL replacement refs thanks to a few very questionable calls, and now you’re thinking it might be time to start using videos to promote your business.
Well, you’re right, it is time to start. YouTube has huge marketing potential for businesses looking to cut costs all while reaching a huge number of people.
Here are a Few YouTube Best Practices:
– Create brand awareness, promote products & services
– Drive traffic to your website
– Generate conversation about your brand
– Highlight presentations and meetings for clients/employees that can’t attend
– Highlight company events
– Act as an online help desk
Creating YouTube videos may seem intimidating for someone with no experience–what kind of video camera do I need, should I hire a professional video editor, what should I even record? All these questions are probably running through your head right now. Don’t worry, this is completely normal and you should be asking these types of questions.
A great aspect of YouTube is that you don’t need expensive equipment to create an effective video. Seriously though, take a look at the Talking Twin Babies home video with over 73 million views (yes, 73 million views of babies speaking jibberish) WHAT THE HECK! Below, I have outlined the best YouTube practices to promote your business.
1. Brand your YouTube channel
Customize your account with backgrounds and colors to match your brand. Your goal is to create a brand experience on YouTube, not to mention, the more branded your profile appears, the more credibility you seem to have.
2. Upload great content
Create content that addresses your audiences’ needs. Videos should be helpful, valuable and compelling to keep viewer attention. Keep your video under 2 minutes to promote something and no more than 5 minutes for online tutorials.
Note: Invest in a good microphone. Sound quality is essential to getting your message across.3. Use tags
Tag videos to make it easily searchable for users. Make tags relevant with logical keywords relating to your business. You can use a YouTube search to find relevant and commonly searched for words and phrases for tags.
4. Engage with the YouTube audience
Simply posting videos is just not enough. Reply to other videos, subscribe to different users and develop relationships with those users. Chances are they’ll promote your videos too!
5. Cross promote
Add social share buttons to your blog and website and cross promote your videos across a variety of different social platforms. But, don’t post your video to every social website at the same time. You don’t want your viewers to think you’re spamming them.
6. Update regularly
If there’s one thing you do, it should be this. You must maintain your account to stay relevant, keep users engaged and drive traffic to your website. Remember, if you don’t have time to maintain it, don’t do it!
There you have it, the top 6 tips for successful YouTube marketing. What other video marketing tactics do you use to promote your business. I would love to know!
– Sarah
