Ten Things You Need to Know When Using YouTube

With more than 800 million unique viewers each month, YouTube is becoming an increasingly popular way for people to interact socially. As the second highest ranking  search engine, YouTube is showing no signs of slowing as a preferred form of social media. Statistics like these are certainly appealing to businesses, and more and more are taking the plunge and uploading videos of their own.

Before your business invests time and effort into a YouTube account, consider these 10 things you need to know:

1. Instead of telling people what you want them to know, give them the information that they want to know. Client-centred marketing is key to YouTube success.

2. Invest in your equipment. Even the best videos will be passed over if they have poor image quality or poor sound. Your equipment doesn’t have to be expensive – a good-quality SLR camera will do – but it does have to produce watchable videos.

3. Customize your page. Create a well-branded YouTube page for your company by customizing it with your brand colours, images, and logo. Also be sure to add your webpage in every description and on every page so that your clients and potential clients can link back to you.

4. Content is king. Much like your other marketing materials, YouTube videos need to contain high-quality content to keep your clients watching.

5. Videos are ranked by viewing time, not clicks. Make sure that your videos rank higher by providing quality, engaging content. Make sure that your first 15 seconds are amazing – they will determine whether people keep watching or click onward.

6. Use the right tags. Using the right keywords and tags will help direct potential or current clients to your videos. Don’t know which tags to use? Get inspired looking at competitor’s keywords, or use YouTube’s keyword tool. https://ads.youtube.com/keyword_tool

7.  Don’t forget, YouTube is social media. Don’t just upload your videos and sit back watching the views go up. Interact with the community by liking videos that your fans have posted, responding to comments on your videos, and removing foul language/abusive comments immediately.

8. Stay organized. Organize your videos in a way that makes sense to your viewers, so that they can seamlessly transition from one video to the next.

9. Analyze. The best way to know which content works for your viewers is to analyze, analyze, analyze. Which video gets the most hits? Which has the longest viewing time? Which elicits the most “likes”? All of these are clues into what was a hit, and what was a miss.

10. Keep at it. Most videos aren’t viral, so if you post some videos and they’re not getting huge hits, that’s just fine. Stick with it – by creating quality content consistently you’ll help to grow your fan base, and client base.