What social media channels would you rank highest if I asked you to compile a list of them, from most important to least important? This answer would be Facebook for almost everyone.
Another question is: Which would be at bottom? YouTube would be the best choice for a lot of businesses (and I do mean a lot).
False! BecauseYouTube can be a great tool for businesses if used correctly and consistently.
To do this, it is important to first understand how YouTube marketing differs from other social media channels and how you can use it to your advantage.
This guide is easy to follow for beginners. It can help you create your YouTube channel, but it also offers advanced marketing strategies that anyone can use.
We’ll do it again setting up your channel and optimizing your videos for editingHow to think outside of the boxNew strategies and monetizationAndHow to advertise on YouTube. All with lots of great examples and screenshot instructions included.
This guide will show you how to use YouTube to promote your business. Get Fans today!
YouTube Marketing: The Essentials
Before we move on to the how-tos, let’s first cover the basics everyone needs before they can get started with the platform. Even if you already have a channel, I guarantee you won’t skip this section.
Marketing on YouTube: Why you should
It makes perfect sense that, before we get into how to grow your channel’s reach, we will also discuss why. YouTube marketing offers many benefits that most businesses don’t realize.
The first one is pretty self-explanatory. Video is huge right this moment. Video is now the king of marketing. If you don’t use it, your competition will almost certainly be using it. This is not an exaggeration. Video ranks higher on social media platforms than other forms of advertising and customers are more likely respond to businesses that use video.
YouTube will give you access to a huge library of videos. The video files can be uploaded to each platform natively. With just a few clicks you can embed YouTube videos in your blog posts. This makes your blog posts dynamic and more engaging.
YouTube has a large and diverse audience that happily uses Google’s search engine and YouTube’s to find the content they are looking for. Optimizing for the right keywords is possible (I’ll show you how later in this guide). This will allow you to instantly connect with them, rather than waiting for a Facebook Ad to show up in their feed. This allows them to reach a large and diverse audience that happily uses YouTube’s search engine and Google’s to find the content they are looking for. Optimizing for the right keywords is possible (I’ll show you how later in this guide). This will allow you to instantly connect with your audience, rather than waiting for a Facebook Ad to show up in their feed. This allows them to find and each other, rather than the other way around.
YouTube videos are able to show up in Google’s search results early and YouTube is the second-most used search engine after Google. You want this huge advantage on your side.
One last benefit? YouTube is used by only 9% of small businesses. YouTube will give you an advantage over other platforms because there is less competition in your industry.
YouTube Demographics
YouTube is a vast and diverse platform. They have 1,300,000 active users, and the site gets over 30 million visitors every single day. YouTube’s users watch more than 3 billion hours of video each month and view more than 1,000,000 videos every day. This is a lot of video.
What about the audience? Here’s what we know, thanks to FortuneLord’s incredible statistics:
- YouTube’s 18-24 audience makes up 11%.
- 23% of those aged 25-34 are in the age group of 25-34
- 26% are between 35-44
- 16% are between 45 and 54
- 8% are between 50 and 64
- 3% of those 65+ are eligible
- Undetermined: 14%
We know that 8/10 people aged 18-49 use YouTube at least once a month. This gives you a huge audience that is eager to see your content.
We also know that mobile video views are increasing across all platforms, but that this is especially true for YouTube–and that users here are willing to stick around a little longer; the average mobile viewing session lasts about 40 minutes on YouTube, which is substantial. When creating content for mobile users, remember this.
YouTube: A social channel unlike any other
YouTube is a social platform that requires a different approach than other social networks. You must be creative and innovative in your approach to YouTube. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Twitter are all about creating and sharing great content with a goal to create awareness, engagement, conversation, and share that content. It’s a very simple definition but it works for the purposes of this argument. It’s all about socializing.
This is not how YouTube users use it. YouTube videos can be compared to blog posts and are therefore more suitable for content marketing. People will leave comments, but they behave in the same way as they comment on blog posts. People visit YouTube to watch and digest videos, but not necessarily to share their opinions. YouTube should be used for content marketing and not social media marketing.
Here are some key differences that you should highlight:
- Your videos are most commonly found on YouTube by people searching for them or looking at other relevant content. You can be found on most social media sites, with the exception of Pinterest, from advertisements if you’re followed or from friend engagements.
- YouTube’s focus is on viewing videos and not discussing them. YouTube doesn’t allow you to tag others in comments as you can on other sites. It’s not about social media, it’s about the viewer’s view. People will share the video on their social media platforms if they want to do so.
- YouTube is a place where people go to watch serious videos. YouTube users don’t always scroll through their feeds the same way as they do on Facebook.
- YouTube can be viewed as a content platform and not as a social network. This will allow you to create videos that are more engaging and perform better.
YouTube Updates
Although this is the last section we’ll be covering before moving on to the how-to, it’s an important one. YouTube recently made some changes to the site. It’s important that we address these issues so that everyone is on the same page.
Many of these updates will be discussed in this post. Here are the most important to keep in mind:
- As of May 2012, you can no longer create annotations. There’s an alternative feature called “End Screens”, which replaces them. You can still use annotations you made on videos created before May.
- Mobile users can speed-up or slow down videos
- YouTube is working on a way for videos to adapt seamlessly to any screen. This will make YouTube more mobile-friendly.
- Recent changes in ad content have been made due to concerns about ads being shown on videos that included extremism and hate speech. Now, channels of arms dealers, political commentators, and even video games have seen fewer ads on their content. This is only for people who want to monetize YouTube by placing ads on it, and not for the ones running them.
- Before you can apply to monetization, your channel must have at least 10,000 views. This is a problem for small businesses who want to make passive income from YouTube. However, most businesses benefit the most from YouTube content marketing, so it won’t impact many people reading this article.
- YouTube’s comment moderation tools were improved last year. This allowed channels to filter out comments that contain certain words or phrases and prevented them from appearing on their videos. You can read more about comment moderation here.
- We’ve covered the basics. Let’s move on to YouTube marketing.
For your business, create a YouTube account
Create a channel just for your business. It doesn’t matter if John Doe is a single-person marketer. You can create a John Doe Marketing account. This will get you more hits and make you an authority faster. This is a fact I can vouch for.
Do you need to create a brand new account? See how to do this here.
YouTube Channel Art: Choose Wisely
You can choose from two images. The first image will be your account picture. This will look similar to Facebook’s profile photos. Your channel art will be displayed at top of your channel, just like Facebook’s cover picture. These images will be the first thing that users see about your brand. The image below shows my account picture and my channel art. (Please note that this is an example account).
I suggest that you use a brand logo for your account picture. It can be a professional headshot if you are a solo business. It should be a match to your profile photos on social media for brand recognition. This is a good idea for both sides. If someone from your other site stumbles upon your YouTube, they should be able to recognize you and make a purchase. You want viewers to verify that you are the person they click on when they Google you. You can change the channel art by clicking on it in your profile.
Choose something that is visually dynamic and represents your business. I highly recommend using graphic design tool Snappa to create your YouTube channel art. You can customize the templates to perfectly fit your channel. Use the same colors, fonts and stylistic choices as you use on your profile picture and website. To help you get your message across faster, you can add text.
