When we think about social media and social media marketing, we rarely take YouTube into account. But in doing so, many organizations are losing out on great opportunities to reach out to, interact with, and do business with numerous potential customers.

It has been long established that YouTube is the go-to for video on the internet. And given that over 80% of all customer-oriented internet traffic is video content, it would only stand to reason that YouTube should be part of a business’ social media strategy.

Besides, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world after Google. It has over 1.5 billion active users per month and features over 1 billion hours of video per day! If your primary concern, regarding digital marketing, is to feature high in Google’s rankings, then your second biggest should be to feature equally as well on YouTube.

The video is currently the most engaging type of content, as the platform presents considerable potential for increasing your brand’s reach and recognition. What’s more, once you’ve created video content for YouTube, you are free to use it for other purposes or on other social sites, as well. You can also utilize them on your website, landing pages, email campaigns, etc.

For the overwhelming majority of businesses and industries, YouTube is an excellent addition to their social media marketing. For B2Cs, it’s a great platform to promote products and services, while for B2Bs, it will do great in expanding their reach and generate leads. Here is how to do that.

Your YouTube Marketing Plan

Your YouTube marketing plan won’t differ too much from your overall social media marketing strategy. The first step is to define your goals and what you hope to achieve. These can include things like better engagement, more traffic, or higher subscriber numbers, among others.

A SMART goal approach is advisable as it frames your goals in a Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-based manner. The next step is to establish your key performance indicators (KPIs) so that you can keep track of your results. Lastly, design a posting schedule and be consistent with it. Over time, your audience will expect a regular and predictable posting frequency, and you shouldn’t disappoint or risk losing followers.

Your YouTube Channel

Creating a YouTube channel is pretty straightforward. It’s better if you’re using an email ID that other staff members can access. Make sure to give it a look and feel of your brand. Use an easily-recognizable channel icon since this will represent you on YouTube. Think of this channel icon as you would your Facebook profile picture.

Your Video Content

Creating highly engaging YouTube videos is not as difficult as it may sound. There are plenty of free and easy-to-use tools out there that can help you with editing. Don’t be afraid to experiment a little, either, especially in the beginning when you’re still forming your audience. As for the type of videos you can post, here are some ideas:

• Product Videos – These should highlight the product’s features, updates, or announce various offerings. It’s also a good idea to show your viewers how to use your products.
• How-to Videos – This type of videos is known to do pretty well as it provides a lot of value and usefulness to the viewer. Google highlights how-to videos as a means for most millennials to quickly picking up a new skill.
• Listicles – “Top 10 reasons why…” and similar titles provide an easily digestible format and have wide traction with YouTube users. They’re great for presenting multiple products and services or various features of a product.
• Case Studies – These are another great way of promoting your products and services by focusing on satisfied clients and how they made their life and work easier.
• Behind-the-ScenesVideos– These present you with an opportunity to humanize your brand and increase trust and loyalty with your audience.
• Interviews – By interviewing experts or influencers in your industry, you can attract new viewers to your niche. You’ll also have access to these influencer’s YouTube following, which can significantly increase traffic.

 

Your YouTube SEO and Analytics

Since YouTube acts as a search engine, you should also tailor your content as such. As like you would with your website for Google, you should optimize your videos for YouTube. It includes finding relevant keywords to use in your tags, add descriptions, thumbnails, captions, etc. There are free tools that can help you a great deal in this regard.

You should also make use of YouTube’s analytics. The insights it provides will help you determine which posts are doing better and which aren’t. It tells you who, when, and from where people are looking at them, as well as for how long. You can use this data to optimize your content further and improve with every new video that you post.

 

Given the increased customer tendency toward video content, having a well-established YouTube presence is almost as important to your social media strategy as Facebook. If done right, these key steps presented here will help you use YouTube to promote your brand, increase its awareness, and reach more customers than ever before.

Until the next time,