Creating and maintaining a strong presence on the world's largest search engine is the number one priority for most marketers. It's easy to get caught up in search engine optimization (SEO) and forget about everything else, mainly because SEO and SMM have been proven to work.
However, most marketers forget about the Internet's second largest search engine.
Business channel on YouTube - how to get active subscribers
Before you say that YouTube doesn't matter because it's a video search engine, let me tell you that it does matter. Especially with statistics like Social Media Today:
- More than Bing, Yahoo!, AOL and Ask... combined
- Over 3 billion searches monthly
- Almost 1 out of every 2 Internet users is on YouTube
- Attracts more American adults in the 18-35 age group than any cable network
- 6 billion hours of video watched monthly
The Anatomy of a Successful YouTube Video for Subscribers
When was the last time you went to YouTube to immerse yourself in a poorly made, self-promotional, boring video that did nothing to help you?
People come to YouTube for one of two reasons:
- They have a problem that they want to find an answer to.
- They want to relax/have fun/look at cute cats.
The process of launching a video marketing campaign on YouTube comes down to three main, basic steps:
- Creating a platform for success.
- Video content production.
- SEO and YouTube Marketing.
Creation of the platform
First things first: build your platform through careful planning. You need to develop a strong strategy that you are willing to spend a significant portion of your marketing dollars on.
The main parts of a video marketing strategy are:
- defining your goals
- defining your audience
- determining the type of video you will produce
Defining Your Goals
As with everything else in marketing, if you don't have goals, you don't know where you want to go. And if you don't know where you want to go, you'll never get there.
An important part of planning is setting reasonable, achievable goals. The key here is to plan small and achieve big. In other words, underestimate your capabilities and you will never be disappointed.
Good goals are measurable, time-based, and contain an action verb.
Here are some examples of goals that a hypothetical Awesome Replacement Doors (ARD) company might set for itself.
- Generate an additional 1,000 visitors to my website per month within six months of video marketing.
- Earn additional income of $2,500 per month within six months of starting video marketing.
- Increase my clients by 50% within six months of video marketing.
How to determine your target audience for a YouTube channel
Before you start any marketing campaign, you need to know who you are going to target.
To do this, you need to analyze your target YouTube audience.
Who are they? – their basic demographic data (age group, place of residence, etc.)
Where are they located? – where they are located virtually (see which competitor channels on YouTube are most popular among your target audience).
Why are they there? – why do they visit YouTube (to find out how to replace a door, watch reviews of kitchen doors?).
Decide the type of video you will create
YouTube covers many different types of videos. Here is a list of the three most popular.
- Training sessions: recordings/videos of public classroom sessions, or even just someone standing and talking (maybe even illustrating concepts on a whiteboard). While this tactic takes some time, it doesn't have to be expensive if you choose the latter approach.
- Webinars: Mostly PowerPoints and/or a few graphics with voiceover. (quick to produce and inexpensive)
- Tutorials: detailed, dynamic videos; either animated or showing the process of completing a specific task (requires a lot of time to create and is usually expensive).
My personal favorite is the third type of video: Although they are expensive and difficult to produce, well-thought-out educational videos are often the most popular type of video and can bring you a ton of traffic and exposure.
By understanding who your target audience is, you'll also know which of the three types of videos above are most appealing to them, and you can take advantage of that information.
Deciding on the type of video you will produce will also help you determine your budget. When budgeting, keep your goals in mind—you can't expect seven-figure traffic on a three-figure monthly budget.
Production of video content for members of your YouTube channel
This is the fun part when you actually start creating your videos. And this is where video marketing starts to get expensive.
Similar to the planning stage, there are three different stages in video content production:
- Purchasing the necessary equipment at the best price.
- Search for topics for videos.
- Shooting video.
Purchasing the necessary equipment
Any form of video marketing requires investment. You will have to invest in several pieces of equipment, and for certain types of video.
Let's say, for example, that our hypothetical company ARD prefers detailed training materials. This makes sense to their audience as they have done research and found that many people are searching for D.I.Y door replacement videos. etc.
ARD will have to spend money on several things:
- professional video camera (from high three-figure to medium four-figure)
- tripod (low three figures)
- video editing software (middle number three)
- wireless microphone (three digits)
- installation and equipment for lighting (depending on the situation)
- much more
So again, video marketing is not a cost-effective source of income in most cases. In fact, everything may turn out to be quite the opposite.So before you go down this path, make sure you have the money and time to invest.
Finding topics for videos
If you plan on releasing videos on a regular basis, you'll likely run out of ideas. Fast. Especially if you work in a niche like door replacement, there just aren’t that many potential topics for videos.
If you find yourself in the same predicament, there are still a few ways to generate new video ideas.
Rework an old blog post. Take one of your earliest blog posts and rework it into a video tutorial. For example, a web hosting guide. It can easily be turned into a PowerPoint video/screencast on YouTube.
Steal your competitor's idea. It's not against the law, you know. No, DO NOT steal your competitor's actual video content (script, scenery, unique ideas, etc.), but by analyzing trending videos in your market, you can figure out which topics resonate the most with your audience and generate the most traffic. After this, all that remains is to create a better resource and promote it more effectively than your competitor.
Use Uber Suggest to create a list of relevant keyword ideas. Supposedly “Google Instant on steroids,” Uber Suggest is a web-based tool that lets you enter a keyword and get hundreds of new keyword ideas. This is the perfect tool for keyword brainstorming.
Ask your audience. The best video topics will come from people who really know what they want—your audience. Ask them.Create a survey using a free tool like Survey Monkey and reach out to your previous clients to take part.
In other niches (like conversion rate optimization or WordPres “how-tos”), you will have an overabundance of video topics in your head.
If this concerns your business, remember one rule: check the profitability of each idea.
In other words, if there is little or no chance that a topic will make you money, or if there is no justifiable amount of traffic for that topic, then there is no reason to spend three or four thousand to create a video on that topic.
Everything is simple and clear.
Shooting video
A successful and engaging video consists of many behind-the-scenes elements.
First, you need a script. Good. Otherwise, you risk looking like a fool in front of thousands of potential customers who will watch your video.
Secondly, you need a suitable location. For ARD, space is not a big issue. All they need is a well-lit house with a door that needs fixing; something that's easy to simulate (read: it's not that hard to break down a door with a well-placed shoulder and applied force). For a washing mashine company, this is a completely different scenario. You want a traffic-free driveway that looks good and fits well with your setup.
Finally, the most important thing you need to remember when creating a video is that it needs to be engaging. Speak clearly - make sure people can hear you. Add a couple of jokes.Of course, replacing doors is a very serious matter with little scope for humor, but there is always an opportunity to throw in a witty one-word remark that will stimulate viewers.
There is another factor to keep in mind: the length of the video. Few people will watch a 47-minute video about monsters. Come on. We only have 24 hours in a day. While there is no universal length, Reel SEO analyzed the top 50 (by social shares) YouTube videos and found that videos under five minutes and three to four minutes are best.
Another important aspect to keep in mind is the thumbnail of your video. You have the option to upload your own thumbnail, or you can let YouTube randomly select a millisecond in your video as a representative thumbnail.
If you are smart, you will choose the latter option. The ideal miniature is:
- branded (has your logo in the lower left corner for better visibility)
- describes the topic of the video well
- makes people want to click
The last feature of a good thumbnail is what you should really focus on: getting people to click. If you're making a PowerPoint-type video, use a screenshot of the most informative and useful slide as your thumbnail. This will allow people to know before watching the video that they will be able to get something out of it.
And that gets them to click.
SEO on YouTube - a way to get over 10,000 subscribers
Fantastic - you have a solid marketing plan for the next quarter, a great, engaging first video that's 3 minutes and 46 seconds long, and you just uploaded it to YouTube.
And you keep an eye on the view counter. But, of course, nothing happens. It's still sitting at 11 views (after you, your parents, and everyone on your crew have watched it on different computers).
No matter how great your content is, if people can't find it, you can't make money from it. And the first step in YouTube video marketing is optimizing your video for higher rankings in SERPs.
Even though Google bought YouTube, the video search engine still runs on its own unique algorithm, meaning what worked to get you into Google's SERP may not work for YouTube.
However, the basic concepts still apply: attract visitors and make your video relevant to keywords. The four main YouTube SEO factors are:
- Video relevance.
- Channel relevance.
- Number of views.
- View rating and engagement.
- Video relevance
No YouTube spider can “watch” your video and determine its relevance to a keyword based on that alone (although it would be great if that were possible).
Instead, spiders judge the relevance of your video by what they can read: the video description and title.
It's the same as meta descriptions and titles for Google: add keywords and secondary keywords there. Tag your video accordingly.
You can include keywords in the description and title - now the spider knows that the video is relevant to the keyword “how to replace a kitchen door” or any other.
Channel relevance
If you're into SEO, you know that optimizing just one blog post isn't enough—your entire site needs to rank well in Google for relevant keywords.
This is the same concept as with channel relevance.
Use your channel description to write a short, keyword-rich description that tells a little about who you are and what you do.
It's also important to include a link to your website because the website link in your channel description is set to dofollow. You will get a juicy backlink from a site with PR-9 completely free of charge.
Also, make sure your YouTube channel only produces videos relevant to one niche—uploading skateboard review videos won't help the ARD channel's relevance one bit.
Number of views
It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem.
One of the main ranking factors for YouTube is the number of views... but it's hard to get views unless you're already ranking high in the SERPs.
Solution?
Promote videos on your social media, blog, email list, and anything else you own like crazy.
Video ratings and engagement
Are your viewers leaving within five seconds of clicking on your video? Unacceptable.
A very small percentage of your viewers leave comments? It's a pity.
Does your video have a 50/50 like/dislike ratio? It's deplorable.
If your viewers aren't engaged in watching your video, YouTube spiders will assume your video is low quality... which it probably is.
Five figure views isn't enough if half the people vote for the video before they leave.
Probably the easiest way to increase engagement (follows, likes, comments, and votes) is to ask your visitors to do so. At the very end, use a standard outro asking people to like, share and subscribe.
Many top bloggers actively use this tactic, so it clearly works.
Advertising on YouTube as a way to increase your channel's audience
YouTube offers advertisers several options for pre-roll advertising, including:
- in the stream: before, after or during the video (pre-roll advertising)
- in search: on the YouTube search results page
- in-display: next to YouTube videos
In-stream video ads are by far the most appealing to visitors, as search and on-screen ads typically lead to banner blindness.
However, with the introduction of TrueView in December 2010, users were able to skip ads after five seconds of viewing. Advertisers only pay if users watch 30 seconds of an ad or the entire ad (whichever is shorter).
Surprisingly, pre-roll ads are somewhat effective: The Next Web reported that 30% of YouTube visitors watch these ads. However, this is a fairly wide range, as YouTube users themselves have stated that they skip between 30% and 80% of ads.
What's more, users who choose to view ads have 273% higher engagement than users forced to view ads in-stream.
In other words, the success of a YouTube pre-roll ad depends on a number of factors, not just how attractive your ad is. When designing a YouTube advertising campaign, consider the following:
- the type of advertising that is best suited for your product/niche (stream, search or display)
- mobile advertising
- Ask yourself: Is my ad engaging enough to make users want to watch it beyond the five-second mark?
Video marketing on several YouTube promotion platforms
While YouTube is certainly a video marketing giant, it's important to keep in mind other video hosting networks: Daily Motion, Viddler, Vimeo, Hulu, and even Facebook, as well as VK, to name a few.
Daily Motion, for example, is one of the top 100 sites in the world with hundreds of millions of monthly views (TechCrunch). Combine this with the impressive traffic statistics that Hulu, Vimeo and others earn, and multi-network video marketing becomes a channel too big to ignore.
It's also difficult. In other words, subscribing and distributing videos to every network isn't the most fun job in the world.
One Load allows you to download a video once and distribute it to 18 different video networks at once:
- YouTube
- Vimeo
- AOL
- Bing
- Hulu
- Bright Cove
- Blinkx
- Daily Motion
- Amazon S3
- Tumblr
- Dropbox
- iTunes
- Flickr
- Veoh
- Viddler
One Load offers a free plan (with limited features), but you can call for a price quote for a more advanced plan.
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