YouTube Marketing

YouTube is a web-service that allows anybody to upload, download, share or comment on videos. YouTube was founded in 2005 by three former employees of PayPal, an internet payment service.  Regardless of what information you need, you can find it on YouTube: tutorials, jokes, parodies, comedies, music, video-blogs, presentations, breaking news, marketing and much more.

What we are interested in here though, is marketing.  If you have your own business, YouTube can quickly become a fantastic cost-effective marketing instrument.  Some key facts you should know about the power of YouTube Marketing:

  • YouTube elicits over 3 billion plays a day
  • In October 2011 there were a record breaking 20 billion video views
  • 48 hours of video is uploaded every minute of the day
  • Over 5% of all time spent on the internet is spent on YouTube
  • YouTube’s demographic range is 18 to 54

In this post, we’d like to share with you three things:

  1. The Product Marketing Company’s top tips for YouTube marketing
  2. The benefits following these tips will bring to your business and
  3. A simple guide to how to get started

Top Tips:

  • Keep the videos short and simple – ideally under 5 minutes
  • Keep your video relevant to the topic
  • Brand your YouTube Channel and video
  • Link your video to your website and vice versa
  • Use humour in your videos, utilise the ‘feel good factor’
  • Promote your videos through other social media channels
  • Tag your videos with keywords
  • Add broad keywords that relate to categories
  • Write a full description for the video using keywords
  • Use the new YouTube analytics to understand which videos are driving the most views and subscriptions
    Youtube-analytics
  • Create an engaging YouTube profile to encourage people to add you as a friend, and propagate your videos
  • YouTube is great for link building and SEO as more and more people link to your videos

Benefits:

  • Better Search Engine Optimisation to your main site
  • Demonstration of your company/self as an expert in niche areas
  • Building permission to market through engagement
  • Adding value to your other channels of marketing

How to get started:

  1. Create your own YouTube Account at www.youtube.com, choosing a user name which will be relevant or memorable
  2. Add your company logo or avatar for good branding
  3. Give your YouTube channel a title which can explain the nature of your videos – this will help with searches and enhance your marketing outreach
  4. Google owns YouTube so add channel tags as this is great for SEO and will help many people find you
  5. Opt to show the comments and subscriber modules
  6. Enter your company URL into your channel profile
  7. Use the profile description to explain to people what your YouTube Channel is about
  8. When uploading a video, use a title that is relevant
  9. Write a decent description of what the video is about and include URL links – again, great for SEO
  10. Make sure you set your privacy settings to Public
  11. Keep your bulletin updated regularly with relevant posts
  12. Link your channel to your website and facebook page
  13. Like and share relevant videos that will draw others to your channel

And a few final thoughts before we go:

  • The sooner you started, the sooner your YouTube marketing will build traffic.
  • The more people that have seen your videos the more people will want to see them. The ball has to start rolling before you see exponential growth.
  • Have as many videos up on your channel as possible.  If a viewer likes one of your videos they will often like another and so the viewers grow.
  • If you follow these guidelines, after a 6 to 10 month set-up period, you will start to see a substantial number of views.

Ultimately, of course, you need to come up with that hilarious ‘must-see’ video which immediately goes viral – conjure up one of these and you are quite literally laughing all the way to the bank!

For more information and services on YouTube marketing please visit www.theproductmarketingcompany.co.uk or talk to Tim Gale at The Product Marketing Company on 0845 643 4463.  You can also email Tim on tim.gale@product-marketing.co.uk