YouTube can be one of the best places to kick off your online marketing business. However when I first started YouTube marketing during my new SEO job, I felt at a loss. YouTube marketing seemed easy enough on the surface, but somehow I wasn’t doing very well. Slowly, I realized there were things I needed to improve on and certain important steps I needed to follow. I eventually learned from my mistakes, and discovered how it should be done. Below I will combine what I’ve learned into the concise guide that I wish I’d had when I started, filled with information that is useful for beginners. I hope it will help you out a bit.
Setting Up Your Channel
I will not bore you with the technicalities of how to set up a YouTube channel, but we will talk about what separates the great ones from the rest of the pack. In order to attract visitors, you need to have a professional looking, user-friendly YouTube channel.
Impressive Banner and Logo
More and more people come to YouTube to learn skills or facts. This means it is important for your channel to look trustworthy and irrefutable. Having a professional looking banner and logo that represent your work is the first important step to setting up a great YouTube channel.
Creating Great Content
I know everybody says you need to have amazing, unique content to succeed, and it is true that quality content is a huge factor. But if you are just starting your channel and feeling like it is not your best possible work, don’t worry. You are just starting. You’ll get there! A crucial part of success is producing constantly. Instead of being too critical of your own work, try to be consistent and make sure you are always putting up new content on a schedule. The more you are sticking to that schedule, the more successful you’ll be.
Another thing to be careful about is the kind of videos you are posting. Like I said before, people watch YouTube videos to improve a skill or get information. And this should be the field you are working on. How-to and listicle videos are in high demand and your videos will get much higher view counts when posted in these formats.
Impressive Titles
Catchy titles are a big part of YouTube marketing. The most watched videos are the videos that have perfected the art of the catchy title. Let’s say you posted a video about weight loss. If you name it “Losing Weight” your numbers will never reach as high as a video called “5 ways to lose weight fast”. Even if you have a great, informative video, you won’t stand a chance against a video with a catchy name that has adjectives with a kick.
Does this make your video clickbait? Honestly, it does a little bit. But as long as you are giving people useful information with quality content after they clicked, a little baiting doesn’t harm anybody.
Kick-ass Thumbnails
What people see of your video before they actually click is a big part of attracting traffic. It needs to be something with a punch, something that sparks curiosity. You’ll see that most successful videos with impressive view counts have great images as thumbnails. You’ll also see lots of boobs chosen as thumbnails as well. Best to avoid this kind of cheap trick.
Annotations
Annotations help big time. People watching your videos will probably be interested in the related videos. So at the end of each video, show them the other options. Give them more and get more views.
Call to Action
Make sure to ask people to subscribe to your channel, like and share your videos. I can tell from my experience that it makes a big difference when you remind viewers to take an action. Don’t hesitate to do this at the end of each video.
YouTube SEO
The word SEO used to intimidate me a lot. I thought it got too complicated too quickly and I wanted to keep SEO out of my YouTube existence…until I realized I couldn’t. But as I gained experience and understanding, I found out SEO is not as scary as I thought. Once you make sure you follow certain rules, it will help your business greatly.
Keyword Research
Keywords are important to make sure your niche is connecting to the right people and you are finding your crowd. Once you select a niche, you will figure which keywords go well with it.
Killer Description
Using keywords, and using them as early as possible, is surely important. They should show above the fold, under the video. But don’t let technicalities force you into writing something robotic and spammy. Don’t overdo it, and ensure you sound human while using your keywords.
Add Captions
Adding captions whenever possible brings more people to your videos. When I tried this myself, I noticed a big difference. My view count increased by about 50%.
Tags
Long tail tags should be used, but it is best not to overdo it. It is also a good idea to optimize it with ranking importance.
