Digital marketing encompasses many different things. Your website, blog, social media accounts, and more all play an important role in reaching the right people at the right times. Though YouTube is not as popular among businesses as Facebook or even Twitter, it is a powerful tool that can benefit almost any business of any size, regardless of industry or niche. Here, you will learn more about how YouTube works and what you can to do leverage it to your benefit using efforts like YouTube SEO.

YouTube is a Google-Owned Platform

If you’ve been considering the idea of utilizing YouTube as part of your marketing plan, there are two very important things you must keep in mind. First, YouTube is a social media network. It gives absolutely anyone the ability to record and post a video, and others can share, like, or comment on that video collectively. Second, YouTube is part of Google’s massive empire. Google has owned YouTube since 2006 when the search engine giant purchased it for a staggering $1.65 billion. This means that when it comes to optimizing your YouTube channel, you’ll want to follow many of the same SEO practices as you would for your website.

People around the world watch more than a billion hours of YouTube content every day. There are nearly two billion active users, and of these, only about 16% are from the US, which further proves the network’s reach. Since Google purchased YouTube, the two have worked hand-in-hand to provide a better overall experience for internet users around the globe and their 3.5 billion collective daily searches.

Marketing with YouTube

There are two different ways you can market your brand on YouTube.

Become a YouTube creator. YouTube creators are the people behind the videos people watch around the world. They are influencers, demonstrators, entertainers, and others who spend their time making, editing, and uploading videos to be searched and viewed by the masses. Depending on your industry, you could make videos of your own. With the right SEO, people will find your YouTube channel just like they find your website, and before you know it, you’ll have thousands of subscribers.
Become a YouTube advertiser. As the two billion active YouTube users watch their favorite videos, they will occasionally see advertisements. Advertisers pay YouTube to show their ads to viewers during videos much like they pay Facebook or Google to show advertisements to their users. Recently, Google added the ability for marketers to specifically target people who recently searched for a related product or service with their ads, which vastly improves reach, ROI, and conversions.

Many of the people who leverage YouTube to their advantage do both things. Not only do they make their own videos, but they also pay YouTube to display their “commercials” during others’ videos.

Benefits of Adding YouTube to Your Campaign

Aside from extending your reach to more people, there are several other benefits associated becoming a YouTube creator for your business.

Demonstrating a product. Videos do something text and pictures can’t: they allow you to show your audience exactly how a product works. If you have limited distribution channels, this is by far one of the best ways to get the word out, and it’s especially beneficial for businesses like toy manufacturers and clothing designers.
Making your brand the authority in your niche. A YouTube channel also gives you the option to create a solid reputation as an industry expert. Some of the things you can do in this regard involve making short how-to videos, giving your viewers tips on how to get the most of their product or service, and even providing links to other creators’ videos that may provide the same information from a different perspective.
Saving your own bandwidth. Let’s face it – website bandwidth can get expensive, and high definition videos can take up a lot of space and eat up a lot of your bandwidth, causing your entire site to load slowly. When you become a YouTube creator, you can embed your YouTube videos into your website to avoid this.
Solving common problems. Imagine creating a list of FAQs, but instead of posting them on your website in text, you make a video, instead. You can demonstrate the solutions rather than just explaining them, and this is sure to improve the overall customer experience.
Announcing sales or other events. Sales and other events are fantastic for getting some attention for your business, but they only work if people know about them. You can record your most successful events and edit the best clips into a short video.
Giving your brand a personality. A brand with personality is a successful brand, and once again, YouTube is the best way to accomplish this goal. If your bakery, for example, only uses organic eggs from free-range chickens, you can take a trip to the local farm – and take your viewers along with you. This shows your personality and helps you become more relatable to your target audience.
Building a community. Finally, thanks to viewers’ ability to comment on your videos, YouTube is an excellent place for community building. Using YouTube as a sharing platform is vital to your success. Consider a once-weekly vlog (video blog) at the very least and add in a few other videos that show new product launches or even footage of your happy customers.

The benefits of YouTube are far-reaching, and with the right knowledge, a decent camera or smartphone, and the ability to relate to your customers, it’s possible to build your brand more than you ever thought possible just by making YouTube videos.

As you can see, there’s much more to YouTube than meets the eye. Some of the most successful YouTubers of all time have made millions of dollars just by doing what they love to do best, and you can use it to your advantage, too. You might not become a millionaire, but there is a 100% chance that you will extend your brand’s reach, whether you choose to become a creator or an advertiser.

Marketing and branding have come a long way from where they were just a decade ago. Consumers, especially millennial consumers, prefer to receive information in different ways. Social media plays a crucial role in the economy, with YouTube being one of the clear front runners. Using your YouTube channel for branding and marketing is a brilliant idea, as long as you’re setting your channel up for success.

Use the Right Tags

You should have widgets and links on your other profiles or sites, and be cross posting your content. This will assure that the followers who are already following you on other platforms are exposed to your content. But what about the people who aren’t?

That’s why placing the proper tags on your YouTube videos is crucial. If you aren’t doing so, people aren’t going to find you when browsing YouTube. You’re alienating YouTube users who could become valuable customers. Add as many relevant tags to your videos as possible. Be careful not to use misleading tags, as YouTube considers this a violation of their terms of use.

Give Your Videos a Call to Action

People won’t become customers if you make it difficult for them to browse your products or services. If your videos are subtle, they may not even be aware that you’re offering them. That’s where YouTube’s annotations feature comes in handy. At the end of your videos, include text and an annotation box with a link to your website.

Provide Exclusive Content

If people can see the things they see in your YouTube videos somewhere else on the internet, what’s stopping them from doing so? The content you provide on your YouTube channel should differ significantly from the content you provide on other platforms. People love things like behind the scenes videos that show them what goes on inside of your offices. Exclusive announcements and live demos that they won’t find anywhere else are also big draws.

Complete Your Profile

Branding should be thorough and consistent. A great YouTube channel has more than just videos – it’s also a place to showcase who you are. Make use of the custom banner feature. Create organized playlists, and include links to your other profiles on your channel’s home page. Fill out your bio. Include branded intros and outros for your videos. Let your viewers know who you are.

Avoid Blatant Sales Pitches

The public turns to YouTube for entertainment. If they wanted to watch commercials, they’d be watching regular television. You have a product or service to sell, but you need to make it interesting. After viewing your videos, people should walk away with more than just the knowledge of what you’re selling – they also need some food for thought. Avoid conventional advertisement messages, and focus on what makes you unique.

Collaborate with Other YouTube Creators

YouTube isn’t just a bunch of individuals who keep to themselves. It’s an active, thriving community in which many of the members collaborate. Are you a lifestyle brand? Find a lifestyle YouTuber to work with, and provide them with the opportunity to review your products or services. There’s a YouTube niche for just about everything. Find the most popular creators within your niche, and touch base with them. Your audience will likely grow as a result.

Give Users a Reason to Subscribe

Continuously providing valuable content will keep you relevant on YouTube. If one of your videos surpasses 100,000 views, that’s excellent. What happens when that video tops out? Keeping your channel interesting with entertaining weekly segments or relevant tutorials will inspire people to stay loyal to you. You want your brand to stay fresh in their memories, and become a part of their everyday lives.

Overall, one of the most important things when it comes to using YouTube for branding and marketing is to stay consistent and valuable. With that in mind, it’s time to develop a plan and get to work.

About Author:

With a background in business administration and management, Tess Pajaron currently works at Open Colleges, Australia’s leading online educator. She likes to cover stories in careers and marketing.

With so many people around the world uploading content to YouTube every day, it’s important to make your brand’s channel stand out if you want to be successful and rank well. Not only do you want viewers to be interested in your videos, you also want them to be able to find you easily and quickly. By following some simple steps to optimize your brand’s YouTube channel, you can ensure that you’ll rank for relevant searches and get more views of your videos.

Identify Yourself Clearly at Multiple Points

One of the key elements of branding, no matter what the channel, is to make sure your viewers know who you are. The name of your company should be the title of your YouTube channel, so when people search for your business name, they can easily find you right away. The company name you use should be the one that most people will be searching for, not your official corporate name, unless there is no difference between the two.

For example, Blue Coat Systems chose to title their channel Blue Coat in order to match what their consumers would type into Google. Another way to make sure viewers can identify you is to brand your content with a small logo or your username in a corner of the screen. This will help users to remember your brand name and seek you out again.

Get Your Content Out

Most users do not use the video description field to their advantage. While this section is meant to hold a short description of the video, you can expand it to include more information. Including a video transcript in this field that details the content of your video is a good idea if your videos are tutorials, detailed information about your product, or responses to frequently asked questions from your industry. This will help you rank for searches related to the content covered in the video.

For example, if you have made a video that answers popular questions about vegetable gardening, including a video transcript will help you capture anyone who searches for terms that come up in the video, such as grow better tomatoes. If you are too busy to create your own video transcripts, there are many cheap transcription services online that can transcribe your video for you.

Create Engaging Content That Viewers Enjoy

Following best practices only gets you so far on a video sharing platform. The best way to rank higher is to create engaging content that users will enjoy watching and want to share with friends. One of the ways you can perfect your content is by using the insights provided by YouTube. You can see how long viewers are watching your videos before turning them off and improve them based on this data. You can also get insight into the best time to post your videos to get the most views. Incorporate the insights and information you get into the new videos you create to make them better. For example, if viewers are only watching your videos for 45 seconds and then clicking on something else, try to condense the overall length of the video. The data provided by insights tells you the story of how viewers interact with your content, and you can improve the quality of your channel if you take the time to view and interpret them.

832,503,378 views!

Getting your YouTube channel to be a success can take some time, as you experiment with what type of content is most successful and gets the most views. By following the guidelines detailed here, you can make the process of ranking your brand’s YouTube channel much easier and faster.

Video content is one of the most powerful forms of content marketers have available. It can deliver a message with clarity. It can give the viewer the most correct perception that the video maker wants the viewer to have. By giving that perception, the video maker has the ability to sell a view, a thought, or even a product. Businesses use video all of the time to portray the quality of their product or service. For these reasons good marketing plans should heavily involve video content.

Promoting the video content is another story and it can be oftentimes more difficult than creating video. Promoting any content online in general is actually a very difficult thing to do. Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world and it’s whole focus is video content, meaning it’s the largest video promotional platform online. It can seem like rocket science to get a business to do very well on YouTube. The good thing about marketing is you can always look at who’s doing it right and then that can teach you things that you can possibly carry into your strategy. Let’s take a look at some businesses that did a really good job with their YouTube channel.

1: PewDiePie

With more than 30 million subscribers, PewDiePie is YouTube’s greatest success story and one of the many entrepreneurs whose business exists solely on Google’s video platform. Google’s YouTube Partner Program allows content producers to share the revenue earned by their videos, with thousands of YouTube channels earning more than $100,000 per year. PewDiePie has taken this business model to its fullest extreme, producing approximately 2,000 videos in total and earning more than $4 million per year. PewDiePie’s videos consist primarily of himself playing video games, proving that an extremely profitable YouTube business can be created on a shoestring budget. What unexplored YouTube niches could your business take advantage of?

2: Blendtec

If you want to use YouTube to market a mundane product, you have to be creative. Although there are many potential niches on YouTube that haven’t been fully explored, one thing the world doesn’t need is another video about making smoothies. With its brilliant “Will It Blend?” campaign, Blendtec chose a different route and used its blenders to reduce popular gadgets such as mobile phones and iPods to dust. Although the videos were shocking and entertaining, they also served a purpose by illustrating the power of Blendtec’s blenders. This campaign netted Blendtec 744,000 YouTube subscribers.

3: Lay’s

When you want a YouTube video to get a lot of attention and quickly, nothing gives viewers more incentive to watch than a giveaway. In 2012, Lay’s launched its “Do Us a Flavor” campaign, asking viewers to send their ideas for new potato chip flavors. The contest netted a Wisconsin librarian a million dollars and the YouTube video announcing the promotion was viewed more than 12 million times.

4: Williams-Sonoma

Although it is impossible to deny the excitement and buzz of a viral video, sometimes it is better to simply give the public what they want. Williams-Sonoma’s YouTube channel is an example of a content marketing strategy with perfect execution. If you aren’t sure whether a particular grill, food processor, knife set or other product is the right one for you, simply click a video link and see how the product works in the hands of a professional. Switching between YouTube and the Williams-Sonoma website is easy as all of Williams-Sonoma’s videos can be viewed on either website.

5: Apple

If you have a company with a great deal of history, why bother producing new videos when you can repurpose the content you already have? Apple’s product announcements are met with a great deal of hype as gadget lovers can’t wait to see the latest generation of Macs and iDevices. Although Apple displays videos of these events on its official website, they also cross-post the content to YouTube with great results. The recording of Apple’s WWDC 2014 conference was viewed more than 1.8 million times on YouTube. Apple also uploads all of its television commercials to YouTube.

6: PlayStation

Sony designed its PlayStation 4 console from the ground up to generate a steady stream of video content. As you play games, the PlayStation 4 automatically records your activities. When something interesting happens, pressing a single button on the PlayStation 4 controller allows you to save the event as a video and upload it to YouTube or another website. In this way, Sony’s users essentially advertise the company’s products for free. How could you get your customers to work for you?

7: Nu Skin

When developing a content marketing strategy for YouTube, you should never underestimate the power of playlists. When you visit the Nu Skin YouTube page, you immediately know how to find the content you want, thanks to the large buttons pointing you toward various content headings such as “Product” and “Opportunity.” Dig a little deeper and you’ll find playlists that further segment Nu Skin’s videos into laser-targeted sub-niches. If you aren’t finding the success that you hoped for on YouTube, is it because users can’t find the content they want?

In Conclusion

YouTube marketing takes some real learning from others who have had success. The biggest thing is to test, test, and test. Not everything that works for another business will work for your business. These channels are great examples of what you should do on YouTube and they will really help you promote your video content all over the web.

While you may think of YouTube as the domain of silly viral videos and remixes, it’s also a database of knowledge and information—one that nearly 1 billion people visit every month. Sure, a large percentage of those visitors stick to the cat videos and the music videos and the cat-music-videos, but countless businesses have found a willing audience for videos that build their brand, establish expertise, and form solid and rewarding relationships.

If that sounds like just the kind of advertising claim that’s too good to be true, it is…if you don’t take the time to really master the medium and understand how to elegantly fold YouTube into your wider marketing campaigns. To get yourself going, we highly recommend taking a browse of this guide to using YouTube, which provides helpful tips for all levels of YouTube users. To get you started, here is a brief primer for getting those YouTube juices flowing.

1. Produce the Videos Your Users Are Searching For

There was a time when video production was largely a shot in the dark. Sure, you could do a little research into demographic data, or perhaps even run a focus group, but both options were expensive and not all that accurate. Those problems are largely a thing of the past, however, with the following approaches to arm you.

Do a little competitor research. These days, competitor research is as easy as clicking a search term into YouTube. Take a look at the videos your competitors are producing and how customers are responding in the comments, When you see commenters asking for different material, that’s your chance to produce a much more thorough and helpful gem. Or, simply put your own spin on similar themes, without blatantly copying.
Use customer service calls as inspiration. Believe it or not, you’ve already got a great treasure trove of data waiting on the other side of a phone call. Use questions and stories from customer service calls to create how to videos to address common questions. Or, ask a customer if you can use their story as a case study.
Make good use of the Google Keyword Tool. You probably know the Google Keyword Tool from your search engine optimization efforts, but that same data can also be inspiring. What better way to answer just the questions customers are asking than by asking Google what they’re asking and brainstorming topics from the results?
Draw from your wider marketing activities. The best way to make sure your YouTube efforts sync with your wider marketing activities is to use those activities to source ideas. Are you doing a top 10 blogging series detailing insider industry tips? Sync each blogpost with a top 10 how to video. Launching a new product? Give your followers an immersive look into just what it’s like to use that product like the longboarding company in the video below. Or, simply use a video to illustrate visually what you’ve written in words.

2. Mix Up Your Approach

Companies who make the most of YouTube know that they’ll develop a long term relationship with their audience only if they keep their content interesting and varied. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular ways to keep it fresh.

How to Videos

Whether you’re providing tips or doing a simple screenshare, how to videos are a fast and easy way to offer your customers valuable and actionable information. While the example below is pretty polished, you can accomplish similar results with a free tool like Screencast O’Matic.

Expertise Establishment

If you’ve conducted an interview with an expert at an industry conference or have a slideshare to share, YouTube is the perfect place. Another great strategy is to record your answers to tricky customer questions. Use your video platform to establish rapport and trust right along with your expertise.

Marketing and Advertising

Before you read even further, let’s be clear that marketing and advertising on YouTube isn’t the same as advertising on TV. YouTube marketing videos have to feel down to earth, creative, and sometimes even risky if you want to entice your audience into watching. This could mean doing everything from emphasizing your brand values a la the White House video below…

…to introducing your brand to the world, to direct promotion of a product, service or event. Don’t be afraid to do something a little goofy, like testing your products under ridiculous and extreme conditions, or adapting your product for unforeseen uses. The more you can show you have a sense of humor about yourself, the better people will like you, engage with you, and share your videos.

3. Spread the Word

YouTube is a powerful search engine, but it still needs your help to discover and promote stars. Here are a few things you can do to rack up those views.

Promote your video on social media. From LinkedIn to Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and StumbleUpon, make sure everyone knows about your video. Even better, when embedding your video on your website or blog, ensure easy share buttons are nearby. If followers engage with your promotional posts, or if they make comments on the video, you’ll also want to respond in a timely and polite manner to keep those customers engaged and sharing.
Call your audience members to action. Viewers should have a clear and concrete way to engage more deeply with your brand upon the completion of your video. Provide links to your website and social media sharing at the beginning and end of your video, as well as in the video description. Brand an entire YouTube channel and create a playlist to lure viewers into even more videos. Suggest that your viewers take action that relates directly to the subject matter, and preferably ties them more closely to your brand. Make them motivated and ready to go!
Optimize your video and YouTube page for searches. If users are going to find your video, it’s important to add keywords into the title, tag and description. Also choose a thumbnail that’s relevant to the video’s topic, so that users will trust the video when it tops search results.

4. Do Your Analytics

It wouldn’t be a proper marketing campaign if there weren’t post-campaign numbers involved. It just so happens that YouTube has a powerful analytics tool called YouTube insights, which allows you to determine traffic sources and demographics, and measure engagement, attention rates and subscriptions. With these numbers in hand, you can gain a clear picture of just what’s working and what isn’t, and produce further videos based on your findings, both in terms of content and execution.

The Takeaway

YouTube is fertile ground for marketers, with an entire world of users actively engaged, all the time. However, competition for viewer attention is fierce, and it’s important to have a deep understanding of the platform if you’re going to stand out. Master your craft, learn the best promotional skills, and have fun!

Author Bio
Luke is a Seattle based writer and internet marketer who loves leveraging YouTube and other types of video within marketing strategies. As an avid hiker, you’ll most likely find him in the mountains on a sunny day.

As everyone knows, YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world. More than 1,000,000,000 unique users visit it each month. No wonder how people can make thousands of dollars by uploading a few “stupid” videos and make thousands of dollars by setting up YouTube Ads and doing nothing else.

What are YouTube Ads?

However, many people are not comfortable showing themselves in videos, because of shyness, lack of security and a handful of other explanations.
What if you’d still like to take advantage of the huge possibilities that YouTube offers? Don’t worry: there is a solution.
You can achieve similar results, if not better, by following the strategies below.

The Equipment

One of the best things about creating high-ranking YouTube videos without showing your face is that you don’t even need to have a camcorder or video camera.

All you have to do is invest into one or two programs and you can create cheap, but extremely professional and engaging videos for years to come. To keep yourself organized create a PowerPoint presentation regarding the video layout.

My favorite tools for doing so are:

Camtasia Studio as screen recording software
Sparkol VideoScribe to help you create fast-drawing videos without any technical or design knowledge
PowToon Animation for creating video animations quickly and easily

With just one of these tools anyone can create “faceless” but engaging videos that look professional and attract lots of views.

Heck, I have a few videos that took me less than 30 minutes to record with Camtasia and have already earned me more than $500 in affiliate commissions. I’m not saying this to brag, just to help you see how powerful these tools can be in YouTube marketing.

What Kind of Videos Can You Create?

At this point you may want to ask what kind of YouTube videos you could create without being present in any of them. Fortunately, there are a lot of options again:

1. Create Tutorial Videos

For creating tutorials, I think Camtasia Studio works the best.

You can create tutorials about a lot of things:

how to install a piece of software online
how to order a certain product from your site
how to sign up for a service you’re promoting
and basically how to do anything online.

2. Create Explainer Videos

You can create explainer videos to show people how something works or to explain a rather boring subject in an easy to understand, engaging way. The animations you can create with Sparkol VideoScribe and PowToon are perfect for this purpose.

3. Response Videos

Another effective YouTube marketing strategy is creating videos where you answer your visitors’ or viewers’ most common questions.

For example you can let people ask their doubts about a certain topic in the comments under your videos or via your site’s contact form and then reply to the most frequently asked questions in a Monthly Video Response.

An extra tip I can give you here is to create a PowerPoint presentation on the subjects you’ll talk about and then record that presentation with Camtasia Studio while you’re narrating. This is one of the easiest and most common ways to create popular “faceless” YouTube videos.

Summary

I hope these strategies will help you create high-ranking YouTube videos without showing your face. They certainly worked wonders for me, and I see no reason why they wouldn’t work for you, too.

And if you can implement these YouTube optimization strategies published before by Brandignity, I’m sure your YouTube channel will become very popular and profitable soon.

Author Bio:

Steven Fabian is the owner of Business Online Guidance, an ultimate resource for “the average person” to start an online business the simplest, shortest and least expensive way. You can find more of his YouTube marketing strategies here.

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