Don’t Forget These Tips When Using YouTube for Your Small Business

The internet has opened the door to an assortment of marketing opportunities for businesses. Everything from social media posts to pay-per-click ads have helped companies boost their visibility, attract more traffic, and ultimately generate more sales. 

There is one avenue, however, that is often overlooked by businesses: YouTube. 

Not just for vloggers and hobbyists, YouTube is an excellent platform for a company to build its brand. It can use YouTube to promote its products, provide information pertaining to its industry, create helpful how-to guides, and so on. 

These videos are not only beneficial for showing up on YouTube, either. They also appear in Google search results. In addition, the video content doesn’t have to simply reside on YouTube – it can be repurposed in other ways to further extend its reach. 

Are you just starting to explore the possibility of using YouTube for your small business? Perhaps you’re not getting the results you expected? Either way, keep in mind these helpful tips when using the platform. 

Quality comes first

As a small business owner, you understand the importance of quality. From your products to customer service, these have to be hitting the right notes to get the results you expect. The same applies to your YouTube content. 

This starts with the right equipment. You want a high-quality camera to capture your footage – that’s obvious. The good news is that even mid-range smartphones these days possess the camera quality necessary. However, there are other pieces of equipment you’ll need, including: 

• Microphone
• Tripod
• Lighting 
• Camera remote
• Video editing software

Regarding the latter, video editing is another important point when it comes to quality. Software can only take you so far in that regard, so if you’re a beginner to the world of YouTube, it’s wise to take a crash course on editing tips.

Understand your audience

Before you jump into crafting videos, it’s essential you have a full understanding of your audience. Without this, you’ll essentially be trying to throw darts at the target while wearing a blindfold. Once you do know your audience, however, it’s much easier to produce content they want to watch. 

Start by doing a little research. In your chosen industry, do a quick search on YouTube to see which videos are generating views. This will give you an idea about what type of content to focus on with your YouTube channel. Just remember you don’t want to simply replicate what’s already out there – you need to take an original angle or different approach when possible. 

Manage your video files

With YouTube, it doesn’t take long to amass a large collection of video files. The more videos that get added to the pile, the harder they are to manage. This isn’t good if you have an assortment of clips you want to return to in the future. 

This is why it makes sense to invest in a video asset management tool. With VAM software, you can easily keep track of your digital assets and find what you need whenever and wherever they are required. 

By using software like Brandfolder as a central hub to manage videos, it’s not just about storing and organizing your digital content. It can also be a great way for all employees across your company to access these videos. If multiple people are responsible for producing YouTube content, a VAM ensures creatives can stick to making videos that follow your branding. 

Thumbnails that grab the attention 

There’s no underselling the importance of the YouTube thumbnail. It has the ability to stop people in their tracks, grab their attention, and make them click to see what your video is about. 

There are various approaches you can take to construct an effective thumbnail. It’s likely you have also seen other thumbnails where a person is to the side, pulling an overly expressive face – fortunately you don’t have to go with this approach. Attractive imagery is a key starting point. Additional text – such as a question – that supports the title can also further engage users. 

When making thumbnails, try and stick to a template so branding is kept consistent.

SEO

Search engine optimization isn’t simply for pushing your website up the Google search rankings. It’s also necessary for maximizing the visibility of your YouTube videos. Don’t forget that YouTube only sits behind Google as the world’s largest search engine. 

As for tactics on how to optimize your videos, this doesn’t differ too far from a standard webpage. Here are a few key points: 

• Title: As well as the title needing to instantly grab the attention of users, it should feature your main target keyword. 
• Description: Unlike the title with a limited number of characters, you can add a lot more text – and other keywords – with the description. This is ideal for adding extra context to your videos.
• Categories: Make sure you place each video into the most appropriate category. This helps YouTube better understand your content and the audience you’re targeting.
• Tags: Tags are another way to help YouTube know about your videos. You can add a huge number of tags for each video, so try and use as many as possible. 

Of course, another huge determining factor for a video’s SEO is the engagement it generates. Likes, comments, and views are all used to push your video up the search rankings. 

Share on social media

You cannot rely completely on SEO to promote your videos. You should be putting in the effort to advertise them through your other marketing channels. This is most effective through social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. 

Social media is beneficial because it’s easy to share snippets of your videos with ease. These clips will grab the attention of those scrolling through their social media feeds. Then once they’re invested in what you are sharing, they are likely to click on the accompanying link to watch the video in full on YouTube. 

Another positive about this one-two punch is it further enhances brand awareness for your business.