As a new entrepreneur starting out today, it’s quite easy to get overwhelmed with the number of strategies and tactics one needs to undertake to get seen as an expert in your niche. Especially if your goal is to ultimately gain visibility and brand awareness for your business.
For many, you’ll be tempted to place using videos and using YouTube on the back burner. Mostly because you believe everything else far exceeds the importance of needing YouTube.
And that my friends will be a HUGE mistake!
Although YouTube began back in 2005 as a fun gimmicky concept where you could share wacky videos. Only the adventurous, truly vain or wannabe celebrity minded creators used it. However, within a few short years, YouTube became a platform that could alter the success of a business. Gary Vaynerchuk, Marie Forleo, and Casey Neistat are a few perfect examples.
So, before I get to carried away, I’d love to share some YouTube Stats that newbies should be aware of.
- YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine behind its parent company Google and the third most visited site after Google and Facebook
- The average mobile viewing session lasts around 40 minutes
- The average length of how to videos uploaded to YouTube are 7:22 while Vlogs clock in around 16:46
- YouTube users watch more than 3 billion hours of video per month
Why Should Newbies Use YouTube?
YouTube easily enables you to build a reputation as an expert in your field, by creating videos that your ideal audience needs. Because you’re solving a problem for them, you can quickly build trust as the person they will come to, to answer their most asked questions.
If you sell a product, why not showcase videos that will educate your customers, current and potential, how best to use your product, alternate uses for your product etc.
Engage with your viewers and foster communication that can lead to offering better content and gaining clients. It’s an absolute privilege when a viewer takes time to leave a comment and you should always respond to their comment. This can be a great place to find new video content due to a viewer asking a follow-up question to your video.
Provide solutions to your viewers by addressing frequently asked questions or help troubleshoot common problems with your product. If you are brand spanking new try researching questions asked of your competitors/peer’s content. Then create videos around those questions. This way you know that it’s a pain point that you’ll provide a solution to for your audience.
Some Best Practices for YouTube
BRANDING
Create channel art that is representative of your brand, company, and content.
Think strategically when naming your channel. Consider using your keywords in your channel name along with naming your channel after your brand. For example, if you are a social media expert you might want to use a channel name like Social Media Mentor or Social Media Diva, or if your company name is Virtually In Sync, then use that as the name of your channel.
An easy and consistent way to brand your videos is to add a watermark logo. YouTube enables you to do this on its platform or insert a 3-5 sec intro after your hook before you offer your main content.
KEYWORDS
Use your keywords in video titles, video descriptions, and tags. Focus on using your primary keywords in your title description and tags and then add in secondary keywords, so that the chances of your video getting found increases.
CONTENT
Decide your niche. Get very specific, the more specific you get you’ll hopefully have less competition. Whatever niche you choose become an expert in it. Offer educational, inspirational or crowdsourcing content. What do I mean, by crowdsource content? Curated content from and by your viewers when they comment and ask you questions. Creating crowdsourced content is a HUGE winner.
VISIBILITY
To gain visibility on YouTube you need to do a few things.
- Upload new content on a regular basis,
- Provide content that your audience wants and needs
- Then ask them to share your content.
YouTube is a necessary component of any business’ marketing strategy and to ignore it or place it on your forgotten to-do list will be at your peril.
Bonus Tips from VidSummit 2017
The easiest content newbies look to add to YouTube is usually their Facebook live streams.
If you want to repurpose your live streams on YouTube, make sure the content fits the YouTube viewer. As long as it’s helping your audience solve a problem, you’re good to go.
The next thing to consider is what will their viewing experience be like. Keep in mind that the YouTube viewer was not on live. They will get impatience with you stopping to welcome viewers and starting all over again. Some advice that was offered at this year’s VIdSummit by OwenVideo are as follows:
- Your Hook (Attention grabber)
- Pause for about 5 seconds – in editing, you will insert your intro into your video here
- Introduce yourself and welcome your viewers (you may only be talking to yourself so this if for your replay viewers) Ask them to comment below and you will address their comments at the end of the video.
- Ask them to share your broadcast
- Present your main topic
- As you see more folks join, do another introduction and welcome. Try not address them personally, just offer a generic welcome and thank them for joining. Introduce the name of the broadcast, yourself and then continue with your main topic
- When you are done, recap and wrap up the broadcast.
- Answer comments by reading them aloud and then answering them. These could become tip videos or other short videos that you can repurpose elsewhere.
Just because you are a new entrepreneur doesn’t mean you should avoid YouTube until you are more established. The sooner you get started the better you’ll be able to convert your viewers into paying clients.
