Forget cat videos, Youtube is in fact the second largest search engine after google. Youtube is not just for entertainment purposes, it is also a place people go to do research,  find knowledge and educate themselves. Chances are that your potential customers are on youtube right now, as you read this, looking for answers to their questions and solutions to their problems. So why not help them by creating video content?

It’s easy to create a channel and upload a video or two. The difficult part, however, is to get found by your target audience, and to engage them enough to consider buying from you. 

So without further ado, here is a complete checklist of the things you should know about when creating youtube videos for your business. 

1. Do keyword research for Youtube

If you don’t know what a keyword analysis is, I suggest you start by reading this article. 

To put it in simple terms it is to research what words or phrases people use when they are searching for content online. 

As for all content creation, it is important to have an idea of what your audience is looking for online. What questions do they have that you can answer? What problems are they trying to solve that you can help them with? This can be answered by doing keyword research. 

If you’ve already done a keyword analysis for your website, this would be a good place to start when looking for topics, and specific keywords. But it might be a good idea to do a more youtube-specific keyword analysis. 

We would advise, when you are creating new video content for a topic, that you map out all the common questions around the key topic. I would also be a good idea to map out all of the common questions your customers have when they are considering to buy your product or service. 

You can get insight both by talking to your audience and by gathering search data online. Last but not least, you can look at what your competitors have created content about. When exploring your key topics on youtube, take a look at what content performs well, and what doesn’t. You can do this by looking at the ranking in the youtube search results, the number of views, and by viewing the comments on the videos. 

But wait….theres more!  Here are two other tips that will give your content more views and make it easier to gain visibility:

  • Avoid strong competition by finding relevant low-competition keywords to target. 
  • Optimize for keywords that already have video results in Google.

You might have noticed that the google search results sometimes show youtube videos at the top of the organic results. If you can identify relevant keywords where this is the case, you can draw traffic from regular google search results to your videos.

2. Optimize video titles and descriptions

  • Create “Clickable headlines”: Get more clicks by writing a compelling title and include targeted keywords. 
  • Sell the video in the description. Tell the audience what the video is about and what they might learn by watching the video. 
  • Include links to other Social Media profiles or other videos, and always link to your website. You can also add info about special offers, ask them to subscribe etc. 
  • Add a video transcript that includes targeted keywords. 

3. Add tags to your videos

Always add relevant tags to your videos. Include targeted keywords as tags.

4. Use Playlists to sort your videos

Sorting your videos into playlists can help you get more views and will make it easier for the audience to find your content. 

5. Add a description to your channel page 

Write a good channel description that sells your brand and explains what the channel is about. Remember to focus on what the audience has to gain by following your channel. Why should they care? Don’t just brag about business. Always add links to your website and other Social Media profiles. 

6. Make sure video quality is high

  • Make sure your video has a good image resolution and otherwise fit into the preferred formats on Youtube.  
  • Sound quality: Maybe not as obvious as image quality and format, but it is important to have a good sound quality on your video. 
  • Videos could be anything from 10 seconds to 50 hours or even more. But we would argue that longer videos be split up in parts under 1 hour. And unless you are uploading a funny cat-video we would advise you to keep them longer than 2-3 minutes. 

7. Create engaging content

#1 rule to get viewers: Make sure that the content is engaging. 

But how? This is perhaps the most tricky part since there is no definitive answer to this. 

For businesses using youtube in their marketing efforts we think there is one specific word to remember and take note of:  “edutainment”. 

The main thing you should care about when creating your content is how you could offer something valuable to the audience. Generally, if the content is valuable to the audience it will be engaging. If the content also is entertaining you are really onto something!

If you think about it this way you will then see that simply uploading 30-second long promotional videos telling your client to buy buy buy won’t really make any sense. For who exactly is looking for that? And why should someone choose to watch such a video? 

A good rule of thumb is to keep content educational. In general we would advise that you use best practices in presentation technique and storytelling. If you have done a keyword research as we suggested you will have an idea of what people are looking for, and therefore what you can talk about. 

Keep things clear and simple and use visuals to illustrate /demonstrate the concepts you are talking about instead of simply talking into the camera. For inspiration, you could look at content that you yourself find engaging and imitate it. 

8. Promote your videos!

Lastly you should promote your videos. As with facebook and other social media there are ways you could pay to boost your content to a broader audience, but there are also much that can be gained by simply sharing the link to your video on your website, blogs, forum etc. A combination of paid and organic promotion of your content is perhaps the best way to go, and it could give your video views a “kick start” so that your video can spread easier organically. 

KEEP ME INFORMED 

 

Asmund Holtan

Written by Asmund Holtan