If your business sells a product or service that can be explained and promoted using video, get it on YouTube. In this post we are going examine key things you need to know about optimizing YouTube content. First of all, why should you even bother with creating content for YouTube? Because, YouTube has 1.5 billion active users and 30 million daily active users that spend 40 minutes a day on average engaging with content on its platform. Video marketing should be included in your digital marketing plan.
There are three keys to earning some of that engagement on your own YouTube channel:
- Create great video content
- Optimize your video content
- Share your video content
Create Great Video Content
Choosing the topic for your video content should be aligned with your marketing goals and focus on your target audience. Spend the time to write a script. You don’t need a professional camera crew or expensive production, but doing an impromptu walk around the warehouse or your retail store with a camera phone isn’t a good idea either, at least without some preparation.
The first step after deciding on the topic for video content is keyword research. I recommend thinking about questions you might want to answer for your customers. Natural language triggers such as “how do I”, “when should you”, “why can’t I”, “where do I” are great search terms that often result in ranking for video content.
Longer videos tend to perform better. It really depends on the topic and who your audience is, but statistically speaking, longer dwell time (a ranking factor) is better and videos that average about 10 minutes in length tend to have longer dwell time. Creating content with enough of a hook to keep viewers around that long is the challenge. Most viewers decide in the first 10 seconds if they will continue watching. Get them interested right away for better outcomes.
Optimize Your Video Content
This is a BIG topic. I am going to give you the overview. Before uploading your raw video, be sure to rename the file to something with keywords. For instance if your topic is ‘How to bait a crab pot’, then rename the file exactly that. So, your file name will be ‘how to bait a crab pot.mp4
There are 3 main sections to be optimized:
- Title
- Description
- Tags
The video title is limited to 70 characters. Search Engines will truncate anything beyond that in most cases. Front load the keyword in the title. From our example of the file name and the natural language triggers , I would use a modified phrase for the title like this with a separator bar and the name of my business: How To Bait A Dungeness Crab Pot | Joe’s Marine Store
The description field allows up to 5000 characters, which is approximately 500 – 700 words. Include a fully formed URL of your site or a relevant page from your site at the top of the description. At the end of the description add links to your social sites and other profile assets like FaceBook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Tags are keywords that describe your content that are added below the description field during the upload process. They should be limited to 1-3 words. They should include your brand. They should include subject matter of the video content. Following our crabpot example tags could be: joes marine store; baiting dungeness crabpot; dungeness crab fishing;
Advanced Settings can be used to set language preferences, date the video was filmed and to declare whether or not the video has been aired on TV which would subject it to FCC regulations. You also should select a category for the topic.
Bonus Tip: Create a custom thumbnail image. Optimize the properties of the images (Title, Subject, Rating, Comments) by right clicking on the image and selecting properties. You will also need a verified phone number associated with the account before you can add custom thumbnails. Here is a support article link that describes how to verify your account.
Share your video content
Once you have your video content created, uploaded and optimized it is time to share it with the world. Depending on the platform your site runs on, it should be pretty simple to embed the video on your site. Assuming a WordPress site, you want to copy the embed code found under the “Share” link below the video in YouTube.
Be sure to leverage all you social account. Upload the video to your FaceBook business page. FaceBook prefers (ranks) native videos over videos you share or embed on your business page.
Lastly, you can get more mileage from your efforts by syndicating your video on other platforms like Vimeo. Follow each platforms individual instructions for posting on their sites.
Conclusion
Video marketing is an essential and very powerful tool for extending your business marketing efforts. This can be done for little or no cost other than the time and effort it takes to film, upload and optimize your video. Don’t over think it. Just do it.