Statistics show that people watch one billion hours on YouTube every day and over 5 billion videos. Additionally, millennials said that they prefer YouTube two to one when compared to traditional television. YouTube is also the second most visited social media right after Facebook with over 30 million visitors each day.
1. People discover brands through YouTube
If these stats weren’t enough to convince you how useful YouTube is, how about the fact that 90% of people have said they discover new brands and products on it? You have to admit that that’s a staggering amount.
It’s no wonder that both big and small businesses are creating videos on YouTube, trying to obtain thousands of subscribers and new customers.
No matter if you already have a YouTube channel and are in need for some improvements, or are about to create one for your business, this article will provide you with some useful tips.
Let’s begin.
2. Are you building a name for yourself or a company?
Before we dive into the tips, it is important to get a few things out of the way, one of them being the question if you’re building a name for yourself or a business. There’s an important distinction between the two and it will define the type of videos you will be making.
Different videos for different types of channels
If you’re making videos for a business, you will want to showcase your products, their uses, and people using them, but also how your company functions, who your employees are, their stories and roles in the company, etc. Companies also use testimonial videos to show their viewers that their customers are enjoying their products.
If, on the other hand, you’re an entrepreneur, you will want to make videos that contain tips on how to help other entrepreneurs, how you succeeded, and what your story is. Entrepreneur channels usually contain tons of advice, TED talks, and reviews of entrepreneurship books.
3. What do you want to achieve with a YouTube channel?
Do you want to establish yourself as an expert in an area, or do you just want to show people what your company does and how they do it? Or maybe you want to increase your sales?
No matter what you want to achieve with this channel, defining your goals is an important step before doing pretty much any project, especially the big kind such as this one. Put your goals and thoughts on paper because knowing what you want to achieve will also influence the kind of videos you will be creating, as well.
What types of videos do people watch the most?
How-to guides and tutorials are something that is not only easy to make but is also useful to people, which is the kind of content you want to be creating no matter if you’re trying to get subscribers for yourself or your business. They’re one of the most popular types of videos, along with unboxing videos, product reviews, vlogs, educational, and comedy videos.
Now that’s out of the way, let’s move on to the tips for building a brand on YouTube.
4. Know your target audience and interact with your viewers
Knowing your target audience is an important step in business, especially in marketing campaigns. When it comes to YouTube, I dare say it’s crucial.
Social media platforms have numerous analytical tools that allow you to learn where your audience is from, what their interests are, what their age and gender are, which websites and channels they visit and watch, and for how long. In short, they tell you everything you need to know about your target audience.
This will allow you to tailor your content for your viewers. If you know what type of videos they watch the most, that is probably the kind you want to be making.
Interact with people
When you start getting views, people will naturally start leaving comments. Use them to interact with people. If they have any advice, even better. Comments can be a valuable source of feedback. Your viewers can always leave negative comments, so be prepared to get criticized. Be civil and if there’s constructive criticism, try to be open to it.
Don’t ever upload a video and never touch it again. It is important that you check what’s happening in the comments every once in a while, especially if you’re a company and someone needs help with something. When it comes to guide videos, there are always issues that can happen, so people will post about them hoping for help. Be there for it.
5. Set up your profile
This may seem very unimportant, but trust me, it really isn’t. Imagine watching an informative video and then clicking on that channel to subscribe, but it turns out that the channel is grey and doesn’t even have a profile picture.
Use your logo (if you’re a company) or a professionally taken photo if you’re an entrepreneur as your profile picture. Keep in mind, this picture will get displayed next to your comments, so you want it to be recognizable.
Brands always use their logos for profile pictures for a good reason: people recognize them easily. Think about it, when you’re scrolling your feed, even if you’re just glancing, you will always notice famous brands.
When it comes to the banner, use your brand’s color as the primary color. This will make your profile more unified.
6. Plan your content and make sure it’s quality
After you get familiar with your target audience and set up your profile, it’s time to start thinking about content.
We already mentioned that how-to guides and tutorials are types of content that are suitable for all channels, but if you don’t know what to make guides on, don’t fret.
How to come up with content?
You can always look at what bigger companies and entrepreneurs are posting about and what the formats of the videos are like. Take notes and do tons of research. Look at the popular topics related to what you do, this is always a good way of staying relevant.
Whenever something big happens in any industry, people google the event, so if you make a video that has an explanation or a breaking down of what happened, people will want to watch it.
These videos are usually short, up to 15 minutes, so try not to make them too long. Even though people watch billions of hours’ worth of content every day, they favor short videos because let’s face it, who has the time nowadays to watch a 3-hour long video on a new craze? Not anyone I know, for sure.
7. Research the competition
Looking at what your competition is doing is actually highly recommended. You can learn a lot about how they’re working on building their brand, what types of videos they’re posting, if and how they’re interacting with their viewers, what their intro and outro look like and so on.
See what they’re posting about and how well those videos do.
8. Partner up
See if there are any channels similar to your that would be willing to partner up with you. Partnerships are useful to both small and big businesses, popular and starting entrepreneurs. If you get lucky and a channel bigger than yours makes the decision to make videos with you, you will get a chance to be seen by their subscribers and get a shot at getting some of them to subscribe to you, too.
This method of exposure helps spread brand awareness and who knows, maybe you’ll get a few dozens of loyal viewers after it.
9. Promote your videos
Once you’ve made your video and uploaded it on YouTube, don’t forget to link it to your other social media. This especially great if you have a few subscribers, but tons of followers on other social media platforms.
Link the video along with a short description and encourage people to share their thoughts and share it with their own followers if they deem it worthy of sharing.
You know how every social media allows you to add links to other social media, so people can find you more easily? Link your YouTube channel wherever you can.
Final word
YouTube is the second most popular social media, so you should absolutely use it for your business. Even if you plan on making one video per week, it can be very useful and enable you to gain customers and subscribers.
By making quality content that people will find useful and informative and by promoting your videos on other social media platforms, you will spread brand awareness and help people at the same time.
Good luck on your YouTube journey and thanks for reading!
