Posted: April 16, 2011
Often overlooked by many small to medium sized businesses is the important role that Youtube can play in developing your online marketing strategies. Numbers recently released by Comscore show that Google sites (which includes Youtube) had over 143 unique viewers in the month of March 2011. Consumers are actively using video sites in the process of deciding weather to purchase certain products, services, plan trips, plan events, and much more.
The first thing you should do for your business to create a video presence is setup a Youtube channel. This enables you to group all of your videos together in one place and also provides an area where you can built your brand through Youtube by entering company profile information and customizing some basic design and colour settings.
Once you’ve done this, here are a few additional tips to keep in mind:
The element that determines the placement for the relevance of searches of your video is the number of views. This measurement is used over the number of links. What this means is distribution of your video is important in order to increase the number of views. Use outlets such as posting a video to your Facebook page, embedding a video into your website, or encouraging an industry related blog to post your video. By having your video appear on multiple websites with related content, this will inevitably help increase viewership.
When you add a link to the description field of a Youtube video, it automatically becomes an active, clickable link (must include the http://). However, Youtube adds nofollow to all links in the description field, effectively making the link of no benefit to improving a your site’s search engine ranking. It is still a good strategy though to add links as it does encourage users to click through to your website, especially since the content of the video should be relevant to the content on your website.
A lot of people think that creating a video for their company is a huge ordeal that involves getting the right lighting, having the right people interviewed, and including the highest quality images and music that enhance their products and services. This does not have to be the case.
As an example, if you are renting out cabins on a lake, how about including a “virtual tour” on your website where you film views of several rooms in the cabin by holding a video camera and slowly rotating around. Embedding a video like this on your website will surely leave a much larger impression about your cabin on potential customers than just a long text description.
Some other examples might be videos that help answer frequently asked questons, like how to start a BBQ, how to setup a tent, or how to change your password on your home security system. Simple videos like these can often be the most effective.
Youtube provides a whole bunch of statistics on your uploaded videos which they call Insight Statistics. You should monitor these statistics, looking at things like Demographics and Engagements that will help you better understand what your audience is looking for.
With these tips in mind, you will be able to grow your Youtube presence overtime which, in return, will provide a positive benefit for your online marketing strategies as a whole.
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