The all-seeing eye that is YouTube, can be a terrifying tool to the new business owner but it’s very much a necessary evil. As you already know, YouTube is an American online video-sharing platform based in San Bruno, California. Three former PayPal employees created the service in February 2005. Google then bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion; and today YouTube operates as one of the Google’s subsidiaries.
Youtube is much more than a video repository though. It’s a shop window of who you are and what your business represents. People who view videos on YouTube are more than happy to stay twice as long or more than they would on Facebook for instance.
Today we should use this tool to reach a new audience as part of our ongoing content re-purposing (don’t we all?). Your mission should you wish to accept it, is to generate regular content and “feed” this behemoth of search engine optimization.
To start on this journey, simply open YouTube, sign in using your Gmail address and start filling in the gaps, OK, it’s a little more involved than that, but this blog isn’t about how to set up a YouTube channel.
When you have set one up though, its’ what goes up on your YouTube channel that tends to worry people more than starting one. Let’s discuss the options:
These are just some of the things to get you started but ultimately you’ve got to think what’s in it for the viewer:
Having all these great concepts are great but what’s equally important is maintaining that relationship. You have to keep feeding “content” to the channel to re-engage your audience and move them through the sales process.
Simply put, if you can answer all of these questions, either in one video or in several – you stand a good chance of actually making money. This is because you’ve built an ongoing rapport with your audience and hopefully imbued their loyalty.
So start planning your goals for this medium, they may be slightly different to the other platforms you manage. With those goals in mind, it helps you decide what you’re going to put up on your channel.
These three words mean can potentially mean so much for your business but it can also be quite hard to achieve! Typically people think of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) only being done on a website, which is true. You can also achieve excellent traction for this on your Pinterest and Google My Business Profile.
Did you know that Google is the highest ranked search engine in Ireland? That means that most people here in Ireland use Google as a search engine and any product of Google will always be favored in their searches.
There are several ways you can do Search Engine Optimization; one is through paid ads another is through storytelling namely using blogs, but you can also story tell using videos.
This is something you can do by yourself or you can pay somebody else to do it for you. I personally prefer to do this myself. I currently achieve almost all of my own search engine optimization by using my Google My Business Profile. However, a lot of my clients use their Google My Business accounts and their YouTube in tandem.
The reason for my writing this blog was to explain a small bit of the background of YouTube and Search Engine Optimization but it’s all meaningless if you don’t adhere to some of the recommendations.
Like every platform you use for business, when it comes to marketing first sort out your goals! If one of your goals is to be found regularly on search (whether you have a bricks and mortar location or not) then this is an excellent platform for your business. It does require a huge amount of personal involvement from you though to maintain. By this I mean the best videos out there tend to do well because you can see a person in it and that unfortunately could be you. On the upside though you don’t have to appear immediately in your videos. You can choose to be the voice behind it and that’s how an awful lot of well-known brands have started.
Time, practice and good feedback build you up and encourage you to eventually step in front of the camera and things change quite quickly after that.
In my next blog I’ll be writing from the perspective of a more intermediate person to advanced, so please watch out for that one in the coming weeks.
So, if this is a medium that you wish to explore then you need to start creating a persona, some goals and build your strategy that also supports your time management and then just get started!
If you need any support with any of this, then please do not hesitate to contact me at www.stomp.ie.
Working with clients Nationwide from base in Mullingar.
