Youtube is a huge venue for user-uploaded videos. It’s also, however, one of the largest social networks on the internet. Millions of people are interacting on Youtube on a minute to minute basis. Youtube is therefore a huge social media market with enormous business potential. Like all social media venues, the protocol is to give value away and cultivate a following. As with Facebook, there’s significant SEO potential (after all Google owns Youtube). But the real value is in organic traffic to your web site and interacting with (commenting upon, sharing, and subscribing to) your videos in the same way that people interact with blogs or your Facebook page.
Target Search Results
The SEO value of videos, podcasts, and images are in the title, description, and tags. Properly optimized videos often rank highly for their targeted keywords on the search engines. Businesses take advantage of this to get lots of exposure.
2. Generate Leads and Traffic
From both the SEO and the social media value (sharing, commenting, subscribing), videos on Youtube can be a good medium for generating leads and traffic. Instead of focusing all your efforts on a web site alone, videos that offer advice, insight, analysis, training, explanations, etc. can actually help you generate leads. A lot of businesses use Youtube the way others use blogs.
3. Training and Instruction
Whether sustaining the growth of your business by implementing training for internal audiences, providing training for your client base, or simply making a case for all the things you say all the time anyway, videos can extend your business’ effectiveness and marketing, just as they do internally for large corporations.If you’re weighing the benefits of giving classes locally (a great marketing technique) vs. doing it online, what not record your local classes, and upload to Youtube. A lot of businesses do both.
4. Extend your Brand
Youtube can help you build your brand very effectively. Create a channel with your company name and logo and use video to explain your core values, your unique market differentiators, and explain where you add value. The number of business Youtube pages is growing exponentially.
5. Client Testimonials
Invite satisfied clients to upload their video testimonials, helping you build credibility and increasing your sales. Or ask key clients to let you film a brief testimonial, then splice them together with video editing software, to make a combined video. Most startups provide a variety of video types on Youtube – instruction, sales, and testimonials too.
6. Your own Infomercials
Why spend money on old-fashioned TV ads when, cost per value, you can do it on Youtube? Whatever product or service you’re offering, make a case for it using your own infomercial format. If Youtube is the new TV, you see the next logical decision, and this places advertising in the hands of everyone. But the rule of the thumb is be incredibly creative. Just an ad spot will get few views – but an interesting show that entertains, while positioning your service or product is a good sell. This might make a good feature video for your Youtube channel.
7. Fun as Publicity
If you haven’t seen the Trunk Monkey videos, they’re worth your time. Humor is a great way to get attention. Create highly informative or funny videos and disseminate them using services like tubemogul. Humor can break through the “spam” barrier and giver your website more eyeballs, increase your popularity as the videos go viral.
8. Tutorials
Tutorials are a specific kind of training and instruction, so we list it separately. Provide clients step-by-step videos guides for things related to but not including your services and products. For instance, if you’re a real estate agent, explain how to stage a home. If you’re a landscaper, demonstrate the best times to water your lawn.
9. Your Talk Show
Like podcasting, you can do video podcasting, addressing issues close to the hearts and minds of your clients. If you find customers talking about a specific issue, take their side and add your two cents in an ongoing series addressing their concerns.
10. Product or Service Trailer
You’ve seen movie trailers. Product or service trailers utilize the trailer-style for a fast, quick and captivating presentation of your offerings. Think about what you’re doing for clients, and roll-out new products and services, before they launch, with “coming soon”. This can be used in your Linkedin Business page and other social pages also.
Keep in mind that you can upload videos to Youtube, then embed them in your own web pages, occasionally changing them out for newer ones as you go. Youtube makes this easy by providing the correct code with various options for size, etc. It’s a great way to send clients from your web site to your Youtube page, increasing interaction and viral spreading of your marketing, just as it brings clients to your web site from your Youtube page and the branding you add to each video.
