Learn how your small business can create and enhance its YouTube strategy and drive more customer engagement through video content.
With over 2 billion global users, YouTube is a vital marketing platform for modern small businesses. Posting YouTube videos regularly can improve your SEO ranking, get your videos shared on other social media platforms and create opportunities for you to partner with other content creators and small business owners.
While YouTube can be a big traffic and engagement boost for your business, it's also a highly competitive space. You'll need to develop a marketing strategy that is focused on your viewers' experience so you can create content that educates and solves problems for your audience.
To help you do that, here are six tips for creating a killer YouTube strategy as a small business.
Your brand is the most unique thing about your company, so make sure it is front and center in all of your content. Highlight your products and services in your videos, using real-world demonstrations, examples and customer testimonies. Creating video content also allows small businesses to show more personality and voice in content. Use video content to connect with your customers on a human level.
As with any marketing channel, creating goals will help guide your content strategy and analyze success after campaigns. Some businesses may want to focus on growing their audience and improving engagement, while others may look at YouTube as a means to convert viewers into tangible customers. When making goals, be sure to make them clear, tangible, measurable and specific. At the end of a certain time period, such as a month or quarter, measure your results against your goals to see how you did.
Like with social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter, engaging with your audience in the comments section can lead to more engagement. By having an interaction with your audience, they'll feel as though the relationship is two-sided and a give-and-take.
Interacting in the comments provides an opportunity to take suggestions for future content and respond to any questions the audience may have. By consistently interacting with your viewers, you can create a stronger bond with them and greater customer loyalty. Responding in a timely manner helps produce valuable interactions with your customers and strengthens the brand-customer relationship.
YouTube is constantly adding new features to help enhance its viewers’ experiences. In the past, YouTube has rolled out live video streaming, in-video shopping experiences, subscription collections and donation options.
As you generate content, play around with a few of these features and see how your audience responds to them. You may find that more viewers tune in more often if your content is live. You also may have a higher conversion rate if your audience can purchase your products or services while watching your video.
Not every new feature is going to produce big results for your channel or brand, but it’s worth it to explore them on a small scale to see if it positively impacts your analytics.
Like growing your social media followers or improving your SEO ranking, success on YouTube is influenced by the consistency and quality of the content you post. While you don’t have to post daily or even weekly content, you should establish a realistic schedule for when and how frequently you'll be posting videos based on how much of your time and resources you can dedicate to this channel. A regular schedule also gives your subscribers an idea of when to expect new content and establishes demand or anticipation. Because video content can take some time to conceptualize, film and edit, allow yourself plenty of time to produce your video.
You will likely gain some subscribers organically through YouTube’s content recommendation algorithms, but you’ll give yourself the greatest chance of success by letting followers on other social media platforms to check out your YouTube channel. You can also embed your YouTube videos in blogs and email newsletters for even more cross-promotion and reach.
Writer : Dan Casarella - Contributor of U.S. Chamber of Commerce
