YouTube ranks at the top of the list of the most popular websites around the world. On this resource you can find entertaining and educational content, as well as promotional materials that receive millions of views, which has a good effect on the popularity of brands and sales of relevant products. Let’s look at how you can use YouTube for business and what benefits it brings.
The Importance of YouTube for Business
YouTube is one of the largest online resources. According to Inclient, in the Russian segment of the Internet alone, the platform is used monthly by over 96 million people.
Now the service combines:
Video hosting. You can upload materials in resolutions up to 8K, lasting up to 12 hours with a file size of up to 256 GB.
Platform for Shorts. These are short vertical videos with a duration of up to 60 seconds
Streaming platform. On the site you can broadcast live and communicate with the audience in real time.
Social network. There is a section for text blogging (“Community”), the ability to subscribe to channels, comment on videos, like and dislike.
Content management system. You can independently set the date of publication of materials, access to them, influence search results through tags and selection of video titles, track statistics for individual videos and the entire channel.
The online resource is available on any platform. The main thing is that it has access to the Internet and a browser. For mobile devices, there are official applications for viewing and publishing content. In most cases, you do not need to register an account to access posted materials.
What Content Will Increase Sales?
You can work on a YouTube channel in three directions:
- explicit advertising
- content that increases audience loyalty and brand awareness;
- customer support.
Advertising can be videos in which you talk about your product range, your specific products and services, promotions, compare offers from competitors and your own products, with an emphasis on the latter.
Increasing loyalty is the main direction of content marketing. He distances himself from obvious advertising. The essence of the method is to post video materials that will be interesting and useful to the audience: the content should coincide with the direction of your activity. For example, if a company is renovating apartments, it makes no sense to post lectures about the living conditions of penguins. If possible, you should refrain from making personal assessments that are not supported by verifiable facts. You can create:
Educational videos – types of materials and tools, their differences and features, historical information, etc.
Help videos – clear explanations of how to perform calculations, step-by-step guides on how to choose a household appliance, car, bicycle, good jeans or quality accessories, etc.
Entertaining content – comic videos on topics related to your activities. Humor should be kind, understandable to a wide audience and not offend anyone.
Support is primarily concerned with resolving problems that may arise when ordering your products or services. For example, you can post a video with instructions on how to properly care for your countertops. Or periodically conduct streams answering customer questions
What You Need to Create and Promote a Channel
Account Registration and Design
First, you need to register an account (it can be linked to an existing Google account) and prepare the design – add an avatar and profile header. This will allow you to stand out from the crowd and show that the channel is developing and content is published on it. Users who do not post anything, but only watch and comment on other materials, usually do not change the standard design. Instead of an avatar, they display a colored circle with the first letter of their login (username).
Equipment and Software
Next, you will need equipment for filming and software for processing video recordings. The list of equipment depends on what kind of content you are going to create. For example, some shorts are essentially a slideshow of several images with overlaid captions and simple transition effects. In other cases, authors set up studios that would be the envy of some film companies.
A budget device for filming would be a smartphone or an action camera. Even relatively cheap models can record in resolutions from 1080p with a frame rate (frame rate per 1 second of screen time, the higher the value, the smoother the image) 60 frames/sec. With sufficient lighting, smartphones provide good video quality. To shoot static scenes indoors, such as online broadcasts, blogs and product demonstrations, you need to purchase a special tripod for your phone. It is often complemented by LED lighting.
Image quality close to professional standards is provided by DSLR and mirrorless cameras, as well as amateur video cameras in the middle and upper price range. These devices can be supplemented with a good remote microphone
It is advisable to shoot handheld with a stabilizer. It prevents camera shake. Software processing, on the contrary, does not always provide the desired result. Stabilizers are produced for smartphones, cameras and video cameras.
Promoting Your Channel
If you are promoting software products and online services, you will need a screencast application. It records in real time what is happening on the computer display along with sound. For this purpose, you can take a Screen Camera.
To process the received materials and edit the videos, you need a video editor. Solutions for non-specialists include PowerDirector 365, OpenShot and VideoPad. More experienced users choose VEGAS, Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve. On smartphones you can edit in CapCut, InShot and KineMaster.
How to Promote a Channel for Business
Identifying Your Target Audience
Preparing a promotion strategy begins with identifying the target audience (TA). This is a generalized portrait of the people who will be interested in your content and who are more likely to buy your products. It may include gender, age, social and marital status, interests, income level, field of activity, etc.
Content Planning
Creating content “for everyone” is a mistake. With this approach, it is impossible to formulate the channel profile and topic of each individual video. Once you decide on your target audience, you will be able to effectively solve these problems.
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Videos must be posted regularly. To do this, a content plan is drawn up – a table with a schedule, which indicates the publication date, topic and brief content of each video. With long periods of downtime, the audience loses interest in the channel and its marketing effectiveness decreases. The schedule also helps you plan your activities and allocate time in advance for filming and editing. First, you can post one material per week.
Optimizing for Search
Google does not publish a description of YouTube’s algorithms. Their work can only be judged by some indirect signs. For example, more frequent display of videos can be influenced by the correct choice of tags and the presence of keywords in the title and description. Phrases that match the content of the video can be found through Google Trends. The service displays statistics on specified search queries – frequency of use by users, their region of residence, related topics.
Advertising and Collaboration
Another method of promotion is advertising on other channels and joint projects with them. Part of the audience of more popular authors may become interested in your materials, become regular viewers, and in the future – clients.