Could you describe your YouTube strategy in 30 seconds or less? Could you provide a concise, compelling overview of your plan for the platform?
If you’re like most smaller businesses, the answer is probably “no.” You know that YouTube is important and that you can’t ignore its reach or power to convert. But you haven’t thought much about the strategy of YouTube. You just post videos and hope they take off.
It’s time for you to take a different approach to YouTube. A more intentional approach. More strategic, if you like.
These seven low-key YouTube strategies can help with that. They could be just what you need to shake off the “post, share, repeat” doldrums and make some serious moves on YouTube.
Table of Contents
1. Identify Your Top YouTube Competitors
Before putting too much work into your YouTube presence, spend some time identifying your top competitors on the platform. You want to find brands that compete with you in the real world and use the same strategies to target the same audience groups.
You can start by looking up your known competitors on YouTube and seeing how they utilize the platform. Sometimes, that’s the best way to get general ideas for content and messaging. You should also research the keywords your competitors use in their video titles and descriptions. YouTube is search driven, just like Google itself, and you need to know which terms to target in your content.
2. Syndicate Your Podcast on YouTube
Does your brand have a podcast? If yes, start filming it and get it up on YouTube at your earliest convenience. It’s a huge store of content that you’re going to create anyway, which means less work for your content marketing team. To see how this looks in the real world, check out the YouTube channel for Yieldstreet, an investing platform that uses YouTube to showcase its popular podcast.
3. Create a Brand Account, Even If You’re the Only Admin Right Now
Create a YouTube presence for where you want your brand to be in five years, not right now. Start by opening a Google brand account that can expand with your YouTube presence; you’ll need it if and when you add multiple admins to your account.
4. Optimize Your Videos for YouTube Search
Optimizing your videos for YouTube search is part art and part science. The process overlaps quite a bit with regular old SEO, so you’ll have a head start if you’re familiar with best practices there. You’ll need to think about your video titles and tags, channel and video descriptions, and the more technical structural aspects of how it’s presented to YouTube’s search algorithm.
5. Create a Compelling Channel Description and Artwork
Your channel description is important for reasons that go beyond SEO. It’s your best opportunity to catch a casual visitor’s eye after they’ve watched one of your videos and keep them on the page. While much of your early traffic is likely to come from search, you’ll thank yourself later for developing a distinct YouTube brand that doesn’t rely entirely on SEO.
6. Caption Your Videos
Not everyone wants to listen to a YouTube video at high volume. Not everyone can. Respect these audience members’ needs and preferences by captioning your video in white or gray text. The font doesn’t have to be oversized and you don’t have to catch every last nonverbal noise in the script. It just has to convey what’s happening in the window.
7. Encourage and Respond to Audience Feedback
Seek out audience feedback through your YouTube channel and be consistent about implementing it. You want to show your fans that you care about what they think and work to improve based on their input. That’s the mark of a mature brand, after all.
Make YouTube Work for You
YouTube is an immensely popular platform. Popular in a way that defies description. (The data just doesn’t do it justice. Lots of people practically live on YouTube, and don’t forget it.)
That’s all the more reason to make YouTube work for you.
Each of these seven strategies is designed to leverage the platform’s strengths and exploit its power to engage. They won’t turn you into a celebrity YouTuber overnight or gain you millions of followers this month. But that’s not actually what you want or need.
You just need YouTube to push your brand forward, rather than holding it back. You’ll get that, and then some, if you execute these strategies effectively.
