YouTube is a powerful content site with over 400 hours of video uploaded every minute. If the site suits the nature of your industry and brand style, YouTube can be an effective and alternative marketing platform to complement the traditional sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

But how do you ensure that you are using YouTube to effectively market your brand?

Here are our top tips for an effective YouTube marketing plan that compliments your current strategy;

1. YouTube Keywords

If you want to ensure that your content is found then keywords are essential. Just because your content isn’t a blog post or text-heavy doesn’t mean that SEO shouldn’t be at the forefront of your mind when creating content.

Ensure you tag your video with relevant keywords before uploading. Make sure the keywords you tag the video with will expand the reach of a video across the platform to a relevant audience.

2. Call To Action

Call To Actions (or CTAs) are vital to add to the end of your video in order to make sure your viewers act on what they’ve just seen.

Add a CTA at the end of your video and in the description that encourages your audience to act by either subscribing or giving a link to buy a product or service.

3. Don’t aim to go viral

On average there are over 1,000,000,000 mobile video views per day. This means that, if engaging enough, your video and brand has a wide and ready to watch audience, eager to see your content. However, don’t expect to go viral overnight.

Videos that do go viral are rare and unique. Therefore, don’t try to replicate viral content that churns out similar messages as this can be off-putting for your viewers.

Instead create videos that are important to your company and focus on quality over quantity as, in the long run, this will pay off.

4. Stick to a style

Before you start creating videos establish a plan as to your style and type of content created. sit down with your creative and marketing team and establish a style guide so that every video created reflects the voice of your brand.

Think about things like;

• Who are your audience
• Could there be a set opening and closing frame that suits your brand style/colours
• Is your tone friendly, informative or professional and high quality?
• Are you using staff members in videos?
• Will you collaborate with any YouTubers or Influencers?

5. Choose corporate or consumer

It may be tempting to create content that is created for a specific audience, some of which will be corporate, some consumers. However consider the fact that one viewer will watch all your videos, therefore they may become disconnected with the channel once they see that a new video is blatantly not aimed at them.

Create separate channels for B2B and B2C differentiating your audience, if necessary. While this may reduce your views on one video, it will add clarity to your page and increase your overall views between the two channels. As well as this, it will make it easier for your viewers to find you and exactly what they’re looking for on YouTube.

6. Experiment with video types and formats

Finally, invest time and money into trying exciting new formats and video styles that you know your audience will respond well to.

Try out;

• Product videos
• Informative how-tos
• Q&As from leaders and experts within your company
• Unboxing videos
• Tours of your offices
• Use live-stream
• Customer testimonials

Try to keep your content as fresh and engaging as possible. then edit down clips to share on Instagram and Facebook to gain more traffic to your longer YouTube videos or website.