First published on Rocks Digital
By Debbie Mrazek

You have spent years building your business and developing your products. With social media, you now have the ability to share those products with millions of potential customers. But how do you properly incorporate video marketing into your existing marketing plan?

YouTube Video Tips for the Newbie

When you add video to your marketing plan, you open up a whole new world of potential. When properly utilized, video can be used to add depth while promoting your products because video allows you to create stories to help sell your products. You could show viewers how you got started, or what goes into the creation of your products, or why you started your business. Video allows you to do this and people love special, behind the scenes content.

1. Keep Your Videos Short, But Don’t Rush

When it comes to the length of your YouTube videos, experts suggest that you keep them less than 2 minutes in length. Shorter videos have been shown to receive the most views from users which should really come as no big surprise in a world where attention spans are constantly shrinking. Although your video will be short, you should not rush. Take your time and get your message out in a concise and clear manner. Remember, you want to create more than one, so you don’t have to say everything in one video. Invite viewers to subscribe, so they will receive a notice when the your next video is available.

2. Create a Branded YouTube Channel

You definitely need to create a branded YouTube channel for your company. Having a company channel will make it much easier for your customers to locate your videos. Make sure to include your channel in the correct categories, use tags, create a search engine optimized channel description, and include links to your website and social media pages. Consider making a welcome video that will display to those that haven’t visited your channel before.

3. Be Ready and Committed

After you have spent the time to create your branded YouTube channel, you need to start creating content. When using YouTube as a marketing tool, you need to look at it as a long-term marketing plan. This means that you need to create and publish on a regular basis in order to keep your viewers interested and coming back for more. Consistency is the key to a successful YouTube marketing plan. If you are not sure where to start with your first video, look to your email inbox, discussion forums and social media. See what questions others are asking that relate to your industry and answer them in your videos. Next thing you know, you’ll have an entire series of videos you’re producing.

4. Utilize YouTube Analytics

With YouTube’s analytics you are supplied with a lot of data designed to show you how your videos perform. Look over the information thoroughly and monitor how many views your videos get each month, the average watch time of the individual videos, how the viewer found the video, and more. Using YouTube analytics in conjunction with your Google Analytics will help you to identify if your videos are converting to visits to your website, sales landing pages, usage of your contact form and more. Understanding the data behind the scenes will help you to shape your video content in the future.

YouTube is one of the most popular and widely viewed sites for video content. You’ll find that most all of the 3rd party video apps even have a way for their users to download their video content for uploading to YouTube. Google Hangouts and Blab have their platforms setup so you can upload your video straight to your YouTube channel upon completion.

There is even a podcast on creating video hosted by Jeremy Vest of VidPow and of course Rocks Digital has more content on video and YouTube.

Have you tried using video as part of your marketing plan? Now is the time to add video to your sales toolbox.