A GUIDE TO YOUTUBE PART ONE: WHY USE YOUTUBE?
Jan 11, 2013
YouTube isn’t just a place to see amusing videos of cartoon cats. Use it effectively, and this online giant can considerably increase your brand’s credibility.
YouTube is currently the third most popular website in the UK (Google and Facebook taking the top spots). The average user spends around 20 minutes on YouTube each time they visit the site, and every month UK internet users spend 184 million hours watching YouTube content.
Part of the reason for this success is YouTube’s affiliation with the king of all search engines. Back in 2006 Google bought the online video site for £883m, and since then the two brands have been merging to the point where you can now only start YouTube channel with a Gmail account. Whether or not you like Google’s domination of the web, it has many SEO advantages. With YouTube videos appearing in Google search results, your business has a much larger chance of appearing on the first page.
But what, exactly, should these videos look like, and why should the small business bother making them? After all, the main aim should be to increase sales, not to gain the number one spot in Google.
This is where the power of video comes in. Video is an excellent marketing technique as it engages with and informs your audience without simply selling to them. “How to” videos are giving viewers valuable information about your products and services, making you come across as the experts in your field (which, of course, you are).
To give you an example, we have recently filmed a series of YouTube videos for our client Holidays2Canada. These videos aren’t meant to be selling holidays to viewers, rather, to give them information about different destinations. The most recent videos we filmed were answering common questions travellers ask when booking a holiday, such as “when is the best time to go to South Africa?” or “What shall I pack for an Alaska Cruise?” These videos have had a good response so far, and with the addition of YouTube ads we have managed to get over 12,000 views.
If you don’t take our word for it you can also watch some of YouTube’s success stories online.
In the second part of this blog post we’ll be looking at how to set up a YouTube channel and use it effectively. Even if you don’t have any videos yet you can still create a profile and build a community.
In the meantime if you need any help with web videos (or anything else) feel free to contact us.
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