Creating a streamable video channel for your business
We all love video. Every one of us has spent time streaming content from Netflix, Amazon and YouTube. Creating entertaining, informative, streamable content for your small business is not only easier but also more important than ever before. Our small business guide to video marketing is designed to teach you the basics so you can learn to set up your own streaming channel on YouTube.
From giving your customers content to absorb and providing you another outlet to reach potential clients, videos come with many pros. In this blog, Small Business Guide to Video Marketing: Streaming Basics, we note one plus that many business owners may not think about is that Google prefers video content shared to YouTube over any other platform (even if your content is more popular on other platforms!)
This huge shift in the importance of video in Google search results occurred way back in 2007 when Google introduced its Universal Search function. Universal Search allowed Google search to display web results, videos, news and images all on one page rather than on separate pages.
Now you may be thinking, why does YouTube have such a boost in shared content over anything else (ex. blog posts, Tweets, etc.)? The answer is much less complex than we thought. YoutTube is just an extensively dense and valuable hub of information that is owned by Google. In fact, YouTube was the most common video hosting site on the internet before Google purchased it, so of course, Google is going to show off its own information (via YouTube) before it shows any other video hosting site or site in general.
Many people have either a smart TV, which has YouTube built into it, or they watch video content on their mobile devices. Creating your own YouTube channel is smart – but creating a streamable set of content forit is even smarter.
When you watch video content, you often watch the next episode- creating that exact same thing for your business YouTube channel is a smart idea. But it has to be the right content.
How to create your own streamable channel:
How-to and entertaining content is ideal for this episodic content model, so if your business lends itself to that type of content, here’s how to get started:
First, pick a topic.
You should be able to create at least 3 – 5 videos on this topic. Let’s pick “how to fit a pants sewing pattern” (we have a number of clients who are sewing pattern designers.) This topic is broad, well-searched and it’s easy to create multiple videos for it. Don’t worry that someone else has this same topic – you approach this in your own unique way.
Then, create three to five videos on this topic
Topics such as how to create a pant sloper using a sewing pattern, how to measure yourself for a pants sewing pattern, how to look at the wrinkle lines on a pair of pants and use that information for fitting. Each of these videos – with optimized titles – form a complete series. On your YouTube channel, these offer your audience a chance to stream a series of videos that comprise an entire topic, or watch just one.
The beauty of this is that video how-to content is evergreen – you’ll get searches for this years after you post this type of content and gain new subscribers and customers as a result.
Now that we understand why YouTube is such a force in the marketing world it’s important to determine how we, as marketers and business-owners can spin this to our own advantage.
Optimize your videos and your channel:
This all comes down to optimizing the video titles and descriptions – getting your videos to pop up first when people “Google” something that aligns with your brand. Here are some things you can do to boost the popularity of your videos:
- Create clear and concise video titles
- Use strong video tags
- Use video keywords (ex. people often search for “how to” videos so “how to” would be a powerful keyword-phrase)
- Ask people to like, comment, and subscribe
- Promote your video content everywhere you can
- Blogs, emails, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.
While blogging, emailing, and posting to Facebook all are brilliant marketing tools for your business, video content is continuing to grow in popularity by the day and has no intentions of slowing down. Storytelling with your videos is an essential part to their success, check out our blog on that here.
Are you looking to grow your marketing audience on YouTube and need some assistance? We offer 1:1 coaching in 30-minute and 1-hour blocks on content brainstorming, setting up your channel, planning how your video space is set up, helping with equipment decisions and techniques. For as little as $66, you can work directly and personally with a marketing expert who can help you with your video marketing.
Not quite ready for 1:1 but want our Video Rocks Guide to Small Business Video offer? Just drop a note in the message area and we’ll send you a link to that!