The benefits of using YouTube for business

If you’re producing content for your website, why not consider something other than blog posts? Consumers love to watch videos. Sometimes, there’s just not time to read a lengthy blog post, but a short clip can be entertaining to watch. So why not consider making YouTube a part of your business strategy?

Before dismissing the social media platform, it’s important to know what benefits you can get out of using YouTube for your business:

Reach

If you’re wanting to extend your reach, YouTube is the place to do it. YouTube has over 1 billion users, which accounts for over one-third of all users on the Internet. In fact, YouTube even reaches more 18-34 and 18-49 year olds than any cable network in the US. If you’re wanting to expand your reach and engage new customers in a creative and fun way, then YouTube is the platform for you.

Attention

When you’re making content, you want people to pay attention to it. YouTube is a great way to capture your audience’s attention. Every day, users on YouTube watch hundreds of millions of hours of videos, and will on average spend 40 minutes on the website per session. This continues to rise, with the amount of time viewers watch videos for increasing by 50% year after year. People are more likely to interact with video than other types of content, so why not find a whole new segment of potential customers who use YouTube.

Targeting  

Like other social media platforms, YouTube’s video ads allow you to target your desired audience. Before you start, just make sure you have done your research and know what audience you’re wanting to target. If not, you may be targeting the wrong people and could miss out on potential customers.

YouTube’s targeting options include:

• Demographics: filter audience by age and/or gender.
• Location: geographical filtering allows you to target audiences by country, state or postcode.
• Language: this allows you to communicate with people in their native language, and targeted audiences are selected by the language settings in their browser or YouTube account.
• Interests and Topic: by analysing what a user has previously browsed, you can understand what their interests are and target them.
• Third party: using third-party data, you can find potential customers who have viewed other shopping websites with similar products or services.
• Keyword: select a keyword relevant to your video and what people will search for.
• Remarketing: targeting those who have previously visited your YouTube channel, videos or website.
• Exclude a group: use negative targeting to exclude a group from your targeting.

You can use these options to target the right audience and achieve the most engagement.

SEO

Believe it or not, there are actually SEO benefits to having YouTube videos. Sometimes, a video offers the better result than websites. People often search for instructions, and it can be far easier to watch a video showing you how to do something, than to read step by step instructions without any visual aids.

As Google is the parent company of YouTube, videos will be indexed immediately. Unlike your website, you don’t have to wait around for your videos to be crawled.

New YouTube videos tend to get an SEO boost, so make sure you post new YouTube videos on a regular basis. Not only will this help with your SEO, but your viewers will come to expect videos to be released on a certain day of the week or within a certain timeframe. Having no schedule leaves your viewers guessing about when there will be new content and makes it harder to build customer loyalty.

Embed your videos

Using YouTube gives you new content to be able to share on social media. However, you can also post your clips on your website. This means the clips will have exposure to those who don’t use YouTube, but visit your website. Videos featured on your website will also contribute to the total watch time of your channel, and therefore improve your SEO.

If you’re going to have an embedded video on your website, make sure there is only one per page, and to include closed captions.

optimize your videos

If you’re going to consider making a YouTube channel and producing videos or making ads, you want to make sure you optimize your videos. This can be done by including:

• About section: a blurb about your company, website link, contact details. You won’t get as much traffic flow increase if you don’t include these details.
• Logo: use your logo as your avatar on YouTube. If you’re making videos, you can even consider branding these, by including your logo at the start, end, or in a corner throughout the clip.
• Cover photo: YouTube lets you include cover photos, so make your channel look good by uploading a branded photograph.
• Video image: when you’re searching for videos on YouTube, you see that static image before you click into the video link. Make sure you pick an appropriate image. Make sure these images are consistent with your branding.
• Title: make sure you pick google titles for your videos. Viewers will be annoyed if your title is misleading. You also want to make sure it’s interesting enough for people to click on in the first place. Including your keywords in the title is a good place to start.
• Descriptions: don’t leave the descriptions of your clips blank! While it probably won’t help your clip go viral, it will give people an idea what the video is about. It will also help search engines understand what the clip is about.  
• Closed captions: rather than using YouTube’s often unreliable automatic captions, consider using closed captions. This means those that are deaf, have hearing difficulties and ESL viewers will be able to watch your videos. Discovery Digital Networks also found adding captions increases YouTube views, with a 13.48% increase in views in the first 14 days after adding captions.  

If you’re considering expanding your business strategy, YouTube is a great option to consider. However, if you’re going to use YouTube, make sure to invest the time in making original, creative videos that not only engage your audience but portray your brand’s personality. This way, viewers will be more motivated to share the clip and click through to your website.