When it comes to social media marketing, YouTube is often treated as something of an also-ran, a little sister we forget. Yet as social media content skews more and more to the visual, YouTube has immense potential to improve your brand’s online presence. How? Let’s take a quick look.
YouTube Branding Is Fast-Growing
Would you be surprised to learn that YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine — after Google, which is owned by the same company? It’s also the third-most visited website globally, coming in behind only Google and Facebook.
The pandemic has only accelerated the growth of streaming video overall. With the convenience of YouTube TV and its associated services, more eyes than ever before spend time here daily. Think 100 hours of video uploaded every minute and a billion visitors a month.
How many of those could be your new fans and customers?
YouTube Is Part of Alphabet Companies
Alphabet Companies owns YouTube. As mentioned above, this is the same company that owns Google, which is why YouTube results feature so heavily in Google SERPs. Google’s Universal Search blends these results with its own (heavily favored) properties.
Many of us want to know how to monetize YouTube directly, but it’s always worth remembering its “little sister” relationship with the world’s leading search engine. With video consumption on the rise, videos are being favored in search returns…and Google loves them.
Trust Generation
The days of hard-sell marketing are long gone. And part of the art of modern soft-sell is building trust and credibility with your customers. YouTube how-tos, tutorials, and guides represent a way to build brand authority and trust among your customer demographic.
People also respond well to a face and a personality, far better than to a monolithic, impersonal brand, so humanizing is an important strategy.
Of course, simply owning a YouTube channel won’t achieve this alone. You’ll need to make an investment in quality, helpful content, too. You’ll also need to make the effort to create a solid brand identity — custom graphics, relevant descriptions, high-quality videos, and a responsive, moderated comment section.
About Brand Personality
On that note, remember that anyone can create a YouTube channel. So to make it a sleek, professional business tool, you’re going to have to put in the same branding efforts.
Showcase your brand’s personality! There are many ways to do this, so we won’t dive in too deep, but just remember that consistent tone, image use, gentle humor (where appropriate), and general humanization of your brand are key to success in any marketing channel, YouTube included.
Put Yourself on the Map
Social media marketing isn’t just about how you grow your brand as an influencer, but how you can connect with other key influencers in your industry.
Did you know over 70% of brands say that they find YouTube videos to be the most effective way to power up their influencer marketing? Influencers can help you to brand awareness and interest, and many a good partnership has driven business goals.
Create Extra Income
As mentioned above, most brands look to YouTube as a way to also provide direct extra income through monetization. It offers several ways to do so:
- AdSense for Video: This is what most people think of as “YouTube monetization.” It’s simple to use. AdSense is free and you have the option to apply it to your videos too. It’s a small income at the start. Later on, however, you can leverage it powerfully.
- Sell Merch: Merchandising through video is a great way to carry your online brand presence into the offline space.
- License Content: This depends heavily on having content people want, so it relies on either mass appeal or a viral video. However, licensing your content to the media, online news, and other creators can also drive income.
Remember, happy viewers who believe your brand enriches their life are happy to buy your products, too.
Focus on Other Social Channels
As with all online marketing, YouTube does not exist in a vacuum.
It’s the perfect way to create additional exposure for blogs. Embedded videos help reduce bounce rate, increase page dwell time, and encourage engagement. Remember that duration of stay on your site pages is a metric that search engines use for ranking, too, so fast click-aways aren’t good.
An engaging video is a great way to keep people on your site, interested, for longer. Provided, of course, you stick to best practices like fast load and convenience of use. YouTube can also help develop compelling calls to action for things such as your email marketing efforts and other conversions.
While direct monetization of your YouTube channel is part of its value to your brand, it’s not all YouTube has to offer. As you can see, it’s also a way to boost your brand reputation and visibility. It will also strengthen trust and credibility, and engage meaningfully with customers.
