When was the last time you saw a video on YouTube? I bet you've seen one today. YouTube is too huge and too popular for marketers to ignore.
If you don't have a YouTube channel, now's the time to start one.
If you have a channel and you never got it off the ground, now's the time to take action.
This article will take you through the process of setting up your YouTube presence, listing steps, tools, and important tips to get you started and moving forward.
1. Define your goals
If your goal is to become a YouTube star, you might be a bit late to the party: it's really hard to get noticed these days — too competitive. Stardom will take years of hard work to achieve because of the number of channels users have to choose from.
Even back in 2014, when I was reading about YouTube celebrity bloggers, one quote really stood out to me:
“We think, if we were coming to YouTube today, it would be too hard. We couldn't do it.”
That’s not to say, however, that you cannot achieve other, more tangible goals on YouTube. It's an excellent venue for business owners and marketers.
Here are three achievable goals that make more sense than fame from a business perspective:
1.1. YouTube for reputation management
Here's one thing about reputation management on Google: You’re never finished.
Even if your reputation is fabulous and you love every single result that comes up in the SERPs for your business name, you may still want to publish more content around your brand.
The thing is, for reputation management purposes, the more navigational queries you can control, the better:
YouTube is the perfect platform for reputation management. YouTube videos rank incredibly well in Google, especially when it comes to low-competition navigational queries that include your brand name.
Furthermore, YouTube videos almost always get that rich snippet treatment (meaning that Google shows the video thumbnail, author, and length of the video in the SERPs). This means you can more easily attract attention to your video search result.
That being said, think about putting videos on YouTube that:
- Give your product/service overview
- Show happy customers
- Visualize customer feedback (for example, visual testimonials beautifully collected and displayed in a video)
- Offer a glimpse inside your team (show people behind the brand, publish videos from events or conferences, etc.)
1.2 YouTube videos for improved conversions
Videos improve conversions for a clear reason: They offer a low-effort way for your customer to see why they need your product. Over the years, there have been numerous case studies proving the point:
- An older study (dating back to 2011) states that customers are 144% more likely to add products to a shopping cart after watching the product video
- Around 1 in 3 millennials state they have bought a product directly as a result of watching a how-to video on it
- This Animoto survey found that almost all the participants (96%) considered videos "helpful when making purchasing decisions online"
- Wistia found that visitors who engage with a video are much more likely to convert than those who don't
That being said, YouTube is a perfect platform to host your video product overviews: it's free, it offers the additional benefit of ranking well in Google, and it provides additional exposure to your products through their huge community, allowing people to discover your business via native search and suggested videos.
1.3 YouTube for creating alternative traffic and exposure channels
YouTube has huge marketing potential that businesses in most niches just cannot afford to ignore: it serves as a great discovery engine.
Imagine your video being suggested next after your competitor's product review. Imagine your competitors' customers stumbling across your video comparison when searching for an alternative service on Youtube.
Just being there increases your chances of getting found.
Again, it's not easy to reach the YouTube Top 10, but for specific low-competition queries it's quite doable.
Note: To be able to build traffic from inside your YouTube videos, you need to build up your channel to 10,000 public overall views to qualify to become a YouTube partner. Once approved, you'll be able to add clickable links to your site from within your videos using cards and actually build up your own site traffic via video views.
2. Develop a video editorial calendar
As with any type of content, video content requires a lot of brainstorming, organizing, and planning.
My regular routine when it comes to creating an editorial calendar is as follows:
- Start with keyword research
- Use question research to come up with more specific ideas
- Use seasonality to come up with timing for each piece of content
- Allocate sufficient time for production and promotion
You can read about my exact editorial process here. Here's a sample of my content roadmap laying out a major content asset for each month of the year, based on keyword research and seasonality:
For keyword and question research I use Serpstat because they offer a unique clustering feature. For each keyword list you provide, they use the Google search results page to identify overlapping and similar URLs, evaluate how related different terms in your list are, and based on that, cluster them into groups.
This grouping makes content planning easier, allowing you to see the concepts behind keyword groups and put them into your roadmap based on seasonality or other factors that come into play (e.g. is there a slot/gap you need to fill? Are there company milestones or events coming up?).
Depending on how much video content you plan to create, you can set up a separate calendar or include videos in your overall editorial calendar.
When creating your roadmap, keep your goals in mind, as well. Some videos, such as testimonials and product reviews, won't be based on your keyword research but still need to be included in the roadmap.
3. Proceed to video production
Video production can be intimidating, especially if you have a modest budget, but these days it's much easier and more affordable than you'd imagine.
Keeping lower-budget campaigns in mind, here are few types of videos and tools you can try out:
3.1 In-house video production
You can actually handle much of your video production in-house without the need to set up a separate room or purchase expensive gadgets.
Here are a few ideas:
- Put together high-quality explanatory videos using Animatron (starts at $15/month): Takes a day or so to get to know all the available tools and options, but after that the production goes quite smoothly
- Create beautiful visual testimonials, promo videos, and visual takeaways using Animoto ($8/month): You don’t need much time to learn to use it; it's very easy and fun.
- Create video tutorials using iMovie (free for Mac users): It will take you or your team about a week to properly figure out all its options, but you'll get there eventually.
- Create video interviews with niche influencers using Blue Jeans (starts at $12.49/month)
- Create (whiteboard) presentations using ClickMeeting (starts at $25/month): Host a webinar first, then use the video recording as a permanent brand asset. ClickMeeting will save your whiteboard notes and let you reuse them in your article. You can brand your room to show your logo and brand colors in the video. Record your entire presentation using presentation mode, then upload them to your channel.
3.2 How to affordably outsource video production
The most obvious option for outsourcing video production is a site like Fiverr. Searching its gigs will actually give you even more ideas as to what kinds of videos you might create. While you may get burned there a few times, don’t let it discourage you — there are plenty of creative people who can put together awesome videos for you.
Another great idea is to reach out to YouTube bloggers in your niche. Some of them will be happy to work for you, and as a bonus you'll be rewarded with additional exposure from their personal branding and social media channels.
I was able to find a great YouTube blogger to work for my client for as low as $75 per video; those videos were of top quality and upload-ready.
There's lots of talent out there: just spend a few weeks searching and reaching out!
4. Optimize each video page
When uploading your videos to YouTube, spend some time optimizing each one. Add ample content to each video page, including a detailed title, a detailed description (at least 300–500 characters), and a lot of tags.
- Title of the video: Generally, a more eye-catching and detailed title including:
- Your core term/focus keyword (if any)
- Product name and your brand name
- The speaker's name when applicable (for example, when you post interviews). This may include their other identifiable personal brand elements, such as their Twitter handle
- Event name and hashtag (when applicable)
- City, state, country (especially if you're managing a local business)
- Description of the video: The full transcript of the video. This can be obtained via services such as Speechpad.
- A good readable and eye-catching thumbnail: These can be created easily using a tool like Canva.
Use a checklist:
5. Generate clicks and engagement
Apart from basic keyword matching using video title and description, YouTube uses other video-specific metrics to determine how often the video should be suggested next to related videos and how high it should rank in search results.
Here's an example of how that might work:
The more people that view more than the first half of your video, the better. If more than 50% of all your video viewers watched more than 50% of the video, YouTube would assume your video is high quality, and so it could pop up in "suggested" results next to or at the end of other videos. (Please note: These numbers are examples, made up using my best judgment. No one knows the exact percentage points YouTube is using, but you get the general idea of how this works.)
That being said, driving "deep" views to your videos is crucial when it comes to getting the YouTube algorithm to favor you.
5.1 Create a clickable table of contents to drive people in
Your video description and/or the pinned comment should have a clickable table of contents to draw viewers into the video. This will improve deep views into the video, which are a crucial factor in YouTube rankings.
5.2 Use social media to generate extra views
Promoting your videos on social media is an easy way to bring in some extra clicks and positive signals.
5.2.1 First, embed the video to your site
Important: Embed videos to your web page and promote your own URL instead of the actual YouTube page. This approach has two important benefits:
- Avoid auto-plays: Don't screw up your YouTube stats! YouTube pages auto-play videos by default, so if you share a YouTube URL on Twitter, many people will click and immediately leave (social media users are mostly lurkers). However, if you share your page with the video embedded on it, it won't play until the user clicks to play. This way you'll ensure the video is played only by people who seriously want to watch it.
- Invest time and effort into your own site promotion instead of marketing the youtube.com page: Promoting your own site URL with the video embedded on it, you can rest assured that more people will keep interacting with your brand rather than leave to watch other people's videos from YouTube suggested results.
There are also plenty of ways to embed YouTube videos naturally in your blog and offer more exposure. Look at some of these themes, for example, for ideas to display videos in ways that invite views and engagement.
5.2.2 Use tools to partially scale social media promotion
For better, easier social media exposure, consider these options:
- Investing in paid social media ads, especially Facebook ads, as they work best for engagement
- Use recurring tweets to scale video promotion. There are a few tools you can try, such as DrumUp. Schedule the same update to go live several times on your chosen social media channels, generating more YouTube views from each repeated share. This is especially helpful for Twitter, because the lifespan of a tweet is just several minutes (between two and ten minutes, depending on how active and engaged your Twitter audience is). With recurring tweets, you'll make sure that more of your followers see your update.
- A project I co-founded, Viral Content Bee, can put your videos in front of niche influencers on the lookout for more content to share on their social media accounts.
5.3 Build playlists
By sorting your videos into playlists, you achieve two important goals:
- Keeping your viewers engaged with your brand videos longer: Videos within one playlist keep playing on autopilot until stopped
- Creating separate brand assets of their own: Playlist URLs are able to rank both in YouTube and Google search results, driving additional exposure to your videos and brand overall, as well as allowing you to control more of those search results:
Using playlists, you can also customize the look and feel of your YouTube channel more effectively to give your potential subscribers a glimpse into additional topics you cover:
Furthermore, by customizing the look of your YouTube channel, you transform it into a more effective landing page, highlighting important content that might otherwise get lost in the archives.
6. Monitor your progress
6.1 Topvisor
Topvisor is the only rank tracker I am aware of that monitors YouTube rankings. You'll have to create a new project for each of your videos (which is somewhat of a pain), but you can monitor multiple keywords you're targeting for each video. I always monitor my focus keyword, my brand name, and any other specific information I'm including in the video title (like location and the speaker's name):
6.2 YouTube Analytics
YouTube provides a good deal of insight into how your channel and each individual video is doing, allowing you to build on your past success.
- You'll see traffic sources, i.e. where the views are coming from: suggested videos, YouTube search, external (traffic from websites and apps that embed your videos or link to them on YouTube), etc.
- The number of times your videos were included in viewers' playlists, including favorites, for the selected date range, region, and other filters. This is equal to additions minus removals.
- Average view duration for each video.
- How many interactions (subscribers, likes, comments) every video brought.
You can see the stats for each individual video, as well as for each of your playlists.
6.3 Using a dashboard for the full picture
If you produce at least one video a month, you may want to set up a dashboard to get an overall picture of how your YouTube channel is growing.
Cyfe (disclaimer: as of recently, Cyfe is a content marketing client of mine) is a tool that offers a great way to keep you organized when it comes to tracking your stats across multiple platforms and assets. I have a separate dashboard there which I use to keep an eye on my YouTube channels.
Conclusion
Building a YouTube channel is hard work. You're likely to see little or no activity for weeks at a time, maybe even months after you start working on it. Don’t let this discourage you. It's a big platform with lots of opportunity, and if you keep working consistently, you'll see your views and engagement steadily growing.
Do you have a YouTube channel? What are you doing to build it up and increase its exposure? Let us know in the comments.
Great article Ann, I've been doing YouTube for 8+ years and from my experience its all about content and triggering emotions so stuff can go viral. Just think of Facebook like emojis, and pick one "emotion" and trigger people. So they interact with the video and share it. So either make them laugh, make them emotional, or make them angry. Also SEO helps a lot, I have few channels that get over 100.000 views per month because of SEO only and best thing is its passive. Other things that work very very well are giveaways and collaborations with other famous YouTubers. :)
How did I know you were going to post here? You had a lot of great content my friend.
Yes! Thanks for contributing your tips here, Nickey!
Solid YouTube guide! We just starting getting into YouTube wince bringing on a videographer last year and are excited to try out some of these tools and tips. Appreciate the honest and realistic expectations and insight.
Wow, such an awesome good with so many legit tools for YouTube marketers! I am excited to try out Topvisor and Animatron especially. Thanks for writing Ann! Probably the best and most detailed beginners YouTube marketing tutorial I've seen.
Awww that's such a nice compliment! Thank you!
Wow this article was great. I have little knowledge about youtube myself but in the future I certainly want to expand my services with youtube services such as optimization and management. This article has helped me massively with the entire structure of how and what is involved in having a Youtube channel and making videos. especially the 3.1 In-house video production part was very helpful I had no idea that it was all so cheap to do it yourself!! Thank you very much for this informative article Ann
You are very welcome, Elias! I am glad to know it was useful!
I'm wondering why Twitter, Instagram, Facebook are not taken into account here. Twitter is booming for business and sharing YouTube videos on Twitter can lead to some serious engagement.
Hi Simon, video marketing is a huge topic! This article was only focusing on Youtube but I am already working on the follow-up that says "It's not just Youtube!"
Hello Ann,
Read your post and really appreciate to you. Actually, I am trying to get more subscribers to my Company's YouTube channel, but somehow I can't get satisfied results. I've tried all process and strategies to gain more subscribers, but got unhappy results. But I read your article and understood proper strategy and I think with the help of this I would get good results. Thanks a lot for posting such a helpful information.
Thanks
I hope it will help to move things forward a bit! Let me know how it goes!
Great post Ann, I particularly liked point 5.1 regarding the clickable table of contents in the video description.
Thanks,
The idea about creating a clickable table of contents is so helpful. It's one of those things that I always see and think is SO HELPFUL, but forget to make on my own videos.
I know! I always feel much more willing to see what's inside the video when I can click right to the part that seems much more relevant to me!
Wow great guide for getting starting on YouTube! We have done a few videos for our business over the last couple years, but I am excited to start implementing some of these tips and tools to help grow it more moving forward. Thanks for putting this together Ann!
Solid content, thanks! I have absolutely no doubt it really is a hard work. My YT channel has been kinda on standby mode, maybe time to start working on it.
Nice Article. YouTube is indeeed an ocean of opportunity for businesses and optimizing it will go a long way to being noticed. So thanks Ann.
Very good Ann, I love to see how everything you say is fulfilled in our YouTube channel. We wanted to bet heavily with the channel for about 5-6 months, and I have to say that all the videos that we upload are positioned in front of the competition. Even so, we do not increase in subscribers and visualizations. I do not know if it will be better with time, we suppose so.
Someone who wants to tell some experience?
From experienced Youtubers I've heard the key is cooperating with other well-known Youtube influencers (in your and neighboring niches). I think this is something you could experiemnt with: Feature them in your videos (interviews, roundups, etc.)
Yes, we have thought about doing this, but there are not many youtubers of the theme, but if it is a very good idea to implement it, in fact it is true, the youtubers now collaborate a lot. Thank you very much for your advice.
Very good article.I embed my video on my blogpost and share that url.
Also my youtube channel has only 175 subscribers but it got monetized indirectly quicker.
Loved what you shared.
Thanks to such a wonderful article on YouTube set up. To optimize video channel or video there are no. Of points to be considered like what words are being spoken in videos use that words to work as keywords for Title and Meta Description. Make an engaging video. First 30 sec. are important for any video to attract viewers. The video should be clear. Last but not least Used video schema for the video to get rich snippet and embed videos on site. People like to watch videos to have more and more idea that how they can grow their business and Some people watch video for fun too.
All good points, Jenny!! Thanks! I think I missed a big part of how to create engaging video content! Sounds like a great follow-up for me!
This is well detailed article about youtube presence i ever read. i want to appreciate your efforts you put into this. i have been telling to my BI team about the importance of video advertising on youtube. it's low budget with high response tool for get users and conversions especially if you are belong to an e-commerce industry. i will share this with my team. Thanks and Good Job!!
Youtube advertising platform is something I definitely need to play more with! Thanks for the reminder!
Thanks Ann for such a wonderful article on YouTube set up. Today people like to see more videos because they give you idea about the product immediately. We are going to have Sales video for our shopping website CashFry.in and your article has helped us a lot.
People do not see that for each 10-minute video there are hours and hours of work behind them, but all that work is worthwhile since the video is the content of the present and future.
Great post Ann Smarty. It's nice to read such a dynamic content and I assure you that we will put it into practice.
So true! I once was approached by a company asking me to make video guides for them and I thought "There's no price I'd have the guts to put on it for me to justify the time investment". People don't realize how time-consuming that may be but it gets much easier with practice!
Wow! So many good ideas I haven't thought of. It might seem obvious to add a list of phrases starting with your brand name, but I've never used a technique like this. I will surely use this idea in the future.
Also, I'm new to the YouTube SEO sphere, and adding timemakrs with links is an awesome way to improve UX as well as your video performance.
At last, Drumup seems like an awesome tool!
Thanks for this. It really helped me!
Great to hear that it looks useful! Thanks for your kind words!
Wonderful information Ann and it comes at a great time for me! I've had a youtube account for years but really started to take it seriously as one of my main marketing tools this January 2018. About to hit the 6,000 subscribers mark and very excited about the growth. Just now beginning to Collab with other artists. Thanks so much and Warm Wishes, Kellie
Wow! Great results! Way to go, Kellie!
Hello Ann, thanks for sharing this beautiful post. You are right I have been thinking to start a YouTube channel since last 2-3 years and still finding myself nowhere.
Seems like I am lost in the crowd. But at the same it feels like a stock market. It's never a right or wrong timing. You should just start and watching it grow. I am considering its required hard work.
Good point on timing! There's never a better time than now!
Thanks for taking the time to write up this article! I espically liked the clickable links part, definitely something that will help!
Thanks again
Hello Ann,
Thank you for such wonderful advice, which is much needed for a successful business. Yes, Youtube is the most popular thing right now which every online businesses must consider to use in order to grow and gain converting traffic to their website. I really need this post and thank you so much for that, as I am planning to use a Youtube channel as well for my products this 2018.
Thank you and looking forward for another beautiful post very soon.
Good post Ann. But personally, I stopped using Canva for Youtube. I switched to Pixteller for my art, much more easy to create/edit.
Thanks! I'll look into that one as well!
Hi there! This is very insightful and I agree with you, YouTube is super relevant. I use it for one of my businesses (selling baking supplies). So, I create several recipe videos each month. I don't want the video to be overly ad-like, so my emphasis is always on the recipe. Having good content is key, just like it would be with a website.
The great thing about it is that I rank really high on Google with some keywords, with which I would have no chance if I had just written a blog post. The chances of ranking higher with YouTube than with a blog post are much higher.
That said, doing YouTube effectively takes a lot of time, unless you outsource. A 3 minute recipe video may take 3 hours of baking / cooking, 1 hour of video production, and 4 - 6 hours of editing. Then, you have to market your video, just as you would your blog posts. So you need to share it on social media, etc. (Unless you plan on simply embedding it into your webshop or blog post where you get million of visitors and don't rely on YouTube driven views).
One final thing to consider, embedding YouTube videos - in my experience - slows the page's loading time. I would not recommend adding a YouTube video to every product page, for that reason.
Hi Ann. This is a very helpful tutorial on starting a Youtube channel and growing it the smart way. I am glad I found it because I I know it will help me a lot- in the future.
The thing is:
I am still a relative beginner in SEO and I feel like I have so much to learn still. So the wise thing for me is to first make Google and Bing my friends, and then expand further. I'll basically have to since I know that video is the future that is coming fast.
Thank you again for your thorough guide, I enjoyed reading it and I bookmarked it.
So interesting Ann! I don't have a Google channel, but as you say, maybe is time to start one. And this guide it´s going to be really helpful for this task. Thanks for sharing your tips.
Your all information are good and acceptable but how to generate views except social media for videos on YouTube. can we use clickbait/linkbait theory for videos also.
Spectacular YouTube guide !!! Thanks Ann
Thanks for the information, very helpful!
Such a great read, Ann. I agree to what the quote stated about coming on Youtube the competition has gone up numerous notches and it's difficult to make your presence visible these days. I would also like to say that I have used Canva and yes, it works beautifully when it comes to producing videos and infographics. Also, the point where you talked about using social media for views is extremely useful for novices becoming marketers. When it comes to social media promotion, do you think buffer would do the trick? Keep up the good work and wish you luck for future articles Ann.
Thanks for the kind words! I don't really use Buffer but any tool won't do the trick when it comes to social media. It all comes down to building your social media following and investing in some ads on your way there!
I suggest anyone getting started with YouTube (especially a small business with limited resources) should make brief and simple videos in the beginning to gain skills, limit the time and money they put into them, and learn from the analytics how audiences respond.
When they really understand what they are doing, then they can ramp up their commitment.
I've see clients spew out a massive number of videos without understanding how to manage the effort. The result is poor rankings and a waste of time and money. YouTube can have a steep learning curve for some people, so quality is more important than quantity in the beginning.
This is a great piece of advice, Scott! Many thanks!
Great ideas for optimizing YouTube video and extremely useful information for anyone wanting to set up a YouTube Channel. Thanks for sharing with us!
Considering YouTube's censorship and restrictions for small youtubers, you should really focus on writing a similar article for other video sharing platforms, such as DailyMotion.com and Rumble.com.
Great tips on growing YouTube Presence. I have just started a new YouTube channel and these tips will really help me!!
Great ideas for optimizing YouTube video and extremely useful information for anyone wanting to set up a YouTube Channel. I would like to add two open source video editors that readers may find useful openshot and shotcut.
Thanks! I'll check them out!
Wow! what a great idea to optimize YouTube channel and videos, this guide will extremely helpful to get more susbcriber and views.
''If your goal is to become a YouTube star, you might be a bit late to the party''
Disagree - Most of the YouTubers I watch all started in the past 2 years and have 1+ million subs each... If you're putting out unique & interesting content within a niche, and you're active in this niche community (commenting, engaging, consistent video uploads, high quality), you can grow very rapidly. (And that's without any YouTube SEO).
Yes, it's still doable but it's more of a full-time job than a marketing instrument at this point. This guide has businesses in mind, those looking to expand their marketing channels rather than going Youtube full-time... But I'd love to read about your friends and how they did that if you are willing to connect me to them. Thanks for your comment!
Very helpful growth steps. Youtube is the future.
Ann: I'm a huge YouTube consumer and am in the editorial calendar phase for my company. Thank you for the excellent primer. Your point #5 had me laughing at myself. Many YouTubers have successfully kept me watching past the 50% point by using teasers. "...keep watching, in just a minute I'll show you a free hack for... but first...." I fall for it EVERY time, but now that I realize the importance of getting past the 50% point, I may become a tease too! :)
Great point on using teasers! Thanks so much!
im waitng for my youtube channel reactivation :(
the thumbnails and titles of the videos, it is very important to specify in both things what you will find in a video. Use flashy images -such as a light woman of clothes- and a title that has little or nothing to do with your video and its content, I will not say what it can cause, because we are already seeing it in the previous points. It is again a sanction such as the closure of the channel.
Just overcoming shyness is my biggest obstacle to making some impact on YouTube. It is difficult to create a brand and add personality without getting in front of the camera. When I listen to my own voice I cringe - that southern accent.
I have the same issue, that's why I started ordering voiceover on Fiverr!