Youtube Can Help Your Business Too

When it comes to driving traffic to your blog or your website, there are several major sources to consider using, asides of course from search engines and doing good old fashioned search engine optimisation.

Actually, I wrote a lengthy article a while back on how to drive referral traffic to your blog, you can read it here when you’re done reading this post if you like.

Anyway, one of the methods I mentioned in that post was to harness the power of video medium, and more crucially, tapping into YouTube’s massive traffic source.

OK let’s assume you have some amazing and useful content, below I’ve outlined 8 smart ways to promote your YouTube channel and start building your YouTube audience.

Tip #1: Brand your YouTube channel
The first thing you want to do to encourage visitors to subscribe to your channel is to make it visually appealing.

Branding your YouTube channel helps you not only to establish your identity, but also allows users to instantly recognise you and your brand on YouTube.

Chances are you’re already using a unique brand image for your blog, which you’ve probably carried through to your social network profiles, so you should also carry it through to your YouTube channel, it makes perfect sense.

Tip #2: Use branded thumbnails in your videos
Continuing on the subject of ‘branding’, as well as customising your channel art, don’t forget to add some cool customised thumbnails to your videos. I’ve always done this for all of my videos so that folks who know me via my blog or social media outlets, can instantly recognise my videos when they see the thumbnails with my website logo.

Before you run off to create some custom branded thumbnails for your videos, here are some essential tips to keep in the back of your mind.

Use high quality, high resolution images, you want your thumbnails to appear as crisp as possible, regardless of what size format your videos are executed or viewed in.
Edit your images so they stand out, use attractive filters, maintain brightness etc.
If you’re using images to represent the content of your video, make sure they’re relevant and suitable for a wide audience.

Tip #3: Use annotations to create ‘call to actions’
From a viewer’s perspective, annotations can be really annoying at times, especially if there’s hundreds that pop-up at any one time, but when used correctly they can be very effective for getting people to take action and subscribe to your YouTube channel. Consider adding one or two annotations in your videos, ideally one halfway through and one just before your video is about to end.

Tip #4: Use custom links to create a highly visible, additional ‘subscribe link’
You already have a subscribe button placed in your YouTube channel for the public to see, but what I like to do is double the chances of someone hitting that subscribe link. So in my custom links I’ve created an additional ‘link to subscribe’, and named it ‘Subscribe To Channel‘ (see image below), I’d recommend doing the same for yours. You can also add your own call to action, for example: Subscribe For Updates or Subscribe For More etc.

Tip #5: Link your associated website, in this case your blog!
YouTube allows you to connect your associated website to your YouTube channel, this helps to improve their search results and also to verify your channel as the official representation of your brand on YouTube.

Simply go to your channel and hover your mouse over the navigational links section of your channel page. Hit the channel settings link to add your blog URL and link your associated website.

Tip #6: Cross promote your videos on other social platforms
This is very important in my mind.

When you create a new video, no one will ever know about it apart from your existing subscribers perhaps, and a few who happen to stumble upon it from time to time.

Don’t just sit around and wait for the views to come pouring in, promote it on all your other social networking sites, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, StumbleUpon, wherever you are, wherever you have an audience promote it. Also do some cross promotion on social sites, here are some examples:

• Share your videos on your Facebook page, then promote the Facebook post using Facebook ads (Boost)
• Tweet your videos on Twitter, then grab the status link and create a campaign through JustRetweet to get more social shares
• Share your videos in relevant groups and communities on Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn
• Pin your videos to your Pinterest boards
• Scoop your videos on Scoop.it, and suggest your videos to other relevant topics on Scoop.it

Tip #7: Create a compelling trailer video
YouTube allows users to create a channel trailer to welcome new visitors and entice them to subscribe.

Your welcome video doesn’t have to be long, just around 30 to 60 seconds long, however this is a great opportunity for you to really let people know who you are, and what you’re passionate about and how they can benefit from subscribing to your channel updates.

About LaraNet: We are a web design firm focused to help you to grow your business and communicate with your customers and prospects using two simple but powerful tools: 1) Interactive Website and 2) Internet Marketing Strategy on social networks like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc …
Whether you want to work with just a web page, or launch or improve your presence on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn or communicate with your customers through newsletters, or improve the location of your business in the search engines through Search Engine Optimization, or start marketing your products or services online, in LaraNet we can help you.

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