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How to Leverage YouTube for your Small Business

We’ve all seen (and loved) videos of cats playing the piano or dogs salsa dancing, but YouTube is more than silly videos of our beloved pets. Did you know YouTube is the number two search engine after Google? Not only that, YouTube is host to over 144 million unique viewers each month. Why wouldn’t you want your business’ video content to be on YouTube? Uploading your video content to YouTube is an absolute necessity for any small business’ marketing campaign. Now that you know why you should have a YouTube channel for your small business, let's talk about how to leverage its power. Create a custom background One of the tasks to take on is creating a customized YouTube channel background, which needs to be consistent with your small business’ brand. Don’t worry if you’re not a Photoshop genius, there are plenty of free and easy-to-use Photoshop-esque tools to assist you. By keeping the background consistent with your brand, YouTube users who stumble across your channel will easily recognize your company and see what it is you have to offer. TIP: When customizing your background, it is important to include your website’s URL, as well as your company logo and any images of your products or services. Make your videos searchable Just like any solid SEO campaign for your company’s website, your videos won’t gain exposure on YouTube if no one can find them.Be sure to include video tags with keywords relevant to the videos as well as your brand. But don’t stop there. It’s wise to include similar keywords in your video titles and its descriptions. Do a bit of research and target one or two specific keywords. By doing this, your video will have better results in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) when those keywords are searched. TIP: Be careful which keywords you use. Do not use random keywords irrelevant to your content. We know it may be tempting to use the keyword “Justin Bieber” to get more hits, but it’ll only cause unwanted-attention, even could even get your video banned.   Organize your videos Make it easy for your viewers to find your videos by adding them to playlists. A playlist is a way to separate your YouTube videos into specific categories. For example, you could break your videos into the following categories: - Product Demos - Commercials - Company Interviews Use whichever categories make the most sense for your business, but be sure the categories are understandable for your audience. Once you’ve decided on categories, it’s time to create playlists. When creating your playlist, you’ll want to use similar keywords to describe the playlists as you did for the videos included in that specific playlist. Doing this makes it easy for viewers to understand which videos they’ll find within the playlist.  (And note: YouTube playlists also have a tendency to come up in the YouTube search results.) TIP: Be sure to have the newest or most relevant video within the playlist as your number one video. You can change the order of the videos under the “edit playlist” tab.  Make friends Don’t forget that YouTube is a social network, and like any other social network, it is important to network with other like-minded individuals. You don’t need to spend all day managing YouTube relationships, but take an hour or so each day to find and subscribe to other channels relevant to your channel, or leave a comment on their channel or featured video. We’re all humans, and as much as we may not admit it, we love compliments. So if you make them feel important, then they’ll likely return the favor and make you feel important as well. TIP: It’s important not to come off as spammy. Put some thought into your comments and those for whom you leave them. Whether it’s a corporate video featuring your CEO’s thoughts on new industry trends or a commercial to promote the launch of a new product, a well-crafted YouTube campaign is ideal for any small business. Follow our steps above, and you’ll be on your way to YouTube success. Looking to start producing video for you small business? Follow these tips and you’ll be creating great video content in no time.