Optimizing YouTube for Your Business

There are many different ways that you can reach your target audience online. You may choose to interact on several social media channels. Only you can decide which ones work the most effectively for you. You can also choose to use YouTube to post compelling videos. Videos will satisfy those target audience members who are visual.

Why YouTube?

You may not be aware that YouTube is an extraordinarily popular social media channel and billions of people go to the YouTube website regularly (around the world). Of course, it is understood that making a video comes with its own set of challenges. That is especially true if you have never made a video or have very limited experience in that area. If that is the case, you will need to establish your comfort zone when it comes to making videos for business. There are several step that you will most likely find helpful when it comes to creating videos for business and evoking the sort of reaction that you are looking for.

• Choose your keywords and key phrases carefully: Before you do anything else at all, you will need to choose your keywords. Make sure that you choose them very carefully. You can make use of the YouTube Keyword Tool, which will make choosing  your keywords and key phrases relatively easy. That tool allows you to track the number of queries you have received (related to searches) in any given month. The way that it works is that you type in a keyword or key phrase and select “exact” to find out the number of people who are looking for your exact keyword or key phrase. That will give you a strong sense of whether you are hitting the mark the way that you should be.

• Know your competitors: As is the case with any social media channel, it is very important that you understand who your competition is and what they are doing or what they have that can trump you. Whichever number of results appears is basically the number of competitors that you have. It is an easy way to gauge. Of course, that means that you wand as small a number of videos as possible to show up! The keyword search tool is very effective and once you have performed the initial search, you can go back and hone your searches.

• Create the shell for your video: You are now at the stage where you can name your video file and create a thumbnail image. As always, you should consider content king. It truly is that. When it comes to how content is received (and viewed) by the search engines, they don’t recognize images. They only recognize and rank text. That is extremely important to remember. With that in mind, you need to understand that a keyword in your video file name is extremely important for search engine optimization (SEO). It is very easy to make that happen with a video that you post on YouTube. As far as your thumbnail is concerned, you should strive to make it as enticing as possible. You will be happy with the results if you can manage to do that. Of course, it is critical that you don’t only share an enticing thumbnail and then disappoint your target audience because your video has fallen short.

• Don’t forget the meta tags, video description, and video title: When it comes to creating the most effective title possible, you should strive to have your title no more than 100 characters. The writing should be short and clear. It is also important that you remember to include a keyword in your title. When it comes to the specifications of your video description, it has been proven to be most effective if you place a keyword or key phrase in the first and last sentence. Those two places are where the keywords/key phrases will get the most attention. That may earn you higher search engine rankings. Now onto the meta tags. With YouTube, you can tag your video with the most effective keywords/key phrases.

• Use closed captioning: You might have seen closed captioning on television programs (or at least the option of it). It is a good thing to include with your video because it allows more of your target audience members to have the opportunity to view what you are sharing. It also is an effective way to get the search engines to pick up your content. It is an easy and effective way to increase your visibility online.

• Use calls-to-action: Of course, it goes without saying that you don’t have total control over how many people actually view your video and whether those people choose to interact with you. However, you can provide them with the opportunity to interact with you. You can do that by providing a call-to-action that will make it as easy for them to interact with you as possible. In your call-to-action, you should either ask them for what you want or give them something that will enhance their interactions with  you. You can use similar calls-to-action as you would in a written article. You can ask a thought-provoking question, leave an insightful comment, etc. People will probably be more than willing to share their opinions with you.

• Once your video is complete, embed it: It is very important for you to embed your video on your website for maximum exposure and buzz. You will need to optimize the page on your website where you have chosen to embed the video and that is an excellent way to build your credibility. Your video is showing instead of telling people about your business and demonstrating what you can do and what you are capable of doing for them.

Conclusion

If you follow the steps that have been outlined here, you will create and share a successful video that will get a lot of positive attention. YouTube is an excellent social media channel and you owe it to your business to take full advantage of it to bring your business to the next level. From the beginning, it is critical that you have a video content strategy outlined and you should make sure to stick with it on a permanent basis. Of course, it is also very important to remember that you are not in a world by yourself and without other people, you will not have a successful business. With that in mind, you must remember that if other people have been instrumental in your success, you should make sure to acknowledge their contribution in some way.

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