Video is the new bright, shiny thing in B2B marketing.
Do a Google search and you will be hit with reports, blog posts and articles about the ubiquity of videos and its impact as a marketing medium.
But when you roll up your sleeves and start getting your hands dirty, you face questions that have no ready answers.
What metrics should you focus on while reviewing analytics?
Should you avoid flashy effects, or can they work sometimes?
What’s the best way to optimize the video for SEO?
What types of Calls to Action work best -you need to be good at this, especially since you are not posting videos for shits and giggles.
Figure out the answers and you will be able to push your video to everyone in your target demographic. Mess up, and your videos will be banished to a barren, dystopic wasteland where the sun does not shine.
Get some inside help
This is when the freely downloadable YouTube Creator Playbook is a lifesaver. It’s to a video marketer what a nutrient soaked towel is to an intergalactic hitch-hiker.
However, be warned. It’s a huge document, and all 91 pages are stuffed full of tips, diagrams and lists of best practices.
All I am saying is, you should probably block some time in your calendar to take it all in.
But I did some of the hard work for you. Check out these points if you are short on time and need to show something to the boss in 5 minutes.
1. The first 15 seconds are crucial
Use the kind of content during the first few seconds that jumps up and grabs the viewer by the throat. Don’t be boring here, more than ever. Also, don’t save your fire for later- most viewers might not stick around for that long.
2. Make love to YouTube analytics
YouTube has a very detailed and powerful analytics tool running behind the scenes. Use it to gain viewer insights, know where they come from and find out whether they stick around till the end.
Pay special attention to Audience Retention, Subscription and Community Engagement graphs to understand your viewers better.
3. Don’t pimp yourself
If you want your videos watched, quit talking about yourself and and focus on your viewers. Respond to viewer comments with your own immediately, create videos based on viewer input and send bulletins to channel subscribers.
And spending more than 5 seconds during the first 15 seconds on beating your own drum is like turning the ring over to Sauron or the droids to the Empire- the dark side has won and your video is as good as dead and buried.
4. What now?
Every viewer will ask this question after they have watched your video (congratulations, BTW).
Use different types of calls to action like in-video mentions, annotations, end cards and in-video graphics to get them to subscribe to your channel, visit your site, share it on Facebook or Twitter and leave comments. You can add these CTAs anywhere in the video.
5. Keep the videos coming
YouTube’s ranking algorithm rewards regularity. Play around with frequency until Analytics tells you that you have hit pay dirt. Then use Scheduled Publishing to automate the publishing and features like Playlists and Video Responses to link videos.
But don’t get too hung up on schedule. If there’s something topical happening in your industry ride the tide and push out relevant content.
6. Themes aren’t only for weddings
Don’t just create a huge, 45 minute video on one topic. Break it into bite sized chunks and release them regularly over a number of days. If you are promoting an event, start some days early to get that pre-event buzz.
And if you have other companies at these events, collaborate and cross promote with them. Access their audience.
7. No, I haven’t forgotten optimization
You have to optimize your videos for search engines and people. For the video itself make the title, tags,description-the metadata- eye catching and descriptive. Use the YouTube Keyword Suggestion Tool to get help with popular keywords.
Also upload a hi-res thumbnail with an interesting visual from the clip that forces the viewer to click on it
But don’t forget the channel page. Create a background and avatar that reminds people of your brand. Link back to your other online properties. Also, make full use of channel templates, modules like Featured Video and Feed to drive views
8. Localize your content
In case your company operates across time zones and cultures, caption your videos and provide transcripts in multiple languages. YouTube’s auto-translate service can automatically translate English into certain languages, but why depend on an algorithm to do that for you?
You could also re-edit or adapt videos, or even create entirely new ones to reach new audiences. And if you started out with an English video but want it to be seen by Spanish speaking audiences, change the metadata as well.
9. Weave a web
Your videos can’t exist in isolation, only on YouTube. Post them everywhere- on Facebook, Twitter and blogs. Put them in newsletters, landing pages and homepages- video improves the CTR of emails and increase the time on site of visits for individual web sites.
Reach out to authority bloggers and sites in your industry with whom you have prior relationships and point them towards your video. Don’t blast them with irrelevant content, though
Which of these thing are you not doing with your YouTube videos?
Image courtesy krossbow