One of the best places to start your video marketing effort is on YouTube. But before we start setting up an account, let us take a look at what we will be creating. I have gone ahead and pulled up the lynda.com YouTube channel. This is much like a profile page on other social media networks. Here you can see content that lynda.com has posted. We can choose the About tab to see information about lynda.com, along with links to other pages. We can see discussions, look at the entire channel, view playlists, or see an entire list of just the videos that a user can sort very easily. Now, most YouTube users won’t be interacting with your channel page until they subscribe.
They will do that by choosing the Subscribe option here on your channel, or on an actual video page. I will show you a video page by choosing on this video here about a GoPro. Here, we can also see the Subscribe button just below our user name. A user can also read information about this video. Here is another chance to add links back to your website, as well as introduce content that has keywords that your user is going to be searching for. Most users will find your content through YouTube search, and you will find that here at the top of the screen.
If we were looking for a video, say how to roast coffee, I could type that into search, and then I am going to get a list of results. Here at the top, we have some paid Advertisements from Starbucks Coffee and a company called We Are Stars. Below that, we have organic listings, from a variety of publishers, all about roasting coffee. A user can sort by choosing these filters, and they can look for content based on its regency, based on features, or even its duration. So to get started and set up your account, you will want to choose Sign In in the upper right-hand corner.
We will go ahead and sign in with the Google account that we have created earlier. Now, right away, Google is going to automatically sign us up for YouTube, it is that simple. But we have a very generic profile, which I will show you by selecting My Channel, here on the left-hand side. Now, since we are new, YouTube is actually going to offer us the chance to set up our channel and make some changes, where we can add our photo, edit how our name appears. If we want to use a business, which is definitely what you are looking at doing, choose the Click Here option, and then you will follow the steps to create your business channel.
So I am going to start one here for H+ Sports. I will choose a category from the drop-down and then agree to the terms. Then I will choose done, and there you go. Now we have created a channel page. Google is going to offer us a tour, and I am just going to choose the X button in the upper right-hand corner. Now, the first thing that you want to do when you set up your channel is added your profile photo and your channel art. Your channel art is very much like the cover photo that you have on Facebook, as well as the cover art that you have on Twitter.
To edit your profile photo, you will hover over it, and choose the pencil icon in the upper right-hand corner. Now, one thing that is really interesting about YouTube is that YouTube is actually connected to your Google+ account. So as a brand, you will likely have, or you should set up a Google+ account. Your channel icon, along with your brand name, will come from your Google+ account. So you will have to go to edit on Google+ to make those changes. I am just going to click cancel now. Now, once you have done that, you can come back and choose the Add Channel Art option.
Here you can upload a photo, or look through a gallery of images that are available to you. You can select one. Google is going to show you how it appears on the desktop, on TV, and in mobile. Once it looks right, or if not, you can adjust the crop here with the option on the left, rescale it, and then choose Select. And our cover art will now appear. Next, we should Add some information about your brand, and you will do that by selecting the about tab, and then clicking on the Channel Description option where you can insert a channel description.
I recommend that you describe your brand very accurately, and include any relevant information that you want to display to a user. You can also click the + icon next to email for business inquires, and leave an email Address where you can be contacted. Now, if I go back to our page, I will click on H+ Sports. When I hover over in this white area, you will notice a plus icon in the upper right-hand corner. If I select that, we can change the navigation, or even edit our channel settings. So if I clicked on Channel Settings, it is going to take me into what is called the Creator Studio.
You will know we are in the Creator Studio because, in the left-hand side, you will see this heading, Creator Studio, along with various navigation options that are specific to how we will manage our YouTube account. Now, at any time, anywhere on YouTube, you can get to your Creator Studio by selecting on your profile icon in the upper right-hand corner, and then choosing the Creator Studio button that displays here. Here, under Channel, we can look at these various options, and browse the settings that are available to us, and configure them how they need to be for your brand.
You can also view your Video Manager, and this is where all the videos you have uploaded will be seen. To upload a video, we will choose Upload in the upper right-hand corner, and then here you can drag and drop your video files, and then YouTube is going to walk you through the steps to provide a name and a description. Now, we will talk more about creating compelling content later, but at this point, we have looked at the high-level overview of YouTube.
The impact of video marketing
Video marketing is another relatively new component of online marketing. It involves producing video content and placing it on sites like YouTube. Now, you might be asking, “Why is it worth producing “video content for sites like YouTube?” Well, if I were to ask you what the second largest search engine next to Google is, what would you say? Yahoo? Bing? It is actually YouTube. This makes YouTube an incredibly valuable resource for driving brand awareness and traffic to your website. Video marketing can be used to show off your location, your products, or even help customers through their buying decision.
You might make a video to tell your brand story or create your own commercial and use it to advertise on top of related content. A well-titled and described video can appear in Google search results as well, driving yet another opportunity for people to discover your brand. Now there are several companies whose success was hinged on viral videos, but two come to mind. DollarShaveClub.com and Blendtec. Dollar Shave Club is an online subscription for razor blades. The company saw impressive growth after they posted a comedic viral video on YouTube. Within the first 48 hours of posting the video, they had over 12,000 new customers.
And in the first three months, they racked up over four and a half million video views. The video went on to generate press mentions, social media shares, and even case studies like this one. The fact we are still talking about Dollar Shave Club reinforces the potential value of the video. Now, Dollar Shave Club orchestrated the effort, they planned the entire video out and designed it to resonate with their target market. Instead of a typical short video about their product, they told the story through an unexpected video montage. They hired the right team to produce it because the quality was paramount.
Another brand that you may have seen on YouTube is Blendtec. The founder created a YouTube video series called, “Will it blend?” Here, he puts everything from bricks to golf balls in his blender to prove it is one of the best blenders you can buy. The videos were a direct response to customers curious if the Blendtec would blend things well, and so he created a video series that answered their question. And he jumped onto trends as well. When the new iPhone was released, he made sure it was dropped straight into the blender. Tom keeps putting items into his blender and now has over 750,000 subscribers to his channel.
These fans continue to share videos with their friends and engage with the brand by suggesting what should be blended next. There is a huge potential to build video content that will resonate with your audience, and your focus does not have to be to go viral. You may decide video marketing is ideal because it will help you along in your sales journey. Or maybe answering questions via YouTube will reinforce your brand is a commitment to customer service. It is possible customers or competitors are already making videos about your product or services. If that is the case, there is even more reason to jump in and leverage the power of video marketing.
The best impact of video marketing will come from building interesting and unique content. As we continue in this chapter, we will take a closer look at how to get set up on YouTube and the best practices for your video content.
