They say an image is worth a thousand words, so just imagine the story a video tells? Instead of a fragment, a solitary slice of life, a video presents the whole story. When it comes to marketing, videos are a powerful way to display your products in an intuitive and lively way.
The global acceptance of YouTube and its move from cute cats into the business world gives companies the ability to use videos to brand their business and promote products with ease. YouTube is the second most visited website in the world; that is a global audience you can reach effectively and efficiently. Unlike online advertising which can get costly, YouTube is an incredibly inexpensive way to promote your ideas because it allows you to upload unlimited videos for free. It costs you nothing but a little time to get your adverts in front of the public.
But how can you make full use of this powerful yet free platform?
How can YouTube drive traffic to your website?
Here are some tips to help drive traffic to your website using YouTube:
- Create high quality video
High quality does not always mean high definition, but also refers to the quality of your content. You need to have a clear idea of what you are going to present your audience with and how to present it. Just make sure that your videos are fresh, attractive and interesting. There are stages to effective video making and if followed, they lead to better content.
- *Write up a story board and script as much as possible.
- *Record your video several times for practice.
- *Record a final rough cut.
- *Edit the video, first focusing on the visuals then insert animations, voice dubbing or background music where needed.
- *Always add your brand with website link and watermark and so on.
- *After editing, you should output the video in HD format (1280×720) that displays perfectly on YouTube.
2. ?Create a YouTube account for your business instead of using a personal account
While using YouTube, you should keep in mind that your account stands for your business rather than yourself and everything you post has an impact on your business. This is an official platform of your company, so make it official: Using your company name! Remember you can change your account name only once. In addition, you should fill out as much of your business profile as possible including profile, image and channel art. This helps users find you on YouTube.
3. ?Define categories and playlists for the videos
It is a good idea to divide your videos into different categories according to the content of your videos, especially when you have a lot of videos. If you put your videos in different playlists, you will enable your visitors to navigate through the videos more easily. This helps improve experience and increase the opportunity of driving your visitors back.
4. ?Be active on YouTube
Social media takes efforts and there is no exception for YouTube. It is wise to keep your YouTube account updated so your visitors are constantly aware of fresh content, otherwise, in a video land so full of options they will forget about you. Upload your videos on YouTube regularly, for example, once a week. And if you don’t have videos to share, you still have other ways to keep you active on YouTube: subscribe to videos from other channels; watch, comment and share their videos.
5. ?Optimize for your video
Once you finish uploading a video, you can make your video easier to access. Set basic info such as title, description and tags for the video; this makes your video search friendly. Add your website link in the description box to direct traffic to your website. What’s more, you can connect your YouTube account to other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. This cross-platform marketing strategy helps reach a greater audience and drive more traffic to your website.
Finally, be sure to promote your videos all over. Your website, your social accounts and within YouTube on a regular basis. Not everyone will notice the first time you post, and it just takes one influential person to share your video for you to get a flood of traffic. Keep at it and sooner or later you will be a regular Rob Reiner.