Video as an Essential Marketing Tool
YouTube has been around long enough that practically everyone has spent a few hours looking at people’s cat videos. It’s one of the best, and biggest places, for entertaining content, however, it’s increasingly become an essential marketing tool. With more than a billion active users around the globe and a total of one-third of people’s time being spent on watching videos, this is a gigantic platform that can potentially reach the most number of people.
Additionally, YouTube is also the second-largest search engine online, while being the biggest video search engine, and it gives companies a way to both improve their brand presence and their SEO.
Things to Consider
Although creating content on YouTube is the way to get started with a video marketing campaign, that’s not the only important factor in such campaigns. There are several different things that companies should be doing to optimize their videos so that they can rank higher in search engine results pages. After creating the video content itself, it’s important for companies to create metadata for the video, which is information that the viewers get about the video itself, such as the title, description, thumbnail, category, tags, and subtitles. When a video receives all of this relevant information, it’s easier for the platform to index it and have it appear in the search results when people start looking up similar videos.
On the other hand, there’s the content of the video itself, and the content should center around providing value to the viewers. There are several different types of videos that can achieve this goal, such as educational videos that demonstrate how a product can be used, as well as the benefits of using it, or interviews with other industry experts that can help in building the company’s credibility, trust and leadership in the market.
Content Value
There are also videos that viewers can find quite valuable — sharing customers’ experiences and reviews, because this way, the viewer can learn more about the company’s products without being given that information from the company itself. This makes the information a lot more trustworthy. And there are video blogs (vlogs) that showcase the daily life behind the scenes at the company, which can strengthen the relationship between a company and its consumers. After creating the video content and adding the necessary information so that platforms will be able to help in its distribution to the right people, it’s time to promote that content directly to the consumers. One of the easiest and best ways to have the content reach the target audience is through social media platforms, which YouTube itself has made incredibly easy to share.
Capitalizing on Social Media
Aside from sharing it on the company’s social media profiles, the video can also be shared on the company’s website or blog. In this case, it’s best if the video itself is embedded into the page, and it’s surrounded by other relevant information, such as related videos or other blog posts from the company on the same topic. These steps, as well as keeping all the company branding consistent throughout, and creating this content on a regular basis are all reasons why video is a great marketing tool.
Ronn Torossian is the CEO and Founder of 5W Public Relations. 5W PR is a leading digital pr and influencer marketing agency.
