In marketing, one of the most important skills you’ll need is the ability to compete on social media. And YouTube is perhaps one of the most important sites in any campaign, given that it’s effectively the world’s second search engine. YouTube attracts more searches than Bing/ Yahoo!, so marketers need to know how to promote their video content effectively.
Setting up a YouTube channel is simple enough, but there are a number of extra tricks you can use to make your channel more interesting and engaging. In this article, we’ll look at some of the most important.
The Brand Channel
On YouTube, you’ll want to set up a brand channel page. Brand channels offer maximum customisation options and the ability to theme and customise the page. If you’re working on a marketing project for a client, the brand channel is the only way to go.
In order to create a brand channel, you need to create a regular channel and then ask YouTube’s tech team to manually review and convert it. Before you put in that conversion request, set up your ordinary channel as best you can.
- Make sure you prepare a branded channel banner, a channel icon and an avatar. They should all match.
- Customise your page to match your branding, changing the background colour as necessary.
- Attach Google Analytic tracking code so you can see how your visitors are behaving from the start.
YouTube recommends that you don’t upload any video until your channel setup is complete. That’s because brand channels get exclusive features that aren’t available to regular channel holders.
Improving Your Channel
Once your videos have been uploaded, it’s time to use all of those extra features. YouTube has added a range of tools to make a marketer’s job far easier.
- Use the Featured tab to showcase the key videos in your marketing project.
- Build playlists to broaden the content you serve up.
- Post Bulletins to update your viewers on a regular basis.
- Add supplementary content using the Customised tab. Here you can build in content from external sources, effectively creating your own custom ad.
If your brand is aimed at a specific niche, consider applying filters to your page so that people outside of your target market are redirected to another piece of video content. This is helpful when promoting kids’ brands, for example, or content not suitable for under-18s such as alcohol advertising.
Finishing Touches
Once your brand channel is up and running, there’s lots more you can do to increase its marketing potential.
- Make sure your keywords are used in your video titles and descriptions.
- Embed plenty of links into your video description.
- Create custom thumbnails that stand out in search.
- Update your content often to build a subscriber base.
In marketing, one viral YouTube video can make the difference between a good campaign and a legendary campaign. Make sure you leverage the power of YouTube – and the brand channel features – to give your marketing campaign the best possible chance of making history.
Sam Wright is a journalist working with Brand Republic.
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