If you’re not using YouTube to market your product or service you’re missing out on a lot of potential customers and losing sales. Creating lots of YouTube videos is a highly effective way to rapidly grow your audience.
Let’s look at some of YouTube’s statistics:
- More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month
- Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month
- 100 hours of video are uploaded every minute
- 70% of YouTube’s traffic comes from outside the US
- It’s the second largest search engine after Google (and Google owns YouTube).
How are you going to grab slice of YouTube’s massive traffic pie?
Any successful plan consists of specific strategies or steps.
Here are the 10 steps to grow your audience on YouTube:
1. Know which audience you wish to target
Within each niche there are people who buy products. The reason they purchase these products is because they provide a solution to a problem or need that person is struggling with.
For instance a person may have flat feet that causes them pain while running. To alleviate the problem they purchase customized foot orthotics. So if you (the seller) wanted to sell custom foot orthotics you would target athletes or more specifically runners (sprinters, joggers, marathoners). This would be your target audience.
2. Do keyword research
So now that you’ve chosen a targeted audience (runners) and decided what products to sell (foot orthotics) you need to find the keywords associated with foot orthotics. If you insert your seed keyword “foot orthotics” into WordTracker’s free keyword tool it generates a list of 66 related keywords.
Here are 10 of them:
ankle foot orthotics
orthotics posting heel for a supinated foot
foot levelers orthotics reviews
foot orthotics calgary
pediatric foot orthotics
custom foot orthotics online
flat foot orthotics
foot orthotics runners
foot pain after orthotics
custom foot orthotics
Create 10 videos by targeting one keyword phrase per video.
3. Create a content calendar
The more videos you produce the more traffic and sales you’ll generate. The best way to achieve this on a regular basis is to create a calendar that displays the date you’ll finish creating your video and what keyword phrase to target. Creating a video production schedule will help keep you on track.
4. Create high quality videos
Create a 2-3 minute video for each keyword phrase. This can be a slideshow (consisting of a series of images with musical background), an interview with a practitioner or a demonstration of how the product works. You don’t have to spend 1000s of dollars to produce a professional video. These days you can create high quality videos by just using your iPhone and free editing software such as iMovie.
Watch my review of iPhone Video Hero – a comprehensive course for creating professional videos just using your iPhone or iPad.
5. Edit out your mistakes
The best videos are produced during the editing process. For PC users you can use Camtasia. For MAC users you can use iMovie (free) or Screenflow (paid). Both softwares require a bit of a learning curve to master them but it’s fun learning. During the editing process you can add text, images, annotations, music, sound effects and remove ums and ahs.
Watch How To Edit A Movie In iMovie
6. Optimize your videos
Uploading your video for YouTube is just the beginning of marketing your videos. To get your videos to rank on the first page of Google and YouTube they should be optimized so they can achieve first page rankings in Google and YouTube.
Here’s what you should do:
- Use your keyword in the video file name (ie foot orthotics.mp4)
- Create a captivating title (so viewers want to watch your video)
- Add your keyword to the beginning of the title
- Repeat your title in the description plus include a transcript of your video content
- Add the URL of your website (where you want to redirect your visitors) in the description
- Include your keyword and related keywords in the tags
- Upload a transcript of your video content (so search engines will index the keywords within your content and create captions under your videos).
7. Create “call to action” annotations
Annotations help viewers take action while viewing your video. These can be in the form of graphics (best) or text. It’s best to add these during the editing process however you can also add text (within YouTube) after your video has been uploaded.
Example annotations
- Redirect viewers to a related video at the end of your video
- Create a subscribe button so viewers subscribe to your YouTube channel
- Ask viewers to download a free report by sending them to a landing page with an opt-in form
- Ask viewers to share your video with others on their social media channels
8. Promote your videos
The main purpose for creating lots of videos is to attract viewers and make sales. If you don’t market your videos to a large audience your sales will suffer.
Here are some highly effective methods for marketing your YouTube videos:
- Email your list of subscribers
- Share the video on your social media channels (ie Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
- Embed the video on your blog and related blogs.
- Find blogs related to your niche and leave comments that include a link back to your video
- Submit your video URL to social bookmarking sites (I use social monkee for fast and easy online distribution).
- Search for related videos on YouTube and leave comments.
9. Analyze your statistics
If you don’t monitor which video received the most views, what keywords people are using to find your videos in the search engines and how long people are watching them you won’t know how to improve your video marketing campaigns.
Log in to your YouTube Analytics account to monitor the effectiveness of your videos. It will show the number of views, estimated minutes watched for the top 10 videos over the last 30 days, 90 days, year or lifetime. You can also analyze which country your views came from (demographics), the sources of your traffic, what devices people are using and how long viewers watched your video (audience retention).
10. Be consistent
You won’t attract a large audience at the beginning of your video marketing campaign however as your videos gain top rankings in Google and YouTube your traffic will steadily increase. The key to success is to create lots of videos on a consistent basis (ie weekly) by sticking to the schedule you created with your content calendar.
And now I’d like to invite you to subscribe to my free e-course
21 Highly Effective Ways To Promote Your Website
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