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Given the current situation resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, a lot of businesses are turning to YouTube in order to stay connected and get the message out. After all, if prospects and customers are staying home and not venturing out of their homes, what better way to reach them than via online video? The good news here is that starting and launching a new YouTube channel for your business is not only quick and easy, it’s also super-affordable. Here’s what you need to know.
Pre-launch
Before you launch a new YouTube channel, you’ll need to do some initial planning. For example, which of your employees at your business are going to be producing videos? What type of content are you actually going to produce? And how will you seamlessly blend your new YouTube presence into your overall digital marketing strategy? You’ll also need to do some preliminary market research to see what your customers really want. Most likely, they’ll want some form of “how-to” video for some of your products.
Launch
There’s a lot that needs to happen before launch date. For example, you need to create a brief trailer for your new YouTube channel, create a cover photo for your channel, and come up with some basic branding details for each video (such as the type of intro or outro you will use). In order to make your channel easy to find and SEO-friendly, you’ll also need to consider basic elements like tags and descriptions. And, most importantly, you’ll need to figure out how you want to integrate YouTube into your other digital marketing initiatives. The most popular option is to simply include a link back to the home page of your website within the video itself, as well as within the description of each new YouTube video.
Post-launch
After you upload your first video, you’ll need to commit to a consistent schedule of video production, such as one new video every week or so. Without a regular schedule of videos, customers will have much less incentive to subscribe. And you risk letting your YouTube presence stall out as you pursue other marketing avenues. That’s why it’s so important at the outset to decide on what type of content you plan to create. You might, for example, just create content around business conferences that you attend. In that case, it’s easy to come up with a video production schedule – just look at your calendar for the upcoming year. During the post-launch phase, you’ll also want to analyze data so that you can optimize upcoming videos. Asking viewers at the beginning and end of each video to “smash the like button” can go a long way in helping the YouTube algorithm find your videos and recommend them to others.
Final thought
At the end of the day, a new YouTube channel for your business might just be the best digital marketing investment you make in 2020. You’ll be connecting with customers, building your brand, and hopefully, laying the foundation for a huge leap in the success of your business once the global health crisis subsides.
