How To Use YouTube To Market Your Branded Content

YouTube is a great marketing tool and can help build brand awareness in record time. In this short guide we look at ways to utilise this fantastic resource to enhance your Video Marketing and Digital Marketing efforts.

From branding and strategy, to population and social media tips, here’s what your business needs to know when it comes to YouTube.

Brand Profiles

Building a strong brand involves targeting the right audience with the right voice, to create a sustainable and lasting relationship. Your brand profile should enable anyone anywhere to quickly understand who you are, what you do, and who you are targeting.

Done properly, this will define you as a business to the observer, help you create effective marketing strategies, and set the tone for customer engagement.

YouTube is the perfect channel for this, as long as you get it right. The use of sound and images can create a much richer user experience than text on a page, and is the ideal place to position your brand and its voice.

Brand Personality

Your brand personality is the identity you use to engage your target audience and the ‘feel’ you give your company. For example, the brand profile used by a pensions company is likely to be very different to that used by a surf shop.

It is important to get this right and make sure everyone dealing with the project is aware of it. This way they can carry it on through each medium, regardless of who is working on it and what platform is in question.

Small to Medium & Local Businesses

For big brands, often long established with a clear voice, creating your brand personality for YouTube is easier than for smaller local businesses. Years in their industry, huge budgets, and heavy offline and Digital Marketing activity usually means that brand had a voice already, we just hadn’t actually heard it yet.

Many local businesses struggle to find their voice, and they key is often building on your USP. Define it, promote it, shout about it.

Strategy

Before you do anything else, formulate your strategy. That whole ‘fail to plan, plan to fail’ thing applies here in truckloads.

Think about:

• How many videos you wish to share each month
• How long each will take to film and edit
• How much they will cost to produce
• Who will be in your videos
• Who will shoot and edit them
• Who you are trying to reach
• What message you wish to send
• How you will measure your success

How To Populate Your YouTube Branded Profile

As with any form of communication to your audience, think carefully about what you are going to show on YouTube.

You should:

• Create appealing, sharable content befitting your brand and its message
• Keep your brand personality consistent
• Structure content well so it is easily digestible
• Use hashtags
• Consider using paid search to boost your content

Other things to think about:

• Is the content informative and/or entertaining? If not is it likely to be good value to the user? Probably not. Use a different medium or platform for this content, or don’t use it at all
• Are you essentially re-using content? Don’t. Keep it fresh
• How frequently will you post a video? Test frequencies to see which is the best received and don’t dip in and out

What You Need To Do On Google+

If you’re not using Google+ yet, you should be. Originally the social stomping ground of the only the technically minded and curious, G+ is now the online haunt of 300 million monthly active users (April 2014) and a must have if you want a presence on YouTube.

YouTube’s One Channel requires a Google account to create it in the first place, and you should link your account to your Google+ page. The idea is that sharing will get a boost due to better search categorisation and improved visibility.

Build a Community for Your YouTube Channel

• Of course Google+ is far from the only social network, and while it is the best for anything Google, other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are essential to helping increase shares and raise brand awareness. Here’s an example from a local Southampton pub: Post by The Rockstone.
• Communities are essential for a successful YouTube channel. These engagers, likers and sharers are the ones spreading the word and promoting your brand in the social arena. They will also help you gauge what is working and what isn’t with their comments and input on each video your produce.
• Give viewers a reason to subscribe, appeal to their interests and keep them interested by continuing to produce high quality content.
• Create or find a community leader, someone who is the voice of authority in your community. Not like a teacher or parent, but someone who is seen to have figurative control over the channel and speaks for it. Their presence will help maintain structure and order.
• Communicate and support related channels with comments, likes and shares. You can’t build a community without being part of one.

Good Examples of Brand Marketing on YouTube

Here’s a few great examples of YouTube brand marketing videos to get you thinking…

• BlendTec
• Old Spice
• Hell Pizza
• GoPro

For more information about how video marketing will help your Content Marketing and Social Media campaigns, speak to us today.

Image Credits: 

YouTube Logo from BigStock Photo

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