YouTube is the world’s largest video repository and the second largest search engine in the world. Neither of those facts should surprise you since 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

• Almost five billion videos are watched on YouTube every day.
• One billion of those views are on smart phones.
• The average mobile viewing session lasts more than 40 minutes.
• The number of YouTube channels earning six figures per year is up 50% over 2016.
• Only nine percent of U.S. small businesses are using YouTube to market their goods and services.

YouTube For You

YouTube is owned by Google. When your video is popular on YouTube, it also ranks highly in the Google search-engine results. That means that your video gets lots of organic (free!) traffic, making it even more popular. What’s not to love?

If the number of YouTube daily views and viewers just cited got your attention, the tiny percentage of U.S. businesses actually taking advantage of the YouTube-traffic tidal wave should have made you positively apoplectic.

Considering the ease of uploading videos with just a few clicks, YouTube marketing is an easy platform to try out. Videos, just like webinars, are the next best thing to face-to-face marketing.

We are all visual people, and, given the choice, most of us would prefer watching a marketing message than reading it.

Even though Google’s annual cost of hosting and maintaining YouTube exceeds $6.35 billion, the platform is free to you, the user. You have the ability to easily reach hundreds, if not thousands, of targeted prospects with your videos, which are automatically indexed on the the two biggest search engines in the world.

YouTube Hacks

Search Suggestions. As mentioned, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. When you begin entering words in YouTube’s search box, it will start offering suggestions for your search. These suggestions come from the immense database of the most popular searches on the site. For example, if you input “Microsoft certification,” YouTube gives you eight suggestions for popular searches beginning with or using the words “Microsoft certification.” Use these suggestions as inspiration for the titles of your own videos. Taking advantage of popular keywords will allow your videos to be found more easily, thus increasing your organic traffic.

Choose Your Title, Then Make Your Video. Sounds backwards, doesn’t it? But choosing your title first, based on search suggestions, and then creating a video that fulfills the promise of the title means that you’re responding to viewer demand. You’re creating videos on topics that match popular search phrases. YouTube effectively is telling you which topics to make videos about. Do that and your videos will get views.

Create a YouTube Channel. You first have to create a YouTube channel before ever uploading a video. The more videos you create and the more popular they become, the more your “channel authority” grows. YouTube rewards channel authority by suggesting your videos in the column to the right of the video that’s playing. On average, 70 percent of channel growth comes from YouTube suggesting your videos to users. The platform is essentially working for your success.

Minutes Watched. YouTube analytics tracks three important metrics for your channel: the number of channel subscribers, the number of video views and the number of minutes watched. The last one is the most important. Success on YouTube is all about getting viewers to watch your videos for as long as possible. That will happen naturally if you’re providing valuable content.

Video Series Instead of Solo Videos. Think about creating a series of related or sequential videos that can be grouped under a playlist title rather than random, one-off videos. While a viewer watches one of your playlist videos, YouTube queues up the other videos in the playlist in the column on the right because they’re thematically related. This is a great way to increase the watch time of your videos. Even though the playlist is just a title grouping your individual videos, YouTube considers it a separate video asset that adds to your channel authority.

Smart YouTube Marketing 

A Clear Call To Action. Always conclude your videos by asking viewers to take an action such as subscribing to your channel, clicking a link, liking your video, sharing it on social media or leaving a comment. 

Post Videos Regularly. This is essential for building the authority of your YouTube channel. Being present on social media is important. Subscribers to your channel will be notified by email each time you post a new video. 

Captions. Consider using YouTube’s free and easy closed-captioning feature. It makes your video available to the hearing-impaired as well as to those who want to watch your video without turning on the sound (like at the library or at work). This captioned content is also searchable on Google, which boosts your organic traffic.