Maximizing Your YouTube Videos

If you don't keep up, you get left behind. For most people last year was a raging dumpster fire, for some of us it was a time of growth and expansion. We are now nearly a month into 2021 and making sure that you are keeping up with marketing trends is key to making sure you are making sales. The year 2020 brought several changes to the way that people live and work and many of them are here to stay. Most having to do with communications and consumer relationships.

While there are several marketing trends you need to be staying on top of (if you aren't already), I will cover them over the next few days but here is the first.

Take advantage of YouTube!!! 🎥

According to a Google-commissioned Nielsen study, YouTube reached more adults ages 18 to 49 in the U.S. than all linear TV networks combined in March 2020. Not only that, but there was also an 80% increase of people watching these YouTube videos on their home television as opposed to a mobile device. 😮

Here are a few tips to ensure you are properly optimizing your videos:

✔ Rename your video with a targeted keyword (you should be aware and do some research regarding popular or trending keywords based on your subject matter.

✔ Ensure that the keyword is in the title natively (not some weird and wonky placement)

✔ Make sure you are filling out your video descriptions and optimizing them appropriately (for example only the first 3 sentences show up "above the fold" so make sure that your relevant keywords show up in the short summary in that section since YouTube prioritizes that section. (here is a link for more tips on how to optimize your descriptions https://blog.hootsuite.com/youtube-descriptions/ You can even place your entire video transcript in your video description for those watching without sound.

✔ Place them in relevant playlists and set them to show next or related video and make sure you are categorizing your videos to catch people searching for particular information can find you

✔ Add tags that fit with your keywords and that your audience may be searching for

✔ Create and upload eye-catching thumbnail images to go with your video as opposed to the randomly generated ones from the video

✨Make sure it is the right size Per YouTube’s guidelines, your thumbnail image should be 1280 x 720 pixels, with a minimum width of 640 pixels. An aspect ratio of 16:9 is ideal as it’s used most often in YouTube players and previews.

✨Use strong high-quality images that might stop someone in their tracks and entice them to read your description

✨Put the title of your video in the image so people know what to expect from that video ✨Keep your font, themes, graphics and colors consistent in your pages so that your channel has a flow and a feel make sure it is legible and easy to understand- heavier and bold work well be careful with scripts (brand consistency matters) Consider having a branded thumbnail template for your videos so people know over time that is one of your videos.

✔ Make sure you are using subtitles and captions. Some statistics say that up to 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound and although not as high, many videos on YouTube and other platforms are watched without sound while people are doing other activities such as waiting for appointments, in transit, or on the toilet.

✔ Add cards and end screens to your videos (showing subscribe information and coming up next videos. You can set these up to default play, but you do want to make sure you have end screens and cards on each video to help guide your viewer.

Over the next few weeks, I will share more marketing trends for 2021 but we are now in the watch me generation and having a strong and optimized YouTube video presence can make all the difference in whether you are visible to your target client.