Social Media Outlets – What to Post Where, and When! – Part V

We have, by now – walked through most of the social media moguls, and the ones which are left like Snapchat, Tumblr and Reddit can be used as well if you’re super creative, and have a lot of extra time left over. Most social media managers are actually quite short on time at the end of the day, so we’ve limited the series to the greatest of them, and the ones you’ll get the most bang for your effort from.

It’s time for YouTube! YouTube has been around less time than even Pinterest if you can believe it! In 2005, on Valentines Day, where this video was the first ever to be shown publicly. YouTube was created by 3 people, and started as most IT companies do…small. These days you can have a full-time job just making vlogs (we’ll explain what that is) on YouTube, being paid by advertisers for the opportunity to be seen, and making a fortune just being yourself. Here’s how to use it for your business.

What is YouTube?

If you truly don’t know the answer to this one, then you definitely need this series. YouTube is a video hosting and sharing service where a person can upload a video, give it categories and tags, add music to it, annotations, and multiple other options, and put it on their “channel” which are all the videos that person has ever uploaded. People can then subscribe to the channels they like and see more of those videos when they login to YouTube. Subscribed channels show up in a tab on the left panel and you can easily find the people you follow and the videos you like the most.

Playlists

You can create playlists of your favorite videos, or – to take less bandwidth, use voice only videos, or ones with a static picture. By selecting whether you like the video, dislike the video, or favorite the video, you can make playlists from what you like the most. When you look at the sidebar on the right side, the scrolling list of songs like the one you chose, or videos like the ones you chose, there is where you’ll see the spot you can add the playlist. From there, anytime you see a video you like you can favorite it and select which list it will go onto. You can even make them public or private.

Customize it

You want people to see something punchy when they go to your YouTube channel, so the first thing here is to change the appearance settings and background colors so they match your company colors. You can even add your logo, and suddenly YouTube has become yet another faceted face of your business. You’ve branded YouTube with your own stamp of approval.

Traffic Handling

YouTube is a great place to go if you’re trying to drive traffic to your website. You can place things in your videos that, when clicked on, take the person to your site or landing page. You can place the link below the video for your site, and you can direct them to it from within the video as well. There are plenty of opportunities to place your company’s web address or landing page, so use them.

Tutorials

YouTube has something none of the other social media biggies have. They have video tutorials and how-to videos in abundance. If you’ve ever been stuck trying to figure out how to do something, the best place to go is YouTube. “How do I get popcorn ceiling off?” try that one, you’ll see the whole host of videos which come up, some look more trustworthy than others, but they’re all pretty short in duration so you can watch all of them and decide how to proceed. Consider this for your own videos, and try to post how-to videos for a product you sell, or a training opportunity alongside the service you offer. Whatever you do, keep it on the shorter side since most people’s attention these days is lost after about 3 minutes if you haven’t already grabbed them.

Sell on Your Site

Don’t focus on selling to these people, they’ll do that as a natural by-product of your site being fantastic, your videos being quality and the trust you have accumulated with them. If you must post a video that has anything to do with what you sell, then it should be of the type listed prior to this; tutorials and how-to videos. Trying direct marketing on YouTube is dicey and not recommended. It is alright to introduce your business, your partners, and even to talk about your passion and strategy, but the moment you try to directly sell to them on YouTube you’ll lose the person. People don’t go to YouTube to be sold things and they don’t want to be marketed to when they’re being entertained. Do that kind of thing on your homepage, not on YouTube.  You can put it there to host privately for your webpage however.

Entertain the Masses

Focus on keeping people entertained, laughing and happy. You want to post something that will engage them, keep them smiling and also which is informative. If you’re running a doggie wash for a business, you could post pictures of wet cats, or wet cat videos to go along with your personal jingle and say something funny like, “It’s good to be a dog.” then you can place your business name and contact details at the end, and below the video. Things like that work very well, they’re not in your face, and they’re passive marketing. Know the difference.  In your face marketing usually comes with a “but wait, there’s more” aspect and that’s what drives people away.

What is a Vlog?

A vlog is a video blog, and it takes the place of a written blog. Somewhere recently people decided it was much easier, though far more terrifying, to appear on camera and talk about the things they wanted to say instead of having to write it. Genius! It worked too, because there are vloggers out there like PewDiePie who have over 50 million subscribers. His vlog is mostly about gaming videos, but he really talks about whatever he wants and he makes buckets of money doing so. Maybe you aren’t interested in just chatting to strangers about whatever pops in your head, and that’s fine. You’re here for your business (and cat videos) and you can easily vlog that as well. If you make a video a week and tell people the state of affairs for your industry, make it like a recap news clip, then people can start tuning in to get the latest marketing news direct from you! It saves them having to read it themselves, and if they know and trust you, they’ll keep coming back for more.

Monetize It

All you need to do is monetize your video by enabling it for monetization. Then you connect it to an AdSense account to earn money and get paid for the monetized videos. DO read the tutorials however, because there are rules to what can be monetized and what cannot as well as options for ad formats. You want to try many different formats because one will work better than others due to placement etc. Choose to monetize with ads, and you can choose which ads and videos will appear from Creator Studio or video manager. Be aware that it is only available in certain countries, and if you do any kind of copyright violation – there’ll be trouble.

AdSense

You definitely want to make an AdSense account, because you’re going to need to connect it to your channel anyway, and because it’s just good business practice to pay for good quality advertising. YouTube, under the giant Google umbrella of companies, has got this one covered – they know exactly what people like to see when they’re watching ____ type of video. They know how long people will watch for, and how often they’ll choose to skip the ad. You’ll want to use AdSense even for the smallest package and let YouTube advertise for you.

Curated…Yes, Here Too

You will have any number of videos saved, shared, or created in your channel, but people have to find you. The more you share other people’s videos (yep curating…again!) the more they’ll do the same for you. Partner up with people in the same business, or in the same niche who want to grow along with you, and create a cross-promotional strategy. Have fun with it! Networking is easily the biggest and most important part of social media and making it work.

Optimize

Make sure you throw in keywords to optimize your site in the content settings. You should know or find out the SEO terms relevant to your industry that get the most attention and use them as well as any other tags you can think of which will set your video apart from others. It will help people who are trying to search for something specific, and the more keywords you use the bigger net you’re tossing out there for the fish to be brought in.

This concludes our social media series, but with the recommendation to read up on Snapchat, Tumblr and Reddit. You may find one of these other sites also suits your needs, and that you do have extra time for using more social media sites. We find however, that a good social media strategy is being involved in a few social media sites, and giving 100% to those sites so they gleam. If a person spreads themselves too thin, trying to be part of every social media outlet out there, they’ll get a lot of posts up, but they won’t have the time to optimize them, keep up with them, and do it well. That kind of thing usually takes an entire team. Good luck with your social media presence!

Social Media Outlets Series

Part I – Facebook

Part II – Twitter

Part III – Instagram

Part IV – Pinterest

Part V – Youtube