YouTube is offering a resource for businesses that is invaluable, and they have been for years. Providing an opportunity to market in a more customizable way than the average TV commercial, not to mention the chance to produce viral content.
But while many small businesses are using YouTube, many are not fully utilizing their potential. The social media site has many ways that you can optimize it. Especially since they changed the format and gave you a better means of personalizing your home page.
I’ve been playing a lot with MyBlogGuest channel recently: using it to aggregate user video reviews as well as promoting viral caroons. Looking back, I can share quite a few tips on making the most of your Youtube channel.
If you want to make the most of your business YouTube channel, here are a few simple ways that you can do it.
Don’t Just Fill In The Blanks
I keep finding YouTube channels which are nothing more than a basic color block background with a couple of quick facts written like a survey. For example, it will have the title of the page for SEO as the username, a dofollow link under website and a single sentence meta description written in bland “About Page” language.
All of this is what you need, of course. But the presentation is so boring and unattractive that it is sure to put people off. It certainly doesn’t show off your creativity or enthusiasm, so why would people expect anything better from the videos you post?
Now you can use a more attractive approach to providing that information. Take some time to play with the layout settings to find what works for you. Channel description plays a huge role in ranking your Youtube video in search results as well as “Related videos”.
Add In More Links
(Partners only)
The single dofollow link was all you were really able to do in the beginning. YouTube seemed to have an odd aversion to allowing users to provide easier access to social networking profiles. At least until the Google buyout, and now there is a greater emphasis on dofollow links.
Now you can attach several. For example, you can provide a direct website link, as well as one to a secondary site, any affiliates or master projects, your Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn, and any other you might like.
Set Up Featured Videos
It isn’t always beneficial to show your latest uploaded video first thing. But that is the default setting for the current layout, which has to be manually changed. Luckily, this is pretty easy to do.
Go to the Edit button on your channel’s video list and use the drop down menu to see the latest videos. Uncheck “Most Recently Updated”, then check the one you want featured and save.
This will place a single video in your featured slot on the main page. It can be changed at any time by going back to edit and choosing a new video.
Creating Custom Playlists
Probably the most noticeable and helpful part of having a YouTube channel today is that it allows you to create and show off different playlists. These are simple to sort and move into playlists once you upload them. From there, you can just organize them in the order you like on the main page.
Users can then click on the playlist and get a whole series of videos. They can play them randomly, or select the “Play All” feature that lets them watch each in order without having to find the next one.
Conclusion
YouTube didn’t change much for years when it comes to account settings and customization. But now that it has a more inclusive and personalized layout, you can do whatever you like with it.
As a business, you should be working to really utilize the potential of your channel. So make the changes above and see what difference it makes.