Creating A YouTube channel

Digital Marketing By Peter Richman, 20th June 2013

Most companies today are pretty au fait with social media: updating their Facebook regularly, tweeting about new products or services and connecting with their peers on LinkedIn.

But when it comes to YouTube channels, not as many companies are convinced of the benefits. There are hundreds of brands that are currently making the most of what YouTube can offer and enjoying boosted sales because of it.

Here, we explore the reasons you should be joining them and how to go about setting up your own channel.

Why?

YouTube’s search bar is the number two option for people searching the web for information, sitting just behind Google. YouTube videos can be comfortably embedded across the major social networks without the need for media players. A recent study showed that 400 tweets per minute contain YouTube videos. Collectively, users spend an average of 3 billion hours on YouTube every month.

So it makes perfect sense to harness the power of video sharing to get your messages across to your customers.

We hear that many people are put off by the idea of uploading videos to YouTube, assuming that the process is long and complicated. But as with anything, once you get started it’s a piece of cake. Let’s look at…

How?

Creating a branded profile on YouTube is straightforward and doesn’t take long. However, it is crucial to get it right, so follow our tips on how to get started.

1. If you don’t already have an account for your company (we wouldn’t advise using your personal account), set one up by hitting ‘create account’ – you’ll find this in the top right hand corner of the website.

Make sure you fill in as much information as you can, taking care to indicate your agreement to the ‘terms of use’ (after reading them, naturally) before you submit. Also be careful to provide a current email address as you’ll need to click a confirmation link which will be mailed to you.

2.  When you have confirmed your account, you’ll be able to sign in and access the configuration options for your account.

Start by selecting ‘My channel’. From this area you’ll be able to control how your channel looks and tweak it to match your branding.

Start by choosing a channel name; this should be your company’s name.

3.  Next, select the ‘colours and themes’ tab to change the background colour of your channel – the ‘advanced options’ tab will allow you to control the finer details and tweak your channel the way you want it.

* Note – if you have a design expert (web or graphic) in your company, this is the perfect time to draft them in. They will be able to help you with matching the colours perfectly to your branding. They will also help you to create and upload a background image, which should ideally be crafted specially in image editing software.

Next, focus on your ‘title and tags’. These are vital for SEO so make sure you choose your keywords carefully. Make sure that your title and your tags directly reflect the kind of content you will be adding so that people can find your channel easily.

Your channel is now ready to go and you can begin adding videos! Which moves us neatly on to…

What?

Many companies get carried away with setting up a YouTube channel, only to falter when it comes to actually adding content. The type of content you add will depend entirely on your reason for setting up the channel.

For example, if you’re running a blog about becoming an electrician, perhaps you’d like to film experienced people talking about how they became qualified. Or perhaps you’re a large supplier to the electrical industry. Have you thought about using some of your products in handy ‘how to’ videos?

You needn’t have a designated media department to create video content.

You can do it yourself with a standard digital camera. You don’t even have to have moving images; you could use a series of stills and record a voiceover or create subtitles. There is plenty of movie-making software available on the market for creating your own short films.

Where?

Making sure your content is easy to find is absolutely crucial to the success of your marketing videos. The placement of your videos can be controlled in the ‘tag and categorise’ options.

The best way to go about choosing the best possible category and tags is by searching for videos yourself. Have a browse around YouTube for videos similar to yours and see how they have been tagged and categorised.

Make sure you use the first few results – they’ve obviously got it right! Make a note of their approach and use the same for your videos.

Driving traffic to your channel

Once you’ve put all this effort into your channel, you’ll want to make sure that as many people as possible are hitting on your channel.

There are several ways to go about this:

  • Social media – use your social networks to spread the word about your fantastic new channel.
  • Watch and comment – have a look around and watch some videos that grab your interest. Leave your comments (positive ones, naturally!) below the video and the channel owners, as well as other visitors, are bound to click on your name and unearth the identity of this enigmatic newbie!
  • Subscribe – identify some high traffic channels in your niche and subscribe to them. You’ll be able to keep an eye on what they’re uploading and see why they’re so popular. You can also use the alerts as a reminder to pop along and add some fresh comments.
  • Inbound links – just as with your website, creating quality inbound links is a great way to drive more traffic to your channel.

These are just a few ways you can start to drive large volumes of traffic to your website. Once you have hundreds of videos and thousands of subscribers, there is plenty more you can do. Let us know when you get there!