YouTube is often overlooked by businesses as a social media tool, and thought of as just a video-sharing platform.
More businesses in 2019 are including YouTube in their digital marketing strategy. The same marketing trend is occurring on other major social media networks – Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Linkedin.
Video content will account for 80% of all internet traffic by 2020. Video content gets up to 10x more reach and engagement compared to links and images
YouTube Facts and Statistics– 2018
- Website: https://youtube.com
- YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California
- Founded: 14 February 2005
- Acquisition date: 13 November 2006
- Founders: Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen
- Parent organization: Google
- Google + : https://plus.google.com/+youtube
- Facebook handle: https://www.facebook.com/youtube
- Twitter handle: https://twitter.com/YouTube
- Instagram handle: https://www.instagram.com/youtube
- Tumblr handle: http://youtube.tumblr.com
- Press enquiries contact press@google.com
- In 2018 YouTube is now recognized as the world’s second largest search engine
- Almost 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every single day and growing
- One billion hours watched daily
- YouTube has over a billion users – almost one-third of all people on the Internet – and each day those users watch a billion hours of video, generating billions of views.
- In an average month, eight out of ten 18-49-year-olds watch YouTube
- YouTube overall on mobile alone reaches more 18–34 and 18–49-year-olds than any cable network in the US
- More than half of YouTube views come from mobile devices.
- YouTube is localised in 88 countries.
- You can navigate YouTube in a total of 76 different languages (covering 95% of the Internet population)
- The YouTube Spaces team is focused on helping creators to make great content through strategic programmes and workshops largely administered at the YouTube Space production facilities in Los Angeles, New York, London, Tokyo, Sao Paulo and Berlin.
- As of March 2015, creators filming in YouTube Spaces have produced over 10,000 videos, which have generated over 1 billion views and 70+ million hours of watch time.
- As of July 2016, YouTube had paid out two billion dollars to rights-holders who have chosen to monetise claims since Content ID first launched in 2007.
- As of July 2015, there were 8,000+ partners using Content ID – including many major network broadcasters, movie studios and record labels. They have claimed over 400 million videos, helping them to control their content on YouTube and make money on videos containing copyrighted material.
- YouTube have more than 50 million active reference files in their content ID database, making it the most comprehensive in the world. It’s even won a Primetime Emmy!
- The first YouTube video was uploaded on April 23, 2005
Online Video Trends
- By 2025 half of viewers under the age of 32 will not subscribe to a pay TV service
- 6 out of 10 people prefer online video platforms to live TV
- In 2015, 18- to 49-year olds spent 4% less time watching TV while time on YouTube went up 74%
- On mobile alone YouTube reaches more 18- to 49-year olds than any broadcast or cable TV network.
- Among millennials YouTube accounts for two-thirds of premium online video watched across devices.
YouTube is increasing its international reach with a healthy audience due to the increased access to the internet for a number of reasons. Year on year first and developing world countries are spending billions of dollars in updating and building their national telecommunications infrastructure to increase broadband speed and reach.
The truth is that YouTube is the second largest social media platform after Facebook and it has broadly all the same generic features as other social media platforms and more:
Monthly active users:
- Facebook 2,200,000,000
- YouTube 1,800,000,000
YouTube Features
- Profile pages (channels)
- Likes and dislike
- Comments/Shares
- Friends/follow/subscribe
- Introducing Premieres. With Premieres, you’ll be part of a shared community experience. Engage with your favourite creator and other fans in Live Chat and then watch the newest video in real time together.
YouTube like all social media platforms can be used to link back to your site in numerous ways, helping to boost the traffic coming to your site as well as helping your SEO. YouTube videos are also indexed in the google search results
Content
Let’s start with content. As with social media, you will need content for an audience to engage with. You have to create a “hook” at the start of the video. Your average viewer will decide to watch the video within the first 3-5 seconds due to the high volume of people watching video online and their short attention span.
70% of a videos performance will depend on how creative and authentic the content is.
Let’s start with content. As with social media, you will need something for an audience to engage with.
Where most people go wrong with YouTube content is that they try to make something that will go ‘viral’. In reality the chances of this happening are extremely slim. It is important to remember that just because you don’t have the biggest worldwide trending content doesn’t mean it isn’t attracting a new audience to your company.
Instead make something relevant. Whether it is a simple ‘how-to’ video, tutorials, unboxing, live streaming Q&A’s with your subscribers or something explaining your product or service, make sure that your brand comes across in a natural (and not too salesy) way.
Here are a few factors to consider when making your content:
Be Creative
YouTube can be a great place to advertise a product or service, it can persuade potential customers into buying your service over your competitors. So, make it something that stands out and get people engaged. Bring in you and your teams creativity or hire someone to help if you are not the creative type. Come up with something that will look great and get a relevant message across.
Put some money into it
Like all of your content, your YouTube videos should reflect your business. So make sure that it has a clean professional look to it. It is worth investing some money and time into getting it right – you will still be spending a lot less than on a TV advert.
What Next?
Once you have your content, there is more that you can do than just uploading it to YouTube. Here are few tips to get people to see the content you have created and use it to increase the traffic to your site.
Titles and Tagging
Make sure that your videos are tagged to the right categories. YouTube does a great job of keeping its audience engaged, you will have probably noticed that you will be offered ‘related videos’ on the right-hand side of the page – take advantage of this. By making sure that your video is titled correctly and tagged to the right category your content can reach your target audience from similar videos they are already watching via related videos.
Favourites
‘Favouriting’ other videos that align with your brand or product will mean that they show up on your channel, giving you a wider range of content on your channel homepage. Curating videos can be just as important as creating them so don’t be scared to share content from other brands that you align with.
Linking videos back to your site
The key objectives of creating content are to get people interested in your brand and onto your site. Your channel homepage can be linked back to the homepage of our site and the videos themselves.
Make sure that you have links in the description to lead potential customers back to site.
Annotations can also be added on top of the video at the end, again leading back to the site.
Make sure that if your video links to the relevant area of the site and not just the homepage. If the video is in reference to a certain product or service, make sure that it takes them directly to that page.
Share, share, share
Your video shouldn’t just stay within YouTube. Post it on your website, share in on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, medium.com, Snapchat and Twitter, link to it from a newsletter – the more exposure it gets the more return you will get from it.
YouTube adverts and analytics
Now that you have content and few ideas for setting up your videos correctly we can move onto the bigger services that YouTube can offer your business.
YouTube offer a wide variety of advertising options including adverts after searches (similar to pay per click) and adverts before videos are played (pre-rolls). You can bid for YouTube keywords in the same way that you would bid on Google Adwords search network.
It is very easy to set up. All you will need is a video uploaded to YouTube, a Google Adwords account and then you are ready to launch your ad campaign.
Once you have everything set up you will be able to track your campaign with Adwords and the YouTube free analytics service, which lets you track the traffic your video gets as well as traffic generated from annotations.
If you want to learn more about getting started both YouTube and Google have produced fantastic guides for setting up your YouTube channel to help your business. If you would like to learn more about increasing your web presences don’t hesitate to give us a call on 01394 615 615 or email enquiries@infotex.co.uk
Source https://www.youtube.com/intl/en-GB/yt/about/press/
