Daily around 1 billion hours of YouTube videos are watched daily. YouTube the brainchild of the company called Alphabet Inc. which is now owned by Google is one of the most desired sources of entertainment, knowledge, and marketing.
YouTube in itself is a pseudo search engine that is dominated by the rules of a search engine and requires marketers to be well versed with the nitty-gritty of SEO, SEM, and video marketing.
Anyone wishing to dip their toes in the sea of opportunities that YouTube holds for marketers should know a few basics of YouTube marketing and what the algorithm dictates.
Even if you are a novice or an experienced marketer wanting to venture into the world of video marketing, here are a few important jargon, strategies, and analytical tools that will help you create a trending channel.
- Algorithm appeasement – Just like Google SERP has a few algorithms working in the back end that decide which pages to rank on the first page and why. Similarly, YouTube has an algorithm in place that analyses the viewer’s history, preferences, meta descriptions, video title, relevancy, click through rate, duration of the video, and thumbnail.
- Viewer history is the type of videos viewed and searched for by a particular viewer. This helps the platform to understand the interests, and preferences of the viewer and AI working in the backend can better the video suggestions and improve the quality of data available for analytics.
- Meta description – It is the short description of the video. Marketers should focus on the description structuring to include the keywords of the video in the text. This helps the algorithm to rate the relevancy of the video to the audience searches and helps to rank better in the suggestions.
- Video title – The title of the video should consist of the primary keywords that give an idea of what the video talks about.
- Relevancy – Al goes a long way in understanding the relevancy of the video to the search query or the audience preference. Hence one should ensure that the video title is relevant to the video.
- Thumbnail – The thumbnail is the image that is displayed when the video appears in the search. This image needs to be catchy and persuasive.
- Keyword research – Doing keyword research just the way any marketer would do for a blog or website is necessary. Keyword research will help one understand the trending keywords, identify relevant keywords and rank higher in the searches. The algorithms analyze the keywords to know the category of the video and thus can rank the video according to the quality of the keyword.
- Using the relevant keywords in the title, video’s file name, and meta description will increase the chances of the video being noticed & viewed more. Using the keyword planner also helps to track the trends & note the changes.
- View the viewer’s journey – An important aspect to look out for. Understanding the search pattern, the type or category of videos that receive the most number of views, the duration of videos that are desired by the viewers, comparative analysis between the videos having extensive subscribers in the same genre or category, the audience demographics, and the number of return viewers.
- The category of videos that work best with the target audience is the best place to start for any marketer. Understanding what suits which audience gives the marketer an understanding of the audience psyche and will be able to connect with the audience easily. Doing some research on other video marketers creating content in the same category will help one understand the trending topics, most searched terms & keywords, and also give an insight on the duration of video preferred.
- Content concoction – Giving the videos a personality of their own by setting the tone, delivery method, depth of the content, and interaction with the audience will help the audience associate with the content. The content should be relevant to what the audience is looking for and has to appear personalized for it to resonate with the audience.
- Set your benchmark – It is okay to experiment with the content but maintaining the quality of the content, nurturing the USP, and the factor that makes the audience come back for more videos should be the ultimate aim of video marketing on YouTube.
These are a few of the basic things for a marketer to remember at the beginning of the YouTube marketing journey.
YouTube is a vast platform that has many aspects, hence a deeper understanding and knowledge of the platform is required to generate business from it. To create holistic marketers that are well-versed with all the platforms, MIT School of Distance Education offers Post Graduate Certificate (PGCM) course in Digital Marketing. This short-term course covers not only the basics of digital marketing but also focuses on the application of strategies & analytics.