Great article from Yahoo
How Does YouTube Fit into Your Small Biz Marketing Plan?
YouTube is one of the most popular websites online and it provides you with a number of opportunities from a small business marketing perspective. You can use it as an excellent inbound marketing tool that will attract potential customers to your online properties and it’s a great tool to help you to also continue to build relationships with the customers you have today.
Video speaks to people. It can help you connect with them in a way that written text can’t always accomplish. It can help you show your expertise and show that you are a person behind a logo who is genuinely striving to provide value.
Here are some YouTube activities for your Small Business:
- Create a YouTube channel. You can easily create your own YouTube channel and start promoting it. You can build a subscribers list here that you can connect with on an ongoing basis. Those subscribers will be notified each time a new video is posted. Once you start building momentum, don’t stop. Create videos and do promotional efforts consistently. Be sure you’re putting out quality over quantity.
- Optimize. If you’re setting aside time to produce videos be sure to also set aside time to optimize them for SEO purposes. YouTube videos often rank very high on Google for desired search terms. Do your keyword research and be sure to fill in the title, description, category, and tags appropriately.
- Promote. If you’re setting aside time to produce and optimize videos, set aside time to promote them, too. Videos don’t generally go viral unless someone is putting in a bit of effort to help them get seen. Videos can be promoted on your blog or website, in your online newsletter, and on your social media accounts. Remember, the better they are from a quality perspective, the greater the chances that other websites will link to them, too ( and that linking could equate to more traffic and possible leads).
- Curate Comments. Be prepared to manage your video comments. Video comments are important as they can provide you with helpful feedback and information that you can use in future marketing strategies. Video comments can also influence a video’s popularity and perceived relevance to the tags and category. They can also be a place for online trolls who simply want to post negativity or who want to try to direct your traffic elsewhere. Watch the comments on your videos so that you can act on them, if appropriate.
- Analyze. Set aside time to read your analytics reports. These will tell you about the people that are viewing your videos and this information, much like website analytics, YouTube analytics reports can help fuel future success you’re your marketing campaigns.
- Advertise. Consider YouTube advertising. If you do pay per click advertising and other online ads, you should also consider YouTube’s program where you can display ads and show promoted videos. YouTube advertising gives you the potential to get seen by many potential customers. YouTube is one of the most visited websites online and you can do targeted ads so that you have a good chance of reaching your desired audience. Don’t forget to measure on an ongoing basis. Make sure to watch your ROI so you’ll know whether or not your current budget allocation is enough.
- Competitive analysis. Just like you should be watching the strategies of your competition in other areas like SEO and social media, check out how they are using YouTube to their marketing advantage so that you can be sure that you’re doing all you can to compete. Try to differentiate yourself from the competition, though. Unique selling proposition matters in every single aspect of your online presence and your marketing strategy.
When you look at your small business marketing plan, fitting YouTube into that marketing plan can definitely work to your advantage. It’s a low cost and high yield marketing method.
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Reference: http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/does-youtube-fit-small-biz-marketing-plan-214548062.html