What’s good guys, today we’re going to be talking about how to get started social media marketing on YouTube and optimizing your channel to get more reach, more visibility, more clicks, and more traffic, by utilizing one of the most powerful platforms on the internet! We will also be sharing with you some of the biggest mistakes in social media and YouTube marketing, and how you can avoid them. These tips will help you save a ton of time and money in the long run! Not fully understanding the power of YouTube and these strategies would be a huge mistake. If you watch till the end of this video, you’ll know exactly what to do if you wanna tap into literally the most powerful platform available!
So let’s start off with how to utilize YouTube analytics. For the longest time, many people ignore YouTube watch time and they see no growth. They might even start losing views. The first thing to think about when it comes to generating traffic is that unlike all of the other platforms out there, YouTube isn’t just a social media platform, but rather it’s also a search engine. The number one search engine in the world, which is Google, owns the number two search engine in the world, which is YouTube. And if you come from this perspective you’ll be blown away. Let’s talk about why that’s the case. It’s important to optimize your videos, like adding a detailed description, catchy title, and tags. This is very significant because a lot of people might just upload and not even think twice about it. Over time, people will discover your videos either by typing keywords of video titles, or because YouTube recommended your video when people were watching related videos. So for that reason any video could potentially drive traffic and visibility to your channel for a long time. However, make sure all of your videos contain similar content. For example, if you have a marketing channel, but a few of your 1st videos are about your pet dogs and cats, people that subscribe will be looking for more animal videos. So when you start posting marketing videos, it gives YouTube a signal that those videos aren’t good because your subscribers only wanted to watch animal videos. So you would need to delete or make private the pet videos in order for your marketing videos to do better.
So another mistake is don’t just copy videos that you posted, maybe on Facebook or Instagram, and upload them to YouTube, because YouTube is a completely different platform altogether. Just because it got views on other social media doesn’t mean it’s automatically ready for YouTube. A YouTube video, if optimized correctly, can potentially grow forever. It will continue to get more visibility because people are still searching for it on Google, and if it’s a good video, if people are staying till the end, and if your retention rate is high, YouTube will start serving it to more people. So in other words, one of the things that you wanna begin is to start off with the end in mind. You wanna begin by thinking about, what are the keywords that you wanna target as your main pillar content? And what if you could just double down on these keywords over and over again? A lot of YouTube videos that people upload have no SEO value. But when you look at some other YouTubers that are crushing it today, one of the things they did differently is they optimized their content on YouTube.
So how do you actually do this? Well, I’m going to summarize for you some strategies from the best YouTube consultants out there. Ok so you start off by thinking about the main keywords you wanna target. One of the best ways to get ideas is to go to YouTube and type in your main keyword first. For example, if I were to type in “make money online”, I would go through the entire list. One thing I would do to get more ideas is typing in A, B, C, D. So for example, make money online space A. Then you might see: “make money online app, ‘Android’, ‘at home’”, and the list goes on. So if: “make money online” was a main keyword, you can see that people commonly search that phrase. So do not underestimate the power of keyword search! The reason why it’s powerful is because remember, this is compounded over time, and this is an exact match. So that means that if you were to create a video on making money online at home, what’s gonna happen is that, you’re not just ranking for the keywords “at home”, but it might also be ranking for a related video, or being shown when somebody is watching another video, or it could be ranking for a different keyword as well. And on top of that, this will be an evergreen piece of content, meaning that your video will always be relevant because people are always wanting to know how to make money online at home. Don’t underestimate the power of just a few hundred searches a month. It’s a lot over time.
So another mistake to avoid is the hope and pray method. Which is just uploading a video and then hoping for the best. But if you begin with the end in the mind and begin with the keywords that people are already searching for, then your odds of it being discovered are a whole lot higher.
So the next thing is: How do you optimize your video? So there’s this tool called TubeBuddy, and basically when you install it, you will be able to see the best practices. For example, thumbnail quality, and adding info cards and end screens. Why should you have a nice thumbnail and not utilize a recommended YouTube thumbnail? Because when you have a customized thumbnail, your click-through rate is higher, which is basically the odds of somebody clicking on your video. What if YouTube were to recommend it? If they recommend it as a related video, one of the things YouTube wants to see, is if more people click on the video. So regarding your click-through rate, 2% is low, 4% I’d say is average, and 9% would be something to celebrate. And to increase the odds of somebody clicking on it, one of the things you wanna do is to create a customized thumbnail that stands out from all the other thumbnails out there. So this is where you get creative! You could do different poses, colors, and expressions. So you’re now taking a thumbnail that’s customized, because if you relied on a YouTube suggested thumbnail, it’s usually really ugly. Next add info cards and an end screen. One of the things that you wanna do is encourage people to binge watch your videos. Think about your videos like a TV series, where your goal is to get people to watch the next video and the next video and the next video. So how do you optimize for this? What YouTube really cares about is watch time and retention. Because when somebody stays on YouTube, that’s when YouTube can serve more ads. And when they serve more ads, they make more money and YouTube’s goal is to make sure that all of their viewers stay on YouTube for all eternity. They don’t want people leaving the platform. So one of the things that YouTube looks at is how well your video is capturing your audience’s attention and having them stay on your video. So for good watch time retention, if you can get 70% to stay on your video for the first one minute, that’s pretty good. Now depending on how long the video is, a lot of people ask, so how long should the video be? Well, it really depends. Most of the time people want shorter videos because it’s hard to sustain a person’s attention for 45 minutes or for one hour. But if you’re good, and if the video is interesting and engaging, and people are watching through the end of a one hour video, and you’ve got more than say, 30% of people doing that, that’s considered very good for that one hour video. Then YouTube is gonna snatch this and show it to more people. So the question is never really how long should a video be? I mean, it could be 8 to 10 minutes, but it’s really like, how good are you in getting people to stay watching your video?
Here’s a framework: So at the start of the video, one of the things you wanna do is, you wanna mention the title, this is for YouTube, as well as for the audience, to make sure that you’re delivering your promise on the keyword that was mentioned in the title. So remember this, for some keywords, the drop off rate is always the highest in the first 10 seconds. And the reason for that is because people are skeptical and they wanna know if you’re going to deliver what was promised in the title. So a really important piece to start off the video is to deliver a message that is in harmony with how you titled your video. Next, remember that people’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, so if you do include some type of intro, it’s usually best to keep your intro nine seconds or less. And then after that you can either earn the right or set expectations on what they can expect if they watch till the end of the video. If somebody is watching your video for the first time, they’re skeptical on why they should listen to you, who you are, and what you’re telling them to do. And this is where you need to earn their respect and meet expectations, but most importantly, create open loops. Now as a marketer one of the most powerful things you’ll need to constantly practice and it’s a muscle, by the way, is to sell them on why they should watch till the end. So you’ll notice that in this video, I had an open loop. I said that if you watch till the end of this video, “you’ll know exactly what to do if you wanna tap into literally the most powerful platform available!” What were the open loops that I used in this video? It was: “you’ll discover some of the biggest mistakes in social media and YouTube marketing, and how you can avoid them.” So what was I doing? I am creating an open loop on why, you, the viewer should stay till the end. Which is basically what you need to be doing to your viewers. You need to talk about and utilize words like: “if you stay till the end, you will discover the top five mistakes I made or the top three things I discovered in my journey, or you’ll be able to avoid this one most painful mistake people make.” So sell them on why they need to stick till the end. Either based upon benefits or the pain that would be avoided by discovering those mistakes. Starting off you might need to exercise this muscle a little bit.
Ok so next is your main content. So right now this is my main content, this is what I’m teaching. So your main content could be your steps, your framework, three tips, one mistake, etc. And after you present your main content, this is when you have the outro. And the outro would usually be your call-to-action. Either to like, comment, subscribe, or all three things. You wanna be able to get them to take action, have a call-to-action, more importantly, get them to binge watch other videos. This is where you have the outro card. On YouTube there’s a thing called an end screen. The end screen is basically to get them to watch your other recommended videos. This is when you have to add in the cards and this is when things start popping up and you could say like: “hey guys, if you liked this video, make sure you watch this other video that’s about this other topic as well.” You want them to binge watch, to rack up your watch time. Because if you can rack up your watch time, that is when YouTube’s gonna serve it to more people. Don’t underestimate the power of following all these steps!
