10 Ways To Optimise Your YouTube Channel

Google’s video platform has a seemingly endless reach, consisting of over a billion users. So many people are now engaged with video that your company has an opportunity to hone in on that potential and use a variety of platforms to filter your product. These optimisation tips will help ensure that your YouTube channel isn’t letting your killer video down and help give your page a fresh, interactive flare – which hopefully will result in an increase of activity.

Like with every visual brand, you need to appeal to the senses. The look of your channel is the first impression the viewer will have. You need to work on grabbing their attention and making them interested in what your company looks like. Ideally, you want a banner or channel art – make it funky but still specific to your company. Secondly you want your logo in the top left corner, make sure it stands out from your art channel, so people can get to know your brand. Next, linking all of your social accounts. To increase activity on all social profiles, making all of your profiles visible on your channel art allows your viewers to research a bit more into your company once they’ve viewed your page. Ensuring links are visible and easily accessed will mean that your viewers can easily guide themselves to your site and hopefully connect with you on all accounts!

Firstly, insert a link to your company website. Next, give a short but informative introduction to your company, what are you known for? What will this channel offer? Why should viewers subscribe? Lastly leave contact details for anyone to follow up. Make sure you sound professional but personable. People connect with people, not a corporate robot. Consistency is key. To make your platform look more professional, keep to a consistent layout. All descriptions and all titles should follow the same format, the same tone, and the same look. Branding is key to ensure that your viewers remember your business.

During your video, there might be information about a product, event or service that you offer. You can insert a link onto your video when this section appears allowing your viewer to efficiently guide themselves to where they can purchase/ get more information about what you’re promoting. You can also use CTA’s to refer your viewer to another video, an example is if your doing a how to video and there’s a skill that your viewer should know before starting this stage, you can link them to it when stated on your video. You can also use CTA’s on end cards to refer viewers to other social platforms, the company website or more useful videos.

You want to pick the most stand out image that you think will explain your video, but more importantly encourage people to watch your video! Usually, a person’s attention will need to be grabbed in the first 1-5 seconds to make them continue on watching the rest of your video – so your thumbnails are majorly important! You’ll often be given a selection of thumbnails from the video, but we’d recommend making your own in Photoshop for example. A homemade thumbnail is bound to grab more attention than a screenshot from the video.

Think about keywords and phrases people will search that relate to your video, being aware of your company’s search engine optimization is a benefit here. The more relevant tags you can think of, the more likely your video is to come up when people search for these terms. If used properly, video tags can be one of the most beneficial tools on YouTube. Playlists are helpful for your business for many reasons, they allow your videos to seem more organised, meaning that your company comes across as more together and professional. They also work to benefit you in additional opportunities to appear on YouTube search results, as your playlist will fall in key generic search terms. Having a description for each playlist heightens the chances of the key terms being searched even further, utilise this!

YouTube allows users to monitor how their videos are doing, what times they are being watched for example and who may be watching them. This is extremely useful when considering the fact it may guide you in a certain direction with future videos. But perhaps it can teach you one or two things on how you can improve your video right now? Changing keywords and so on, depending on what your data tells you, it can make a huge change in viewership.

As stated earlier, people engage with people, not with a company. They want a conversation, they want their questions answered! Always show a human side, keep updates frequent, reply to channel comments, reply to video comments. You may even be able to gain a phone interaction from an inquiry on your YouTube video – which is great business. The more you build a character for your viewers, the more likely you are to generate business and have a reliable following.

Linked with engagement – encourage your viewers to subscribe, follow, connect or tweet with you. Offer them some kind of reward such as filtered information – top tips, latest industry news, product offers, first tickets for events. The stronger the relationship you build with your audience the more successful your business will become as a whole.

Be smart with the tools around you, look at what performs and what isn’t quite making the quota. Reform your strategy, possibly try a different tone, maybe try to engage on a different platform, maybe try and change your whole video feel for your next product? Social media is an amazing tool when utilised to its full potential, you can track your viewers activity and tailor content to them. Build relationships by offering them interesting, fun, engaging information that’ll benefit them!