YouTube is obviously a huge channel for marketers. It’s the #2 search engine in the world, second only to Google itself, and it averages over 1B daily views on mobile devices alone. Given this massive — and growing — audience that’s engaging with YouTube video content, how can marketers put their best foot forward to build their presence on the platform?
As we shared in our recent webinar with PUMA, there are a number of elements that marketers should consider to accelerate their organic growth on YouTube. By investing in channel management and SEO strategies, marketers will see increased organic viewership, subscribership, and watch times on their YouTube channel — all of which have a positive impact on both branding and the bottom line.
Here are 6 key best practices that we shared in our channel management webinar with PUMA:
- SEO at the video, playlist, and channel level: No more uploading videos to playlists titled “30 second spot.” Marketers should ensure that they’re implementing relevant titles, descriptions, and tags across their channels to help users discover content. We’re talking optimizing all video and public playlists to boost relevance in search results and help viewers contextualize brand videos. After all, marketers invested in high-quality, compelling creative to engage audiences — it’s worth taking the extra step to ensure the viewing experience is positive as well.
- Engagement elements encouraging viewers to interact: By dropping interactive cards and end screen elements on their content, brand marketers can push users to check out up to five products per video. These interactive elements also encourage follow-on views by prompting viewers to watch more content from brand playlists and channels.
- Publish consistently to keep viewers coming back: PUMA publishes as much as it can; the more high-quality content they can produce, the more opportunities they create for viewers to interact with their brand. And as Ivan Dashkov, Team Head of Social Media of PUMA points out, high-quality doesn’t mean expensive, it means that it fits the platform and engages its audience.
- Utilize custom thumbnails for a cohesive branded look: Implementing custom thumbnails allows brand marketers to make their YouTube channel stand out, makes their presence more visually interesting, and helps viewers find the most relevant videos to them.
- Utilize closed captions to increase searchability and reach a wider audience: YouTube’s algorithm uses closed captions and translations to understand and index videos, so including these elements helps videos rank higher in search. Including non-English captions also increases the reach of brand videos around the globe.
- Producing videos for YouTube: When we look at top brand videos on the platform, videos that are longer than 5+ minutes get the most engagements. Audiences are looking for long-form content on YouTube — and marketers should rise to this challenge, and deliver long-form content on the platform.
Want more insights on building your brand’s YouTube channel? Watch our recent webinar with PUMA now — and let’s connect if you’d like to learn more about how Pixability can help you deliver organic growth on the platform.