Today, we released our study The Top 100 Global Brands: Key Lessons for Success on YouTube. In a previous post, I discussed the motivation for the study, so I’m not going to reproduce it here. (Sorry SEO aficionados.) I also decided to break a marketing rule: I made the report available ungated. (Sorry landing page form addicts.) Why? Because this report is applicable to everyone in brands, agencies, or anyone else who’s using video to deliver a message and engage an audience. We’re finding that YouTube is the great marketing democratizer. The information that we distilled in the report findings are relevant to any company, whether a top 100 global brand or a top 10 local plumber. We aren’t blind-faith fanboys either: we looked at the good, the bad, and the ugly of YouTube and online video marketing.
Over the past week, I’ve spoken with many great people who cover YouTube and the online video market. All of them asked about the key takeaway. Here it is:
When organizations do YouTube right, they get incredible results. When they don’t, they stink. Period.
Here’s a summary of the findings:
Make lots of video content: be a well-oiled, consistent, video content machine
Practice good video SEO: take video optimization and YouTube channel architecture seriously.
Use different videos for multiple touch-points: Don’t get caught in the overproduction trap. Lesser quality video works well too.
Link video to marketing initiatives: apply the “always on” strategy to video marketing.
Ensure video has branding: apply it consistently, intelligently and methodically.
Content vs. channels: adding more content is more important than adding more channels.
Engage community via social media: audience is everything on YouTube
YouTube is a big deal, but brands (and others) have to use it right in order to achieve some very powerful results.