Tips from the HubSpot Skill Up Series 'YouTube Marketing'
HubSpot has offered a Skill Up series of eight podcasts that cover important aspects of marketing a business on YouTube. This article summarizes those aspects.
The Skill Up series emphasizes at the beginning that YouTube is the second biggest search engine. Therefore, creating not only optimized videos is important but also creating an optimized channel. Depending on how much time a given company has to devote to YouTube, the company's channel can become a regular content vehicle – like a website. This article assumes the basics are needed to get a channel going.
The YouTube Algorithm
The YouTube algorithm is looking for engagement. More specifically, engagement means watch time. This is more important than views and likes. Because your channel's accumulated watch time is a measure for the algorithm, it is recommended that badly performing videos are taken down because your channel's accumulated watch time is affected. This can be challenging advice for a channel that is just getting up and running. But once videos are accumulated, this tip could implemented.
Optimizing Your Channel
Optimizing Your YouTube channel starts with three basic improvements: Channel art, a trailer, and an about page. Channel art should be simple enough to work on small screens, but also be a large enough banner, 2560 x 1440 pixels, to display well on TV screens.
Below is an example of channel art that is 2560 x 1440 pixels designed for small and large screens.
A trailer video can be a tool for giving an overview of your channel. If you do create one, there are details to consider such as updating it on a regular basis and targeting a new audience versus targeting a returning audience. An about page can include keywords for your channel. These keywords need to be in the first 48 characters.
Optimizing Your Videos
Optimizing videos is done with an effective title, description, tags, and thumbnail. A title needs to be clear and be what people are looking for. Use keywords in your title if you can. Also use keywords at the top of your description and in tags. A custom thumbnail is a standard requirement for attracting viewers on YouTube. Some graphic design will likely be needed. Also important to video SEO is the transcript. For this reason, it is recommended you upload your own transcript.
Example thumbnails:
YouTube Metrics that Matter
This podcast series suggests having clear marketing goals to compare your metrics to before you consider metrics. Once you start analyzing the analytics, the most important measures are accumulated watch time, average percentage viewed, and average view duration. The graphic below shows accumulated watch time, average percentage viewed, and average view duration.
YouTube Management
How dedicated a business is to YouTube can determine how far its channel can go to improve engagement. Audience building can be valuable but will require the release of regularly posted videos. One tip for video production mentioned in this series is to find a production hack that works for you. Maybe videos that include voice over and stills allow you to build a series, for example, making production faster and easier to implement.
Interaction with your audience is recommended well-established YouTubers interviewed in this series. Managing and responding to comments requires monitoring your channel. Monitoring comments can get sophisticated such as blocking specific words and links. You can also delete people if necessary to encourage clean comment threads. Advanced YouTubers advise against turning off comments. But this is a decision that needs to consider the level of engagement the channel owner can devote to channel engagement.
1,000+ subscribers are needed to add links to 'cards' that can be inserted into your videos. To attract subscribers, it is encouraged to ask people to subscribe to your channel in videos, especially in a trailer video.