Many of us grow up dreaming of appearing on the television, with the buzz of being seen by the masses. Luckily for us, the internet is the new TV and it’s never been easier to get yourself seen by a global audience.
By Tim Pritchard at SellerDeck
Read On:
Five steps to perfect product pages
How to create a Youtube channel
Off-the-wall marketing
We all know about YouTube and it’s meant to be great for business, so it still surprises me how few of the business owners I speak with make use of this amazing facility.
Anyone can happily start their very own channel and with the right content, the potential is endless.
Here’s my five point guide for making the most out of YouTube.
1. Know your market and do your research
Before you get started on your new YouTube venture, do your research. It’s well worth spending a decent chunk of time perusing YouTube (just be careful not to get distracted) seeing how your competition currently does things.
Find some videos that you think are good, as well as bad. Take notes on these and try to find either a gap in the market, or a way you can do things slightly differently. If you can’t find a unique angle, just do whatever feels natural, show off your products or share your expertise.
It’s also worth doing some keyword research to establish the best tags to add to your videos. With writing, they say “write about what you know”, and the same goes for video content.
2. Get used to the equipment
You don’t need expensive studio equipment to produce videos good enough to market your content. All you need is a smartphone or DSLR camera, a tripod, someone to help and some basic editing software.
Free editing suites like Movie Maker for Windows or iMovie for Mac are perfectly adequate to trim the fat from your video, and are both easy to use. Watch the ‘how to’ videos for these programs on YouTube to help get you started.
3. Don’t be nervous
Yes, there’s a camera pointing at you, but don’t be nervous. You can keep retaking until you get it right and edit any bad bits. Remember, you’re an expert in your field and you’re just sharing your knowledge.
Imagine that a customer has just asked a question and you’re giving the answer. If you’re struggling, get help from a friend or colleague, or find an appropriate ‘presenter’ for your videos.
4. Reach out to subscribers and post regularly
In your videos, encourage viewers to ”hit the subscribe button”, so that when more videos are posted they will be notified. Regular posts with decent, interesting content will bring more subscribers.
Don’t think that you’ll be getting 1000s of views and subscribers overnight; it takes time, so keep at it. Just remember that you’re appealing to your core demographic of customers, so produce content you think they’d want or need.
5. Don’t respond to ‘trolls’
Unfortunately, YouTube is an active preying ground for ‘internet trolls’. Trolls are folks that scour the web with seemingly no other intent but to bully and undermine.
Hopefully, during your research you would have found some videos that went viral for the wrong reasons and seen some bad comments.
Responding to these comments will rarely work out well. Of course, if someone has genuine questions or comments, make sure you engage, but if it’s a nasty remark, just for the sake of being nasty, steer well clear.
So remember, be prepared for it to take a while to attract big view counts and subscribers, but be focussed on why you’re doing this.
YouTube is a great place to attract new potential customers, as well as providing answers to questions that your customers may have, and guides for how to use your products.
And being owned by Google, a good YouTube presence certainly doesn’t hurt your brand’s SEO and online reputation.
For more visit: www.sellerdeck.co.uk
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