It’s hard to believe only a decade ago the word video was synonymous with movies, Hollywood, celebrities, and sometimes home videos of birthday parties, vacations, and siblings pranking each other. These days videos are so much more.
In fact, they are so much more essential to how we consume information and take in the world around us, it’s hard to imagine a digital world without video. For life coaches and digital fitness pros, these top tips will help you take your marketing game to the next level by integrating YouTube videos.
Why You Need Video
Video has become foundational for modern consumers. It’s how we document the banality of daily life, but it’s also how we involve context in our newsfeeds. Twitter used to be 140 characters. Now news is reported with tweets of 140 characters, plus a video.
Facebook promotes the visibility of video over any other status type (e.g., photo, words, sales post), and has gone as far as to invest in video variations, such as its recent Live Video option. Andrew Hutchinson reports, “Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg has said he expects most of Facebook to be video by 2019.”
Now, let’s consider YouTube. Sure, kittens get a lot of credit for owning the Internet with their crazy video antics. But did you know there are high school aged cosmetic savants making millions with their fashion vlogs? Those prankster siblings I mentioned, have moved from grainy home videos to YouTube sensations. They are now making millions showing off pranks while traveling the world. Video is here to stay and for serious fitness and coaching professionals, video is now the single most critical digital marketing tool.
Where to Begin…
As with any new investment of either time or money, the best place to begin is understanding where YouTube videos fit in your business plan. So, let’s consider a few foundational key points.
- Who experiences the most success on YouTube, besides cats? There are seven highly successful categories of videos and one of them is People & Personalities. That would include life industry leading certified wellness coaches and digital fitness pros like yourself. It also clearly shows there is a huge, available audience for your message.
- Research the competition. Since we know what you have to offer is a popular category, invest an hour or so to look at who else is doing what you do. Take notes on what you love, what you hate, and what you know you could do better. Keep these notes handy. You’ll use them when it comes time to create content, the backbone of a successful YouTube brand.
- Take Your Branding Seriously. Similar to any other online or offline business, take steps to communicate a memorable brand. Consider everything from registering your domain name in order to protect it, to the creation of a visually stunning and recognizable profile. Employee the most powerful public speaking tactics when presenting to your video audience.
- If you didn’t already know, YouTube is owned by Google. And that makes it one of the easiest and fastest ways to get to Google page 1 since video is often displayed first, before all of articles and blog posts.
So, you’ll need a Gmail account with a business set-up and a connected YouTube Channel. Kevin Donnelly provides a great run-down of set-up details with screenshots. Your business plan and brand guide will help you optimize the customization of your YouTube Channel.
- Plan Your Equipment Investment. These days we wear one hundred hats. We are the marketing department, the CEO, the talent, the financial wiz, and so much more. Now you’re adding producer, videographer, and editing guru to the mix.
Luckily, today’s technology makes that an attainable goal. Many people have had to involve a variety of cameras, lenses, light boxes, and microphones. Guess what? Brian Lovegren shows us that simply setting up an iphone on a tripod in well-lit room is how many overnight YouTube sensations are finding their way around potentially complicated equipment.
- Plan Your Time Investment. Entrepreneurs like you and I tend to be big picture thinkers, which means we can easily over-commit when it comes to the details. As the next YouTube life coach star or the next in-demand digital fitness pro, be sure to plan and set aside time for your video venture. Protect that time and make room for the learning curve you’ll have to face when working with video on a new digital platform.
- Plan on Getting Your Investment Back. If your goal is to build visibility, that is one thing, but if you want to monetize your YouTube channel, add it into the plan now, so you are working toward that end from the beginning. You can always change the plan if you find other opportunities opening up for you. Common monetization strategies are to partner directly with YouTube. You can earn $.10 to $6 dollars for every 1,000 views. Brand sponsorships, selling products, and affiliate marketing are also very popular.
Quality Content Creation Equals YouTube Sensation
Growing an audience and earning traffic will not only bring more visibility to your message, but will encourage sponsors and other forms of monetization for your YouTube Channel. Ridiculously Great Video Content that generates channel subscriptions and return viewers is what you are looking for. Here are a few tips to help you plan your content calendar.
- How-to Videos are Winning Big. YouTube has almost become an open source university. The most popular content by far, are how-to videos. Amy Gesenhues quoted a statistic, “searches related to ‘how-to’ on YouTube are growing 70% year over year, with more than 100m hours of how-to content watched in North America so far this year” alone! Take this seriously and build how-to videos into your content plan.
- Be Authentic and Let Your Personality Shine Through. The YouTube video category you are publishing under is People and Personalities. Hint: the focus should be on personality. Avoid Talking Head Syndrome, which occurs when someone lacks creativity and simply talks while standing directly in front of the camera.
Videos need to be interesting and reflect your message, not just your likeness. Include images, slides, video clips, and other interesting content that will keep people engaged. A buzzword that has gained popularity this year is, authenticity. Whatever your message, be your authentic self. People connect with people, not brands.
- Brand Storytelling and Consistency is a Powerful Tool. Designing a great brand is the first step to becoming recognizable. Implementing branding best practices is what separates successful YouTube pros from the greenhorns. Create a consistent look for your channel.
Use a memorable intro and outro for every video. Be sure to add your logo as a watermark throughout your video. That way, when viewers decide to use clips or share your video, the brand is shared with it. Most importantly, create a story around your brand. Share your successes, inspirations, and lessons learned. This gives people a way to connect with you as well as relatable stories and experiences. People connect with experiences, not brands.
YouTube Best Practices for Personalities: The Nitty Gritty
You added YouTube videos to your business plan. You did the research, set up your channel, planned your time and budget. You’ve got a killer content calendar and a brand guide. Let’s talk about some of the optimization tips and tools that will help you spread your message to the masses!
This is the nitty gritty, so my first tip is to bookmark this article so you can come back to it over and over to make sure you’ve got these details down.
- Your Channel Icon (Profile Image) & Channel Art (Banner Image). By default, it’s your Google+ image. But your brand guide may tell you that your logo is going to be your profile image for YouTube. Whatever you’ve decided, be consistent and don’t leave it as the Google+ default badge.
- Remember, to optimize the photo. It should be a jpeg, 800×800 pixels. Loading channel art is a super opportunity to communicate the look and feel of your brand. Keep it under 4MB and try for 2460×1440 pixels.
- Customize Your Page. Use the gear icon to enable the ‘customize the layout of your channel’ option. This will create five tabs for you to play with: Home, Videos, Playlists, Channels, and About.
Each and every one of these should get your attention, but the About Page is a must, just like when you create a website. This is where people see the person behind the brand. Recall the branding 101 lesson from earlier: people connect with people, not brands. Or in some cases, people connect with cats, but that’s not your audience, so you’re OK. Include your personal mission, which should tie in with your brand story. Give all the relevant contact info: email, website, social media links, product links or other monetization you already have set up.
- Optimize Your Video Uploads. You created wonderfully entertaining and useful content. Don’t let it go to waste! Think about all the keywords people may use when searching for your videos or video topics. Narrow it down to one target keyword per video. Then use that keyword or phrase in your video description, video title, video filename, and the tags for your video. Understanding the major theme of your video and the words people will use to find it is a critical tactic to implement.
- Use Your YouTube Tools. YouTube has a suite of tools available. It’s to your advantage to use them. YouTube Director is a suite of video options created with businesses in mind. The YouTube Video Manager helps you organize and optimize your videos and playlists. Attend conferences, workshops, consultations, and anything else that will help you get a leg up on the competition. The YouTube Creator Hub is a great place to get started.
- Enable Buttons That Encourage Engagement. Turn on your Subscribe button. Adding “?sub_confirmation=1” to the end of the URL for your channel will ensure viewers see a pop-up encouraging them to subscribe. Simple. Straightforward. Why wouldn’t you add this? Make sure you have a link to your YouTube channel on your social media profiles and website. If you are selling products as one of your monetizing strategies, add a product card or other clickable links to your video.
- Always, Always Include Your Call to Action. All this work in the details of optimizing YouTube – it would be a shame to miss out on the extra sweet and juicy low hanging fruit.
Tell your followers what you want them to do: hit the subscribe button, buy your products, check out more videos, head over to your website, follow you on social media. Whatever the direction you want to send them, tell them. Give them direction.
YouTube is a wondrous place full of diversions and distractions. I promise if you don’t make your call to action clear, they’ll end up watching cat videos with no memory of how they got there. Megan O’Neill says there are three ways to get your call to action across: the vocal direction, text in your video, and call to action buttons.
- Personalize Your Thumbnails. The YouTube Creator Academy says, “90% of the best performing videos on YouTube have custom thumbnails. It also gets remarkably specific when it comes to thumbnail best practices. Who knew there was so much science in such a little picture?
- Interact with Your Audience to Let Them Know You Are a Real Person. Here’s that pesky “authenticity” word again, but it’s a buzzword for a reason. When people comment on your video, answer them. Be professional. Offer advice or resources.
Encourage conversation among viewers about your video or related topics. This not only builds a community. It builds your brand community. Dara Fontein gives some great advice on the Hoosuite blog about building quality interactions. She recommends setting aside a few minutes each day to interact with and build your audience.
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