Why not use one of the most widely viewed platforms available to you at the click of (a few) buttons? YouTube can be a great way to get your company name out there. To find out more about how you can use it for your business, we asked nine members from Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) the following question.
Q. What's your best tip for using YouTube to promote your brand?
Their best answers are below:
1. Be Authentic
Be as authentic as possible with video and YouTube. The visual nature of video means that people have more cues to determine the congruency between you and your brand. People can detect authenticity. Being true to your brand, personality, and mission can positively impact your videos. Dove is a great example. Their beauty series helped show that they care about more than selling soap. – Andrew Thomas, SkyBell Technologies, Inc.
2. Teach to Create the Need
Create videos that are genuinely useful to your audience. Teach them how to do something new (tutorials, recipes, exercises). Present your product as a natural need they'll have when they engage in that activity. Want to sell golf clubs for beginners? Try making initiation videos for golf, and subtly showcase the advantages of your clubs in them. – Pablo Villalba, 8fit
3. Be Interesting -- and Keep It Short
Keep YouTube videos short (under one minute). Most people stop watching after the first minute anyway. And create something that people actually want to see and will find useful. – Laura Land, Accessory Export, LLC
4. Keep Making Videos
The impact of using YouTube and making videos comes from consistency. The benefits are many: you get better at making videos the more you do it, you build a loyal base of followers over time, and if or when you do produce a video that captures the attention of many viewers, there will be a wealth of other videos for them to watch on your channel. – Bhavin Parikh, Magoosh Inc
5. Start with a Hangout
If you are going to make a video that is going to end up on YouTube, you might as well create it as a Google+ Hangout so you get the additional SEO boost. Then make sure you get it transcribed so you have the text in the description, leveraging keywords you want to rank for. – Mike Ambassador Bruny, Ambassador Bruny Dot Com
6. Find Influencers
YouTube has become one of the most influential outlets in all of media, and there are many YouTubers in most industries that have massive followings. Find these influencers and turn them into virtual brand ambassadors. If they love your brand, so will the people that watch their videos. This can be more effective than any traditional marketing you'll ever do. – James Simpson, GoldFire Studios
7. Go Live
Since late 2013, verified YouTube accounts can stream live. At She Takes on the World we have used this live functionality for online events that have drawn tens of thousands of people. Going live allows you to expand your audience, especially if your event gets featured while you're live. Your fans will also love getting to interact with you in the real-time comments below the stream. – Natalie MacNeil, She Takes on the World
8. Create Entertaining or Useful Content
This is pretty much true across all social media platforms. InList operated a massive social media campaign this summer, and more than two million people viewed our ads. During this exercise, we noticed significantly higher engagement on posts that are naturally enticing versus those that are blatantly advertorial. – Gideon Kimbrell, InList Inc
9. Feature Clients
Let your customers do the talking by directing a video around their story. Some of our most viewed YouTube videos are client showcases. Ninety percent of that video content is about how the business owner got started. The remaining part focuses on how our product has helped them. Our product is all about promoting our clients, so we want our videos to reflect that as well. – Nanxi Liu, Enplug
