5 Reasons Your Brand Can’t Afford to Ignore YouTube in 2020
By: Joe Pollicino, Social Lead, Hot Paper Lantern
December 16, 2019
At a digital agency, it’s not uncommon to field a range of SEO-related questions from clients on a regular basis. This sometimes parlays into talking about YouTube strategy. And while these brand clients are not necessarily vying for YouTuber influencer status, they do want to ensure that a wealth of relevant video content exists for their brand.
Success on YouTube, for the most part, can be attributed to relevancy and consistency—the factors that keep viewers watching. However, most companies aren’t set up to be content houses, and don’t have the resources to pump out videos on a daily or weekly basis. So why even bother?
Because–as Google loves to remind us—YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google. Operating from this standpoint paves the way for ample opportunities:
Discoverability. Just as your business wants to present its best self through a well-designed website, it should consider the optics of any and all potentially relevant platforms, including YouTube. Even if there isn’t time or budget for a full content and audience growth strategy, YouTube has an unparalleled ability to create more discovery points for your brand.
Evergreen content. It (almost) goes without saying that your channel shouldn’t be a wasteland, so some foundational work will be required. Make sure you have a few evergreen videos so that the channel always feels relevant, and include paths that will allow audiences to engage with your brand further. This can be as simple as a recruiting video that links to a landing page for job openings.
Audience-focused. What’s the core benefit of leveraging YouTube in a discoverability context? To ensure your brand is available when someone is searching for it in a video-consumption mindset. This content will appear in your Google search result, which is an overall win for your SEO strategy, even if it doesn’t make the first page of results.
Relevance. Whatever your YouTube content is about, make sure you use relevant keywords as you write up meta tags, headlines and descriptions. It doesn’t have to be complicated! Think of the one to three words that describe your business and make your content unique, apart from the requisite product names and umbrella topics. What do you think someone would have to search for to make your content pop up? What video content would align with your core audience while remaining accessible to outliers?
Buy-in. Next time the YouTube question comes up in a planning meeting, keep the following in mind: YouTube has SEO power, which can benefit your business, whether for recruiting, lead generation or brand positioning. You probably won’t become a YouTube sensation on your first try, but you can still give your audience a far better sense of your business than they would have had without YouTube’s engine chugging along.
