YouTube Marketing: Strategy & Assets for No-Cost Reach
Learn ways to expand your reach with evergreen videos and YouTube strategies to leverage your existing assets for free.
By Ken Morico updated When I devise strategies for organic growth for my clients I have two core tactics that deliver consistently - blogging and YouTube. The shelf life for content created on blogs and YouTube is essentially eternal and represents the best investment in time and money. Videos that you put more effort into and are expected to stick around awhile are called "evergreen" videos... a throwback to television and radio days. Think of the Charlie Brown Halloween Special or Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Certainly the media companies reaped more than their initial investment.
With hyperinflation and general economic uncertainty, it's prudent to bet only on sure things. If you spend time and / or money on content to help sell your product or service, you want a return. It's easy to overspend with ad platforms like Facebook and Google. And once your campaign ends because you stop spending money, the traffic dries up. Be the vulture. Not the meat.
I've gathered the best YouTube strategies from my experience and other industry leaders.
YouTube Tips for the Best Long-term Investment
- Create a "home base" website to post your videos, blogs, and free resources to generate traffic. Embedded YouTube video views count as views on YouTube.com which can boost your ranking.
- Embedding YouTube videos on your site can save you money on third-party video hosting while improving your reach.
- Create longer videos.
- Inconsistent posting can be an issue for the YouTube algorithm - try to post more consistently.
- Add links in YouTube video descriptions to your Web site to increase site traffic.
- Use chapter markers in YouTube description to help users navigate longer videos increase interaction rate.
- Create related videos to keep people on your YouTube channel. Add videos to a theme playlist.
- Create a niche so YouTube can understand your channel.
- Try "behind the scenes" / commentary after short videos to increase length.
- Collaborate with other people / businesses in your niche and have them introduce you and your YouTube Channel / Web site.
- Re-create popular videos in your niche with your own voice, style, perspective, and research.
- Add links to YouTube videos as comments in your Facebook posts.
- Increase the quality of your production - work on getting a studio setup with studio lights and DSLR camera with tripod for commentary videos.
- Shoot videos in 4K if you have the equipment. 4K videos will look higher quality when scaled down to lower resolutions as well.
- If your camera equipment isn't great, consider de-saturating color videos.
- If you have a budget, get a graphic designer to design video thumbnails and YouTube Channel art.
- Provide raw video to video editor to create polished videos / videos with intros (leverage Fiverr and UpWork).
- Use WordPress to create a Web site and host it at https://wordpress.com or WP Engine and pick a custom domain name if you don't already have one.
- Once a website is setup, you can advertise to people who have already visited your website and shown interest using Google Tag Manager and AdWords remarketing / YouTube Advertising.
- Explore YouTube third-party tools like TubeBuddy to help analyze your competition.
- Subscribe and study your competition to understand how they "talk to" their audience.
Do you agree with these tips?
If you would like an assessment of content for your business as well as well as a deeper, in-person discussion of tactics to expand your reach, contact me, Ken Morico, Digital Marketing Consultant.