With the landscape constantly changing, it often feels hard to trust the longevity of social platforms for your digital marketing strategy. But one social platform that’s not only increased from prior years, with an expectation to pull in more users… is YouTube. YouTube has a dedicated, young audience that’s only growing, so creating a channel for your brand can be a worthwhile investment.
The benefits are countless, but the major bright spots are maximizing search traffic towards your brand, allowing your brand to tap into a new audience, building a loyal following and of course, making a profit.
1.Maximize Search Traffic
There are about 5.4 billion Google searches a day, making Google the world’s largest search engine. And YouTube, which is owned by Google, is the second largest. So when a user (or in this case, potential customer) types their search words into Google, the top video results will always be from YouTube (not Facebook, Instagram or Twitter). So by creating YouTube videos and using your brand’s unique search words, you can capitalize off the enormously high daily traffic from Google.
A simple google search will bring you to a brand Youtube page like Calm or Goodful:
2. Tap Into A Different Audience With Your Videos
On top of the viewers gained from Google searches, YouTube has 200 million users and counting. So by only sharing video content on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok, your brand is missing out on a huge potential community of viewers. And depending on your brand, your content might even have a larger draw on YouTube than its competitors. YouTube favors longer content, so entertainment brands can find success sampling full episodes and long compilations, food and restaurant brands can find success with recipe videos and make-up and fashion brands can air in-depth tutorials. Its only competitor in the realm of longer videos is Facebook, however with the majority of YouTube’s viewership being aged 18-25, compared to Facebook’s largest demographic being 25-34, your brand’s YouTube channel can tap into a younger audience that isn’t on your Facebook page.
3. Build A Loyal Following
With linear, cable TV programming becoming more and more outdated, younger audiences are turning to YouTube for its own version of TV. YouTube’s algorithm favors consistency and subscribers crave dependability. So if you post often on the same day (and even around the same time), you can train your audience to know when to come to your channel to have their expectations met. And using data like this chart below, you can optimize your release schedule.
4. You Can Make Profits
Through Google’s AdSense or AdWords programs, you can earn money on your videos through ads at the beginning or end of your videos. But ad sales are not the only way to monetize your brand channel. If your brand sells physical products (like merchandise or swag), you can promote them either within a video itself or at the very end with direct links viewers can click on.
If there’s anything you take away from this piece it’s that you can’t count YouTube out of your brand’s social strategy, if anything, you should invest more into it. And if you’re already uploading video content onto Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, find a way to post that same content onto YouTube (Our suggestion: 1+ minutes on YouTube, less than 1 minute on YouTube Shorts) and start gaining an audience that’s just waiting to find your channel from a Google search.
