Last updated on June 14th, 2024
The YouTube community has some of the most exciting personalities on earth.
But you are not one of them.
And, let’s face it, the YouTube channel for your business isn’t that exciting, either. At least to the YouTube masses, anyway.
But that’s OK.
You can’t juggle ping pong balls. You’re not a video game expert. And your videos don’t bring out someone’s inner beauty. You are definitely not funny. You are not one of those people who should sing in public. The cool kids will never think you’re cool just because you have a lot of videos on YouTube.
Your videos will never get shared by a million people. You will never get to tell your friends, “Our video just went viral.”
But that’s OK.
It’s OK, Really
It’s OK, really. Because I can tell you there is a certain group of people who are very interested in hearing what you have to say, and they don’t care if you can make them look more attractive, or can speedrun through the latest video game, or can juggle or sing. They only want you to share what you know. They just want you to help them to build their business.
I call this group of people by a magical name. I call them “customers.” Or “clients,” if you prefer. And they want to hear from you.
You don’t have to compete with PewDiePie. Instead, you can be the king of your own neighborhood, and leave him and his friends to have their fun. You’ve got a business to promote.
You Don’t Need A Million Views
No, you don’t need a million views. But you do need a smaller number of highly-targeted leads of people and companies that work in your targeted segment of your industry. You want to rank high in YouTube and Google’s discoverability algorithms, by using best practices that some people call “video SEO.”
How To Get Leads On YouTube
How do you get these leads? It starts with good content, which in your case means that your videos are highly informative. These videos don’t have to be sexy, and they don’t have to be expensive (in fact it’s sometimes better if they are not expensive, because you can put them out more quickly and on a regular schedule). But the videos have to get right to the point in the first three seconds. They have to have very close up shots, because half your viewers are on mobile. You have speak quickly, because people are impatient – if you’re slow they’ll skip ahead or quit the video altogether (and they may never come back). And you have to end the video quickly – most businesspeople can’t afford to take their eyes off their email for more than a few minutes. If you have a longer video, break it up into several bite-sized tips. And make sure you have good audio, with a USB microphone if you’re off camera or a lavalier mic if you’re on camera. Because if the user has to check their email mid-video, they’ll keep listening, absorbing half of your info via audio-only. If the audio continues to engage them, they may come back to watch the video again after a minute or so (unless the email distracts them).
But that’s the structure of the content. What kind of content, actually, should you do? There’s a tendency to want to do videos that all say how awesome you are, but those get boring quick. If you want real engagement and shares and long viewing sessions, give the customer something they can’t get anywhere else.
What’s Your Expertise?
What is the one thing they can get on your channel that they can’t get anywhere else? It’s your expertise, and not just about your own product. Much like your content marketing blog, your YouTube channel will win if you can answer questions people are searching for. I recommend an 80/20 rule. If you help the customer get better at doing their jobs overall, you will win their loyalty. So 80 percent of your videos should show them how to do skills, tasks, and learn answers to hard questions that are related to your industry in general – but not necessarily your own product. Basically, you want to help your customer look smarter in the eyes of their boss. That should be 80 percent of your videos. Then 20 percent of your videos should show them how to use your own products more proficiently.
“How to” wins on YouTube, education wins on YouTube, and demonstrations win on YouTube.
These videos about how to use your product better can be mostly screencasts if you’re a SaaS platform, they can be close-ups of one of your employees sitting at their desk. They can be of you in front of a whiteboard. If you have a physical product, you can do video demonstrations of how to use the product in various situations. As long as you inform quickly and succinctly and keep doing it on a regular basis, you will win on YouTube.
Meanwhile the competitors will be spending most of their time just talking about themselves. They may even use their YouTube videos to try to be cool – but of course we know that they are not. They will wonder why YouTube doesn’t work for them.
What Does The Customer Want To Know?
You will show you care most about the customer, and care about what they need, instead of showing them how much you care about yourself.
You need to ask the customer questions in your videos, instead of just telling them, and encourage customers to ask you questions of you in return, via the comments section. Then answer their questions in the comments, and use it to begin a relationship around a common interest, which are your videos and the lessons within. Then give the customer a more direct link to your website for more info – by sharing this in the comments, too.
How-To Wins On YouTube
If the titles of your videos have some version of the words “How To” in the title, you’re probably on the right track. If they don’t, you’re probably going to have a high bar justifying why anyone would want to watch your videos.
Oh yeah, and you’ve got to make sure the videos and the channel follow best practices for optimization, aka video SEO or “discoverability.” That’s what we do here at VidAction.tv. Let me know if we can help your B2B or SaaS. Thanks for reading.