Last updated on June 15th, 2024
How do you match your content to audience and value proposition? How can you work with YouTube influencers to promote your brand? How can YouTubers make their channels more attractive to brand deals?
HOSTS:
- Dane Golden: VidAction.tv | LinkedIn
- Tim Schmoyer: VideoCreators
- Matt Ballek: VidiSEO
Tip #1: Create YouTube Hero Video Strategy: High-production
Matt Ballek says that “Hero, Hub and Hygiene” is a way brand can structure content, which was created by Google’s internal agency. Matt says he sometimes calls it “Push, Pull, and Pow” content, but the theme is the same.
The Hero portion generally refers to how brands use YouTube as an advertiser. Hero is the high-production videos that agencies are already putting out. These are often in pre-rolls. YouTube says this is often a twice-a-year type of thing – you get huge spikes of traffic and nothing in between. This means major advertising initiatives intended to reach a wide audience.
Hero is essentially what brands are already doing. But the Hero needs Hub and Hygiene to succeed at the highest level. Tim Schmoyer says that Hero is great for building exposure and awareness and buzz, but what are you building the buzz for if there’s nothing that comes after that.
Tip #2: Create YouTube Hub Videos: Passionate Content
Hub content is regularly scheduled content designed for your prime prospect. This is the content brands should develop on a regular basis to give a fresh perspective on their target’s passion points. And the brand need not confine itself to videos it makes itself. Rather, each brand should feel free to curate enthusiast videos from around YouTube into best-of playlists on the brand’s own channel, highlighting community enthusiasts.
An Example: As part of the #FiestaMovement influencer campaign discussed below, popular YouTuber Mystery Guitarman, aka Joe Penna, created an orchestra of musical instruments out of his car, resulting in a music video with 500,000 views. While the video was viewed by Penna’s enthusiastic audience on his own channel and on the #FiestaMovement website and social media platforms, Ford could go one step further by including the video (while still hosted on Penna’s channel) into a #FiestaMovement playlist hosted on Ford’s YouTube channel, exposing it further to a new audience. This costs nothing to do and takes only a few minutes. In fact, Ford is already curating other Fiesta videos via the playlist functionality.
Tim Schmoyer says that on his own Video Creators channel, almost everything is Hub-type content which caters towards his fans who keep coming back. But on the Hero side he does big live events, which can be Hero on the cheap.
Tip #3: Create YouTube Hygiene Videos: Evergreen and Searchable
Tim Schmoyer calls Hygiene content “Searchable” content and Hub content “Community” content. But the names don’t really matter. What it refers to is the super-evergreen videos that people are searching for. Searchers may be trying to solve a problem, and you build exposure for your brand by answering their question. These can often be “How-to” videos or tutorials.
Matt Ballek compares the Gillette how-to shave videos (yes Hygiene content about hygiene) to the Dollar Shave Hero videos. Here’s a Gillette How-To Shave video:
Here’s the Dollar Shave Club video:
Tim recommends searching on YouTube for “How to Make Playdough” to see how normal, searchable, how-to content can blow so-called viral videos (aka Hero content) out of the water.