Last updated on June 15th, 2024
One of the most underrated ways to get traffic to your YouTube channel is to have a great website and blog to go with it. Embedding a YouTube video on a blog post will get both a ranking higher in Google search. Bree Brouwer has made a career as a writer by helping video marketing companies with their blogs. Today she gives us her top 10 secret tips for making a website to go with your company’s YouTube channel.
GUEST: Bree Brouwer of Tubular Labs and BreeBrouwer.com | LinkedIn | Twitter
HOSTS: The VidAction Podcast is hosted by:
– Dane Golden of VidAction.tv and VidTarget.io | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube
– Gwen Miller of Kin | LinkedIn | Twitter |
SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by our affiliate partners, including: TubeBuddy, VidIQ, MorningFame, Rev.com, and other products and services we recommend.
PRODUCER: Jason Perrier of Phizzy Studios
TRANSCRIPT
Bree Brouwer:
Always have a website. It doesn’t matter if you want to try to be different or go against the crowd, you really need a website because as long as Google is around and a thing, it’s in your best interest to have another place, another digital presence that Google can literally connect to your brand. It needs to index the words on your site. It needs to index and figure out where you relate to other businesses you might interact with online, other companies.
So yeah, in general, when you want to be a serious video marketer business, you generally want to have more consistent brand experience that you personally control versus just being on platforms that you have no control over. That could shut down any day.
Dane Golden:
It’s time for the VidAction Podcast. This is the podcast where we help marketers and business owners just like you get more value out of your video marketing efforts. My name is Dane Golden from VidAction.tv where we help you up your game on YouTube for business and transform your viewers into loyal customers. My other business is VidTarget.io, where we help you get a higher return on your YouTube ad spend with targeted YouTube lists that you can put your video ads on. My co-host today is Gwen Miller from Kin. Hello, Gwen.
Gwen Miller:
Hey Dane, I’m excited for today’s topic. This is the part of the business I think I know the least about.
Dane Golden:
Yes, but you were such a good question asker and that’s the key. What do you do Gwen over at Kin?
Gwen Miller:
I am vice president of content for Kin and we’re a digital women’s lifestyle company. I have a passion for using data to crack content for unique, one of a kind audiences.
Dane Golden:
Okay. And for you, the listener, you should know that as always, you can follow along in the podcast app of your choice that you’re listening to right now, we’ve got a transcript, we’ve got links. We can find out all sorts of things and you can send us a tweet and let us know how you think this podcast is going. If have any questions, I’m @DaneGolden and Gwen, what’s your Twitter handle?
Gwen Miller:
It is @Gwenim.
Dane Golden:
Gwenim. Today, we have a special guest, it’s Bree Brouwer. Welcome Bree.
Bree Brouwer:
Thank you.
Dane Golden:
Now, I’ve had you on this podcast before, right?
Bree Brouwer:
Yes, that was, oh, that was a while back. So I’m definitely happy to be invited back again, but it was a while ago.
Dane Golden:
Well, this is a return performance and you’ve made a professional specialty out of writing blog posts, text content, mostly that helps promote or describe various types of video marketing stuff. And I am a believer in this. I believe blog posts are one of the most underrated parts of video marketing and YouTube marketing specifically. You’ve come up today with your top 10 tips for doing a website that goes with your YouTube channel, and you’re going to give us those tips. Is that right?
Bree Brouwer:
Yes. I’m going to do my absolute best based on what I know about the industry. Even though I personally ironically, do not do video marketing myself, I have a website, but yes, I work with so many video marketers and digital first entertainment companies, so it’s really … There’s plenty I’ve seen that works and what doesn’t, so.
Gwen Miller:
Perfect, I definitely need these tips. So I would love to dive in for what is the first tip.
Bree Brouwer:
All right. First tip is this is going to sound silly, but always have a website. There are actually people out there who argue about whether or not you even need a website. If, for example, you’re a video marketer and you do most of your video marketing on YouTube, for example, a lot of YouTubers and creators don’t have websites. That’s different, but it’s especially different if you’re a business or a video marketer, you really do need a website.
Bree Brouwer:
It doesn’t matter if you want to try to be different or go against the crowd, you really need a website because as long as Google is around and a thing, it’s in your best interest to have another place, another digital presence that Google can literally connect to your brand. It needs to index the words on your site. It needs to index and figure out where you relate to other businesses you might interact with online, other companies. So yeah, in general, when you want to be a serious video marketer business, you generally want to have a more consistent brand experience that you personally control versus just being on platforms that you have no control over that could shut down any day.
Dane Golden:
I forgot in the intro to say, hey, you’re from Tubular Labs, a great company, and you are their content marketing genius over there as far as I’m concerned.
Bree Brouwer:
Thanks.
Dane Golden:
And I’ve connected with you over the years as you’ve continued to focus on the specialty, which again, I think is totally underrated. What is your number two top tip?
Bree Brouwer:
Number two is once you realize that you need a site, keep all your branding the same. And by branding, I mean, everything like your logo, your colors, the tone of voice, any images, style of images you tend to use let’s say in your video marketing videos should also be fairly consistent and look the same on your site. So let’s take a very specific example there, you have an above the fold header, or I’m sorry, you have a header on your YouTube channel. I highly suggest you almost mimic the same look with the logo and the same layout on your website above the fold. So if someone is on your YouTube channel and they click the about me or they click any button that takes them to your website, it should look like it’s nearly seamless between the same brand basically.
Gwen Miller:
Are you pretty safe at using … When you’re envisioning your YouTube banner, do you need to keep anything in mind for that transfer over to the web? Or is it pretty seamless that whatever works for YouTube will probably work for the web?
Bree Brouwer:
I know that there has been at least in the past a lot of studies about whether or not people actually click web links in YouTube descriptions and even in the pop-up cards and all that. I believe on YouTube, it’s probably good for you for your banner to clarify, visit our website, probably. So you obviously, you don’t need that exact text on your website because if someone clicks it, you got those people there.
Bree Brouwer:
So I think that’s probably the only difference you should let people on YouTube know you have a website. I would also put that honestly, in the about, put your website links wherever YouTube will let you, especially, let’s be honest, if your goal is to get more business and you need to drive people to your site to see your services, then yeah, I would try to put it wherever I could.
Gwen Miller:
Got it. Love that. So let’s move on to number three.
Bree Brouwer:
All right. So let’s say even if you have one larger single page website, we all know what those are. They’re just a large scrolling website. That’s fine. If you have that, make sure you have on that site or ones where you click through to the different tabs or portions of your site, you need an about section, no matter what style of website you set up. So people need to know who you are, so you need an about section. You also need a rundown of your services or offerings section at wherever you’re going to put that and contact options.
Bree Brouwer:
I mean, I would say for a business that’s bare bones, A people want to know who you are, so an about page. B, they need to know what you offer and why it’s relevant to them. And then C, they have to have a way to contact you. You can have other pages on your site. A blog is also super helpful, but it is technically optional depending on the business you run. But yeah, at minimum you need those three things. Anything else you throw on your site just helps Google index it more and again, connect your various digital presences across the web.
Dane Golden:
Why do you think that the page called about seems to be so popular? Is it just one of quirks of websites or what is it?
Bree Brouwer:
I do think it is actually. It could even go all the way back to … Let’s even think about general social media when it first started and blogging. People always are interested in people, right? Back on Myspace, when everyone was sharing their favorite music, you still wanted to know who is this person? Do I actually have connection with them? Why should I care about their music? So, yeah, I think people just want to be connected to people.
There are a lot of faceless corporations and businesses that it just feels so impersonal, and everyone says this about at least YouTubers, right? People feel that they know YouTubers, because they see them. They’re a person.
Bree Brouwer:
Businesses really need to do the same, which is why I feel very strongly about businesses need to have a person of who they are and an about page really helps people get to know you as a business, not just a faceless corporation sitting out there in New York or London or whatever.
Dane Golden:
Okay. And what is your fourth top tip?
Bree Brouwer:
Fourth top tip is, follow site design best practices. If you’re not an expert in this, that’s fine, I’m not either. I’ve learned general best practices through the years. If you need to hire someone, do it. But in general it’s things … When I say site design, I mean, things like don’t use clashing or harsh colors. Yellow on a white background is so hard on the eyes and it’s basically impossible to read and look at. So you want to make sure you have larger text. I believe the industry standard is somewhere around 15 or 16 pixels now on a website.
Bree Brouwer:
And remember too, your site needs to be mobile ready? So if someone is visiting your site on mobile, it’s easy to read there too. Your images should be clear. If someone’s on a big 28 inch desktop screen, the images shouldn’t be stretched or ugly looking is I guess another way to say it. And yeah, just make sure you add image alt texts and descriptions, which are the backend coding that also help your site get indexed more by Google. They can, instead of trying to figure out what your image is, you just tell Google. So it’s a lot of that site design best practices you want to make sure you implement.
Gwen Miller:
Bree, what do you think of these website building websites that offer templates?
Bree Brouwer:
That’s a fantastic question, and it’s super relevant to my life because my husband actually works at GoDaddy. So we talk about this-
Dane Golden:
Oh.
Bree Brouwer:
Yeah, we talk about this a lot. Website template builders are a fantastic start for small businesses that don’t have a ton of resources or even time to throw a big website project at. The only thing is with website builders, you definitely want to make sure that when you go to them, they not only have the ability to customize to show your brand, but also some way for Google to find that site and continually index it. I know that for example, my husband works, like I said, he works at GoDaddy. I know GoDaddy’s website builder, they readjusted a couple of years back and now it lets you do a lot more customization.
Bree Brouwer:
And then I know Squarespace is super popular and they’ve got really nice, easy on the eyes, smooth looking templates. So there’s really no problem with those. They are a fantastic option for small businesses in particular. So yeah, I would … If you feel overwhelmed by the prospect of setting up a website, then start there for sure.
Gwen Miller:
I love it. I love it. Okay. What’s number five.
Bree Brouwer:
Number five. I have already mentioned multiple times that Google wants to index and recognize your digital presence for your website. The way you do this is by using keywords and key phrases related to your business. These should be … And I’m sure some listeners are going to be like, oh yeah, she’s talking about SEO, search engine optimization. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You want to use any related topics and words related to your business and you want to use these in headers and sub-headers across your site in your basic text. And again, like I said, you can even put image alt text and descriptions with an images too. So put it in there.
Bree Brouwer:
Crazy enough, Google also reads the file names that you use when you upload images. So if you could put … For example, in my website, I call myself a content strategist and a content marketer. Pretty much all my images on my personal website say Bree Brouwer content marketing strategist, and it’s just with dashes between each word. So it’s Bree Brouwer content strategist.JPEG for example. So there’s tons of places on your site you could put keywords and key phrases which is again, partially why it’s so important to have a website to help tell Google who you are.
Dane Golden:
Yeah. I do use that trick sometimes and I get a lot of … Google image search does show up at the bottom of a normal search sometimes, and sometimes I’ll have a, I’ll just have a podcast image of Bree Brouwer at the top of the podcast page and it says Bree Brouwer. And then they might click on that and they’ll have a link to the podcast. It’s a great way of getting them to show up, right?
Bree Brouwer:
Yeah. And it’s really not … In terms of overall marketing effort, it’s really a low, super low key thing. All you have to do is just remember name your file names with good keywords and key phrases and Google will find it for you. It’s real simple.
Dane Golden:
Okay. Bree Brouwer, what is your sixth top tip?
Bree Brouwer:
All right. So everyone listening uses videos in some way to market their business. So it only makes sense then that you should embed some of your YouTube videos across relevant portions of your website. This again helps keep that consistency and flow between your YouTube channel and your website, keeps that brand looking nice and tight like you know exactly what you’re doing. So, and what I mean by relevant portions of your website, let’s say for example, you have a blog post about, let’s go back to best, let’s say best microphones to use for your video marketing.
Bree Brouwer:
Let’s say you did a video about that too, that you already have on your YouTube channel, just embed that in your blog post. People also really like videos on homepages. I know that actually, Gwen, I visited Kin’s website and I know that you guys have video backsplash basically. Those are real popular. That’s a great way to also tie in your brand. Again, just bam right there when someone visits your site, they know it’s you, but yeah, you can put it across. I’ve seen about videos of companies on their about pages. So there’s plenty of places you can put your YouTube videos. They don’t just have to sit on your channel.
Gwen Miller:
Okay. So for my fellow overzealous overachievers, is there too much of a good thing? If I wanted to do a video section where it pretty much duplicated YouTube, is that overkill? Is it better to use it strategically?
Bree Brouwer:
I think it depends on your business and your marketing goals and how you make money as your business, right? So let’s say you make money because you do video marketing, you’re teaching people things in some way or another. What I would suggest then is putting up, for example, a learning library or a resource center where they can literally see the videos you put on YouTube in a classroom setting, not really a classroom, but it’s just all laid out clearly with clear headlines right next to them and maybe a short little summary or excerpt right next to it.
Bree Brouwer:
So yeah, definitely, if you do videos and that helps drive a massive portion of your business, I would put it on a separate page on your website like a resource center. And you can even break those down to let’s say you had a particular series on, well, let’s say you’re a local car mechanic and you get a lot of business because you teach people how to fix their cars before they even come to you. Let’s say you have an entire series on brakes for your car. You could even separate out all those videos into the break lessons on your site, so.
Gwen Miller:
I love that.
Bree Brouwer:
Yeah. So you don’t even have to put all of them on if you don’t want to. If you have a series that’s maybe your most popular even, you could just put those on.
Gwen Miller:
I love that. All right, let’s move on to number seven, are we on now?
Bree Brouwer:
I think so. So for number seven, this is my passion because I’m a writer, but I get very nitpicky about language, but it’s also very important. So my seventh tip is when you’re creating website, you need to be picky when it comes to the words that you write and use. You not only want to match your business’s tone that you already have on YouTube in your videos, you also want to be very careful about grammar and spelling. I was going to look up before this podcast the percentage of people that actually turn away from websites when they see a spelling or grammar area, error, sorry. And it’s higher than you would expect. People literally do not trust businesses when they have poor writing.
Dane Golden:
Wow.
Bree Brouwer:
Yeah. I’ll have to Google it after this, but it was something relatively high. I believe at least a third of people will leave a website and not do business with companies that have grammar issues. So it’s very important. And I know people just brush it off sometimes, because they’re like, oh, we live in an image heavy driven world, and clearly that’s not everyone’s cup of tea, so.
Dane Golden:
Wow. I’d never heard that. I always try to spell well, but I never had heard that. A lot of what we do on our blog is we’ll do our tips from the videos, but we’ll put them in a outline form instead of a paragraph form. Is that any good? Is that a good way to do it?
Bree Brouwer:
In shorter format versus paragraph format?
Dane Golden:
Yeah. No, just an outline. We just do number one, number two, number three, steps, like steps.
Bree Brouwer:
Yeah, definitely. If you go back to the idea of Google basically indexing, reading and crawling your site for the words that you’re using, that actually makes it simpler for Google. Not that it matters, it’s a program, it can think at the speed of light compared to us, but it definitely makes it not only easier for Google because bullets and end points are very concise. So it’s going to be pretty clear every time you write a bullet exactly what you’re saying in that bullet. And it’s even better from a reader perspective because our eyes, again, while text is important, yes, people are correct that we live visually. So when someone sees bullets, their eyes are actually naturally drawn to that because it’s a different format than just a big paragraph.
Bree Brouwer:
So I recommend people use bullets sparingly, but very strategically on their sites. I would definitely do that for, for example, you guys’s podcast. If you’ve got main points, boom, put those main points and bullets at the top. And then if people want to read more, they might be, for example, they could scroll down on that same page and see a little bit more of what the whole podcast is about.
Dane Golden:
Okay. And Bree Brouwer’s top tip number eight for websites and YouTube.
Bree Brouwer:
All right, top tip number eight. I would seriously encourage everyone to set up an email list where you can capture leads. Not everyone is necessarily going to naturally want to subscribe to your YouTube channel, because again, this comes back to the way some people like to learn. Some people might prefer getting emails and text-based content from you instead. The consistency of these emails is totally up to you. Most people, depending on the size of the business, recommend at least sending one email newsletter piece of content per month. Sometimes it’s more depending on your industry, but the value of setting up an email list where you can capture leads is again, because you essentially own your website, it is your own platform that can’t get shut down unless you’re stupid and don’t pay your hosting bill.
Bree Brouwer:
So the great thing about that is if you set up an email list, then you can start capturing these people who are potentially interested in your services or products. They’re clearly coming to your site, so what you want to do is offer them some value. Have them give you their email and then continue to sell them or send them relevant, valuable information. And eventually, those people will probably turn into some either referral for you or a customer. I know email marketing is, it seems involved, but it is still one of the top rated forms of marketing to this day, even despite having all this nice flashy, beautiful video on social media, people, businesses around the world still swear by it, and it’s one of the oldest forms of digital marketing there is.
Gwen Miller:
Okay. I’m going to ask on my classically practical questions. Any recommendations on tools to help you manage this email flow?
Bree Brouwer:
Yes. I have not looked into specific programs for quite a while, but there are … Mailchimp was popular for a while. I believe they’ve even expanded into a larger entire content management system now that you can use across your whole site. So there’s companies like SendGrid, there’s Constant Contact, there’s so many different email marketing software programs to help you out. There’s even two. Actually, one of my current clients is a email deliverability company based in Amsterdam. Apparently a new thing too, is for people who want a little bit more control and want to be a little bit even more techie on their site, a big thing now is actually finding software programs that help you send email from your own website’s backend versus having to pay for different software service.
Bree Brouwer:
So there’s tons of options. But what I always recommend is people just start Googling and seeing reviews. A lot of people still love Mailchimp, but they didn’t like that for example, the templates, the email templates were basic in … They all looked the same. If you got an email from one company and from another company and they both use Mailchimp, you could tell it was Mailchimp they were using. So some people didn’t like that, for example, but other people loved it, because they’re like, Mailchimp’s nice and simple and easy to use. So I just suggest people do their research and give, if they’ve got free trials, try them out.
Gwen Miller:
Oh yeah. All right. Number nine.
Bree Brouwer:
Number nine. I think I did actually already mention this, I’m ahead of myself. Link to your website on your YouTube channel. So link to it, again, wherever you can, video descriptions, just put it in at the end, put it in your end screens or cards. Put it where it’s relevant. While it’s nice to have it wherever you can, I don’t think it, personally to me, I don’t think it looks spammy if it’s put in, but not always encouraged to click. If you are encouraging people to click it every once in a while, I think that’s okay, but I wouldn’t have your website link all over YouTube channel and then say, visit our website, click here, go to our website. If they’re interested, they’re going to do it. Unless want that as your CTA, your call to action for that particular video or section of your YouTube channel, then just put it in there in my opinion, just see how that works.
Dane Golden:
All right. And the big, huge number 10.
Bree Brouwer:
You’re making it sound so exciting.
Dane Golden:
I’m looking at it right here, it’s not that exciting.
Bree Brouwer:
It is a big deal though. It’s going to sound boring, but it’s a big deal to consistently update your website as needed. If you don’t update your website, what ends up happening is Google … Well, let’s say you launch your website in February, Google will start crawling your website. It’ll start indexing it and it’ll be like, cool, this is Gwen’s Kin community website. Awesome. Now let’s say you don’t touch your website until December, Google is not going to be able to compare or keep your basically profile, online profile up to date if you don’t update your website.
Bree Brouwer:
It’ll still recognize what you initially put out into the world and those keywords and the initial content you put out. But if you want to grow, it’s going to look at your site and be like, well, they don’t seem to be an active business, they don’t seem to care. They’re not growing. So, okay, they’re going to push your competitors website higher up in search results. And that is a big deal, especially as a business, small businesses, marketers that you need to be thinking about staying at top of search results and as weird and possibly boring as it sounds, that means you have to update your site as needed.
Dane Golden:
Bree Brouwer, you’ve given us, I think a clinic on one of, I believe the most underrated parts of video marketing. You say you’re not a video marketer, but by using these tools are marketing YouTube channels and other types of video platforms, et cetera. That’s, to me, that’s the same as video marketing. A lot of it is metadata, and you’re just doing it in a more handsome form. Tell us about how people can find about you. First, Bree Brouwer, let’s spell your name and if you could spell it for us, but also how can people find out about your work at Tubular Labs and any other stuff you’re working on?
Bree Brouwer:
Yeah. So my name is Bree Brouwer, spelled B-R-E-E, and then my last name is Dutch. So it’s going to have extra vowel in there, people might not expect. It’s B-R-O-U-W-E-R. You can find more information about me and what I do in my writing services at breebrouwer.com. Nice and simple as long as you know how to spell my name now, and you can also visit tubularlabs.com/blog. That is basically where I’ve been doing the majority of my work for the last four years now at this point. I’m editor in chief over there. I write all the blogs and work on content strategy with the rest of the marketing team.
Dane Golden:
Excellent. Thank you, Bree Brouwer. My name is Dane Golden and my cohost, she’s Gwen Miller. We want to thank you, the listener for joining us today, don’t we Gwen?
Gwen Miller:
Yes, indeed, Dane.
Dane Golden:
Okay. I want to invite you the listener to review us on Apple Podcasts or reach out to us and Twitter or LinkedIn or wherever you like. We love doing this podcast because we love helping marketers and business owners just like you do YouTube and video marketing better. Thanks to our special guest, Bree Brouwer, thank you, Bree.
Bree Brouwer:
Thank you guys so much for having me on again.
Dane Golden:
So much fun. Until next week, here’s to helping you help your customers through video.