YouTube is often cited as the second most use search engine behind Google.  One of our previous YouTube blogs  talked about why, as a form of social media it’s a really effective marketing tool.  Here’s a few suggestions for integrating the use of videos and YouTube across your wider marketing activity, using examples of how we do it for our clients.  Why do we do it for our clients?  Because like many others, most of them are too busy focusing on the day to day running of their businesses, and many people dread the thought of creating the video and then figuring out how to put your video online. Do the benefits of this marketing strategy outweigh the work that goes into it?

In short, yes they do!  It does require a bit of work, for our clients we generally, shoot the video, edit and format it (branding it) then upload to their YouTube account.  We then optimise each video, taking the same approach to optimising web pages.   For one of our clients we shoot, edit and brand a video each month then use them in the following ways:

• In each monthly newsletter – ensuring the video clip is relevant to the newsletter topic.
• Website resources page – we embed each video to the webpage, and optimise each one with effective titles and tags.
• Links in daily tweets and weekly blogs (which we also write and load), again being relevant to the blog / tweet content.
• LinkedIn updates – links to new videos or ‘how to’ advice, relevant to your contacts and prospects.
• LinkedIn company page – linking a relevant video to each company service
• Emails to prospects – ‘how to’ videos are great – it’s a great way of keeping in touch with people.
• DVDs for people to buy – put together a series of videos to sell as another product.

Here are a few YouTube SEO tips:

• Research keywords just as you do for your website, blogs and tweets.
• Use creative and literal keywords in the video title.
• Tag each video with relevant categories using keywords and phrases you’ve researched (and are relevant to your business).
• Embed the video in your website and other forms of communication – newsletters, blogs etc.
• Create a quality video so you get a good rating for it – don’t throw together for the sake of it.
• Integrate it with as many other areas of your marketing as possible, and load new videos on a regular basis.
• Use ‘how to’ videos full of advice and tips people can follow easily – these are highly searched.

There are other platforms for storing your videos, but YouTube being a Google product means that for SEO purposed it really is the most effective.  So not only are you connecting with your audience if you use videos, you are doing wonders for your SEO.