YouTube In Business: Using the Platform Right to Achieve Success

Around 1.9 billion users visit YouTube each month, according to YouTube’s data. For business owners, that number represents a consumer pool that must be reached. In order to do so effectively, business owners need to understand how best to approach the platform and its community.

Value Offered

A business’s YouTube channel needs to offer value to their audience. Currently, 51 percent of YouTube users use the platform to learn how to do things or experiences they’ve never done before, according to the Pew Research Center. Business owners can offer value by creating videos that offer tutorials to use their product or services. If a brand’s brick-and-mortar location is new, creating a video that shows directions or having a visual tour of the store provides value. It gives their audiences something new to learn and helps familiarize them with the brand and services.

Subscriber Motivation

Business owners will need a dedicated audience to consume their content if they want to succeed on YouTube. This means growing their YouTube channel’s subscribers. Businesses can add annotations to videos or point out the subscribe button in the video description area. Emphasizing the benefits of subscribing to the channel helps motivate audiences. Brands can use their channel to provide sneak peeks at new products. 90 percent of YouTube users report discovering new products on the platform, according to Google Data. Brands may even tie-in a discount that will only be available once the channel has obtained a certain number of subscribers. Motivating subscribers is a good way to grow followers and give the audience an opportunity to observe the brand’s business model in practice.

Video Thumbnail Appeal

Audiences click on videos which have thumbnails that catch their attention. YouTube’s Creative Academy recommends a thumbnail resolution of 1280×720 and that the image needs to be under 2MB. They also recommend using highly contrasting colors and selecting a still from the video or using an original photo that provides context. For example, Nintendo’s YouTube Channel has thumbnails that are brightly colored yet provide context to what the video is about. A visually striking thumbnail not only gets attention, but it helps familiarize the audience with the brand’s content style.

YouTube may seem intimidating with the millions of creators that are already using the platform. However, this should not discourage businesses in the least. Arming themselves with smart and effective practices can provide brands with a steady direction that can help boost the brand and the business as a whole.