Video Marketing: Content Strategy Guide for YouTube

In this post, we study YouTube’s recommended video marketing strategy and how you need to distribute it.

Video marketing is the right choice. How often have you heard that it is now essential to make videos to create an online presence? Those who say this are right: it’s true, the videos give crazy results.

But, contrary to what some would like you to think, it can be a little more complicated than expected. The thing is before you start recording videos, you need to know what to do in detail.

You cannot proceed in the dark. What you need is a path to learn how to create marketing videos.

In this post, you will find everything you need to get started:

• What (really) is video marketing for companies and personal brands?
• Why are videos so important in 2020?
• How to do video marketing with the YouTube strategy?

Are you careful? Start reading.

What Is Video Marketing?

I’ll tell you right away. Video marketing is not about throwing videos online at random, trying to imitate some famous person. Right video marketing consists of knowing how to create content capable of:

• Educate
• Inspire 
• Entertain.

You don’t necessarily have to achieve all of these three goals in one video. You can create tutorials to teach people to do something, while to inspire and entertain, you could run vlogs.

But this is not the real question. At least not now. To do this, you need a reasoned strategy that allows you to reach goals. Almost anyone has started recording videos – partly because, “you know how it is, it has to be done”.

Many of these people took a video camera, a microphone, and started talking about stuff hoping to become famous.

Do you want to be different? Let me ask you three questions:

• What the (real) reasons why you should start making videos are?
• Do you know the difference between video hygiene, hub, and hero?
• Do you know how to create a strategy to increase views?

If you answered “No” to at least 1 of these three questions, you should keep reading.

First of all, let’s answer a fundamental question.

Why Is It Important to Include Videos in Your Content Strategy?

This year, according to Cisco, 80% of global Internet traffic is generated by video.

This is a growth of 16% compared to 2014. YouTube, Facebook, Netflix: videos surround us. And the growth seems unstoppable. This mainly means two things:

1. Videos are a format you can’t give up if you want to do marketing in 2020.
2. People love videos, a format suitable for keeping attention alive.

The truth is that content of high value alone can be useless if it is not conveyed with the right means. You must know that the “container” can make a difference. The likelihood of a viewer watching a video in its entirety is dramatically higher than that of a viewer reading that same content in text format.

A well-done video needs less effort to understand. The first step to convey your message is to be able to carry it entirely to your audience.

You have to adapt to their needs. These needs change according to the audience you are targeting. There may be people who prefer very long and detailed posts and others who want short videos full of special effects. What do you have to do? To test. But even before that, having a clear and established method for creating content.

Video Marketing Strategy: The 3 Types of Effective Videos

The most crucial part of a video marketing job is the planning of the contents during the year. To be able to gather the desired results, it is essential to proceed in an orderly manner. Simply put, posting the right videos at the right time. But how do you decide what and when to publish?

According to YouTube, the three types of videos that creators must produce during the year are these:

• Hygiene
• Hub
• Hero.

Now let’s see precisely what it is.

Video Hygiene (Or Help)

What does your audience want to know about your brand or industry? What can be relevant content 365 days a year? For example, product tutorial, how-to, customer service, etc.YouTube

Once you identify your target audience, you need to understand what their questions are you can answer. Practically, you need to know what they are looking for, such as on YouTube.

Several tools can help you in this phase:

• Google Trends
• Answer The Public
• Ubersuggest.

Once you have found several popular topics in your niche, make videos that adequately respond to that specific request.

These are perfect content for educating your audience, i.e., teaching them to do things or to think in the way you think is right.

Video Hub

You have grasped the search intentions of your viewers and are answering their questions. But how can you get a spectator back? It’s time to drive audiences to your content hub.

What are video hubs? This is content that you develop regularly and give your audience a reason to subscribe to the channel and come back to watch the videos.

Examples of effective video hubs are weekly episode series. YouTube recommends that you communicate your publishing schedule to create a habit for your subscribers.

The ideal is to devise formats that allow you to give an up-to-date perspective on your target’s interests. You could do vlogs where you entertain or inspire people by showing your life and teaching them something.

In this way, you’ll be able to strengthen your brand identity and create discussion around the topics that interest you. Try to position yourself with strong, firm opinions on key topics.

In addition to this, to make your videos immediately recognizable, create a defined communication style:

• Keep a constant visual language.
• Use a suitable tone of voice.
• Tell stories that allow the audience to identify themselves.

Video Hero

What content do you want to reach a larger and broader audience? What would be your Super Bowl moment? A brand may have only a few hero moments in a year, such as product launch events.

Video heroes must be out of the ordinary. They must surprise the viewer. That doesn’t mean you have to produce a viral video with special effects and people doing crazy things. Of course, that would be a nice big result. But there can be several other types of hero content:

• Live-stream of an event.
• An important announcement.
• A special video for a particular event.

The important thing to understand is that you should go and find all those important moments of the year for those who follow you. It doesn’t matter if you create this moment or take advantage of events such as holidays, competitions, or anniversaries.

Those who follow football know very well that during the season, there are periods full of hype. May, for example, is the month in which the main league’s end and the Champions League final, the most prestigious club cup, is played.

Here, for a football brand, that can be an ideal time to create hero content. To catch the best moments in your industry to create such content, as YouTube advises, you can use Google Trends.

At the same time, you should be monitoring social media, touring communities, and talking to your audience. Of course, these videos must also be in line with the message you want to convey. The goal must be to reach as many people as possible to increase brand awareness.

How to Choose the Best Channel for Sharing Videos

We talked a lot about YouTube. It is the first solution that comes to mind when you think about a site where to upload videos. There are, however, several other channels to share videos that you cannot underestimate:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Snapchat.

Hubspot research shows that more and more people (67%) go to Facebook to watch videos.

Indeed, in South America, Facebook (85%) is catching up with YouTube (95%). What can you learn from these numbers? In your video marketing strategy, you must be able to diversify the distribution of content.

Think first of all about your users: take surveys to understand what they want and test what works best. Obviously, you must also take into account the characteristics of the individual platforms. The main ones, in general, are basically 3:

YouTube

YouTube is a great choice for posting longer, quality content that requires more attention. Many formats have reached the level of some television programs, and indeed, YouTube is transforming itself into the new TV.

This is a great challenge and a huge opportunity. The challenge clearly lies in having to create high-quality videos. We’re not just talking about the quality of the footage, but also good exhibiting and entertaining skills.

The opportunity lies in having an audience accustomed to consuming more structured content. Let me tell you. Our attention span has collapsed: it’s lower than that of goldfish. But that does not mean you have to give up writing 4,000-word posts or recording 30-minute videos.

It’s such content that manages to position you as an authoritative expert in your niche. It has to be super-interesting content bursting with value. Yet not all that glitters is gold. The problem is that YouTube’s algorithm aims to make the user consume as many videos as possible.

Where is the problem? Viewers are sucked into an endless whirlwind of videos that take them far away from your brand. So what you can do, once you get attention, is to bring people to your website. Once you have brought them into your ecosystem, you will have the ability to get them into your funnel, get data, and create a relationship.

Facebook

Videos on Facebook, according to TechCrunch, have 8 billion views per day. Here too, in short, we are talking about very interesting numbers. The main difference with YouTube is that, on Facebook, videos compete with other types of posts (videos and images).

This also means that videos are more eye-catching in the feed. Unleash your creativity to make the most of this benefit and make your videos stand out more in the feed. Use colors, themes, and images that make your brand instantly recognizable in the forest of memes and kitten photos.

Always keep the stiff competition in mind. You can also experiment with different formats – for example, test how well vertical videos work for your audience. The goal is to capture attention as much as possible. When they shake Facebook, people are hardly willing to spend that much time on a single piece of content.

Test to find the ideal length of your videos and the best type of content:

• Information pills on specific topics
• Funny sketches
• Small vlogs to have your say on hot topics.

Whatever format or type of video you want to test, always keep in mind a significant detail. 85% of the videos seen on Facebook are played without audio. Here, then, the texts remain fundamental:

• Captivating titles, both in the post and in the video, to attract attention.
• A description that explains to the user the contents they will find in the video.
• Subtitles, to allow everyone to follow what is said.

Instagram

Here comes the beauty. Instagram is the social network of the moment. You may not know that videos are the type of content that grows the most on Instagram. 

The time spent watching videos on Instagram has increased by more than 80% year over year, while the number of videos made each day has increased four times compared to last year.

The opportunities to upload videos are mainly 3:

• Feed
• Stories
• IGTV

If IGTV hasn’t caught yet, the feed and Stories are an incredible source of potential viewers. Of course, there is the problem of time limitations. But for this very reason, I said that here comes the best. See limitations as an ongoing stimulus for your imagination.

Don’t just do what others do: try to think of innovative formats suitable for Instagram times. In the Stories, for example, you can take advantage of the many stickers available:

• Questions
• Surveys
• Emoji.

The important thing, even in this case, is to remember that the videos start without volume. Play is automatic, so it would be good to avoid inserting audio for the first few seconds of the video. This way, you will avoid making users miss a few steps.

Video Marketing FAQs

Why do I need a video? 

Today’s customers expect to see the video since it gives them a better idea of how your service or product works and what your company is about. People come to trust your company more with a video. 80% of consumers say that a video influences their buying decision.

Will video increase my search engine ranking?

Google’s algorithms are frequently prioritizing sites with video content. When Google crawls your site, its robots look for indicators, including quality of the page, keyword instances, and relevance. Video graphic objects add value to all three of these metrics. Adding videos helps explicitly increase your search engine results page (SERP) rank in a few key ways:

•Increasing your click-through rates
•Lowering your bounce rates
•Creating quality backlinks

Can I afford video marketing?

Video marketing doesn’t have to be costly. For instance, on a low budget, you can curate relevant videos into a marketing campaign, or hire professionals to produce high-quality videos with all the bells and whistles on the high end. And, there is everything in between. The bottom line is that the cost of video marketing varies from one company to another, depending on many factors.

Conclusions on Video Marketing

We are at the end. Now it’s all in your hands – you just have to start creating a strategy and recording videos for your audience. Remember, as we told you, the contents must follow three principles:

• To educate
• To entertain
• Inspire.

If you find that a video doesn’t achieve any of these goals, you should redo it from scratch. Only if you demand the best from yourself and keep testing, will you be able to develop effective video marketing campaigns. All clear? Let us know in the comments if you’ve ever made videos for your company or your brand and the lessons you’ve learned.

The post Video Marketing: Content Strategy Guide for YouTube is republished from Dopinger Blog