I bet you have a YouTube channel… but have you thought about doing more marketing with it? 

Maybe you’re not sure if it’s worth the effort? The time investment? The learning curve? 

Well, here’s why it might pay to consider using YouTube for more than just saving videos of your own training.

Why use YouTube for Marketing?

YouTube is a search engine and video platform with over 2.5 billion monthly active users, making it the second biggest search engine, the second biggest social platform, and the second most visited website in the world. YouTube has digital clout!

And not only do people go to YouTube to search for information directly, but unlike other search engines, YouTube search results also make a strong showing in Google search. That’s because Google likes it when you use other Google products. 

Think about it. YouTube is a video platform. Dog training is a visual medium. You already likely have a lot of video content and a good portion of it probably already lives on YouTube.

YouTube gives you a way to appear in search twice — in traditional search AND as a video specific search.

But…

Ranking on the platform is highly competitive, with 500+ hours of content uploaded every minute.

That means YouTube is HIGHLY competitive — so it’s important to understand how the YouTube algorithm works to optimize your videos for visibility.

If you remember our articles about SEO, a lot of those same ideas apply here — we need to optimize our titles and descriptions for the types of keywords people are searching for.

If anything, the titles and descriptions matter more here than SEO in a blog post. In a written post, Google can crawl the words of the post itself to get context for what the content is about. So far, Google hasn’t come up with a way of watching your video to access that information. (However, if your video has spoken audio that contains keywords, include captions and a transcription as they can help.)

There are paid tools available that let you dive into keyword research and find out what terms get the most searches, but you don’t need to splash out cash to do basic research.

Thankfully, if you’re stuck on which keywords to target, YouTube will give you ‘autocomplete’ searches for common phrases. To get these, go to YouTube and search for something like “How can I stop my dog…” and YouTube will give you the most common ways that sentence is completed.

Once you have the keywords you want to use for a video, they need to be used strategically…

Titles

Your video title has to tick some boxes for it to work well. Common best practice is that the sweet spot for titles is 75 characters, which means you need to think carefully about what you choose to use.

In general, you want to include a keyword, but you also need to use a format that is likely to get clicks. Some title formats that are commonly used (because they work!) include:

• Pose a question (“Why…” or “What is…”)
• Make a listicle (“Top 5…” or “5 Reasons why…”)
• How-to’s and tutorials (“How to…”)
• Compare and contrast (“Ranking the 5…” or “Best to worst…”)

Descriptions

The stiff competition on YouTube also means that it’s important to think carefully about your description.

Descriptions have a limit of 5,000 Characters — but don’t keyword stuff — that’s not what this space is for. Instead, try to give users a sense of what the video is about. It can help to start with a short summary of your video which integrates your primary keyword.

And it’s worth noting that in some search views the beginning of your description is visible! Try to give a bit more information than the title as people are more likely to click a video if they have a clear idea of the contents.

Include key points and related links such as other relevant keyword-specific videos on your channel. Depending on the length of the video, you can also include timestamps that integrate associated search terms, or promotions. 

Make sure to list links to your website, a well-chosen lead magnet, your social channels, and any products mentioned. And don’t forget to include relevant hashtags! 

Example:

When you create your own descriptions, consider including the name of the dog you’re working with, the skill you’re working on, and the breed. These can all help you come up in search results. If people know you — and your dog — it gives them more information to use in search.

And including the dog’s name and skill you’re doing can help you search for the video in the future should you want to use it again.

If you have a video taken from a specific class, include that information (and a link) in your description so people can watch the video and sign up for the class.

Thumbnails

While YouTube search results don’t have the benefit of being able to “read” your content for context they do have one major additional element that a Google search page doesn’t. Thumbnails.

The thumbnail for a video is the image that YouTube shows a viewer before they choose to watch a video. It’s a key piece of the YouTube puzzle and it pays to take some time getting this bit right.

What makes for a highly clickable thumbnail?

• Good thumbnails combine an attractive photo (not necessarily a still from the video), the title of the video, and a description that reinforces who is likely to be looking for the information, what they’re going to learn, and often how they’re going to learn it (i.e. that it’s step by step).
• Just like choosing images for your website, your YouTube thumbnail images should consider sightlines towards the thumbnail text to draw the viewer’s eyes where you want them to go.
• Copywriting rules for appealing to emotions are relevant there — think about what people are looking for (easy, fast, step by step, how to, helpful tips, problem solving, etc.)
• If appropriate, break out some of the information into an infographic to give an idea of what type of detail is in the video. 

Once you’ve created a thumbnail in image editing software (Canva etc.) you can upload it once you’ve uploaded the video.

It’s also worth thinking about branding your thumbnails — making a Canva template that you reuse to create a consistent impression. Then, if someone has watched a video by you before and gotten value — and you come up in another search for them — they’re more likely to click again. 

Here are some examples to give you the idea:

Example 1: The Admin bar, a channel for WordPress professionals. He isn’t a professional content creator; this is his own business marketing. Here we see images of the creator looking at the camera, along with the video title and the series title. Note the consistency on fonts and colors to give a coherent feel to the display. 

Example 2: Miranda Goes Outside, a channel for outdoor lovers. Miranda’s a professional content creator. Miranda also uses ‘selfie’ images (looking at the camera), along with images from Canva to add interest and information.

Example 3: Eric Hanson, a backpacking and hiking channel. He shares the same space as Miranda but has a very different visual brand to his channel. As you can see, the same techniques are used: images of him looking at the camera to catch the scroller’s eye, added Canva images to build interest, and the consistent use of fonts, colors and layout. But despite the similarities, these thumbnails are clearly different to Miranda’s above.

All these creators are pulling information from the video to hint or tease — and then provoke the viewer’s interest in what the video contains. 

So now you have people watching your video. What should you focus on next?

Subscribers

If love makes the world go ’round, subscribers are what power YouTube! 

Subscribers on YouTube aren’t the same as subscribers to your email list. People who subscribe to your YouTube channel are notified when you publish new videos. Unless they disable notifications, every time you publish a new video your subscribers will get a push notification direct to their device.

If you’re wondering why you should care about subscribers, it’s because YouTube rewards channels that are popular, and number of subscribers is one of the metrics they use to determine popularity.

Having more subscribers gives you access to different YouTube functionality — and boosts your visibility with the algorithm. Basically, the more popular you are, the more likely YouTube is to show your videos to people in their feeds.

You can check how many subscribers you have using YouTube analytics. Once you’ve signed into your YouTube account, go to YouTube Studio (under “more from YouTube”) and then select “Analytics” from the left-hand menu. This allows you to determine the success of your efforts to gain subscribers, and tweak things accordingly.

What next?

This article has covered the bare bones of using YouTube for business. So far, we’ve gone through: 

• why it’s a great marketing tool, 
• how to optimize your titles, descriptions, and thumbnails
• why subscribers are important.

That’s a lot of information in one place. So, to avoid overwhelming you, we’ll delve a bit deeper into YouTube in a later article. You won’t want to miss it!

We’ll explore: 

• Branding for YouTube — how you can tie your channel images and videos into the rest of your marketing to make it look fab
• The why and how of creating and using end cards and calls-to-action
• How to add your logo to your videos

Until next time, get busy with that video camera!