A quick guide to Youtube

Video has become one of the internet’s most powerful tools, and Youtube has been a major driving force behind this. Cisco believes that by 2020, mobile video will represent 75% of global mobile data traffic. If you’re still on the fence about video it’s a tool well worth considering.

So how can you get your video content online? Uploading natively to platforms like Facebook and Instagram TV, as well as live streams, are really good methods, but this article is focused on YouTube, and with very good reason.

See also: A beginners guide to Instagram

Let’s start with some fascinating facts from Youtube:

• Youtube has over one billion users (Instagram has just crossed the one billion mark and Facebook has over 2 billion)
• One billion hours of video are watched on Youtube every day
• According to various different sources, YouTube is also the second largest search engine, behind Google (who owns YouTube)

Getting started

As with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and more, YouTube is free to use. You can start a channel yourself free of charge and start uploading your content straight away.

See also: A guide to Facebook

From here, you can share your video content onto your social media platforms, you can embed the YouTube links into your website or within newsletters and much more.

You can send these links to prospective clients for them to see how something works or show examples of what you can do. You can create video content for them to use to help wow their own customers and encourage a sale. You can use it to show a location, introduce the team, talk about a new product. The opportunities with video are endless.

The value of video

But does it matter? The simple answer is yes, video does work. When people see you on video, they connect with you. They know how you speak, they learn about your sense of humour, they may even be able to pick you out in a crowd. If it’s a product you’re selling, you’re not just showing them a picture and leaving them to it, you can show them how it works and the features it has that make it even better than the rest.

Video can cut down on customer service queries, enhance user experience and promote your brand and services in a new way.

See also: Five free forms of marketing

The great thing is that you can get started with your phone. You don’t need to invest in the latest technology – start with what you have. A microphone will help with sound and a tripod too, but to get started you can use your smartphone.

Your first uploads will probably not be all that great, but that doesn’t matter. The more you do, the better they will get.

When your video is on Youtube, don’t forget to spend time on the description. As YouTube is a search engine, and you want your videos to get seen by the maximum number of people, put time into this element of what you’re doing, as you would with any other SEO task using keywords and phrases wherever possible.

From here, you can share and promote your own YouTube videos whenever you like- they can continue to generate views and continue to spread what you’re doing long after the initial post too.

But there is a something to note. Before Facebook was really pushing for video content, when you pasted your Youtube link into Facebook, it looked good and it made you want to click. However, with the various changes to Facebook this no longer works as well. But don’t despair, just save your video file on your computer and upload to Facebook natively to ensure you still get the video views.

I’m a huge fan of video, but I also won’t cut my nose off to spite my face. If Facebook, is going to ‘support’ my content if I post it natively, I’ll do it.

You can find my YouTube channel to get some more inspiration here.diversification ideas, rural business, rural business ideas

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