YouTube is a marketing platform before it is a video site, and a business channel that nobody finds is a production cost with no return. These are the six steps that decide which one you end up with.
Reef AlchemistSearch can earn the click.
Audience EchoThe video earns the watch.
- Understand the audience before choosing a format
- Study competitor output and the useful gaps it leaves
- Produce the subject, sound, light, edit and thumbnail properly
- Use relevant search language so the video can be discovered
- Read views, duration, reactions, comments and subscriptions together
- Promote a populated channel through the audience's existing routes
Why YouTube is worth the effort
The platform had over 2 billion active users and ranked as the second most popular social network worldwide when this was written — figures reported here without a named source, so read them as indicative of scale rather than as measurements.
Creating a channel is simple and free, even for a business. Making one succeed is not, and the six steps below are where the difference is made.
Step one: understand the audience
To create content anyone wants, build the customer personas first and narrow the target audience. Who are they, and what do they want? Once you know what interests them, the format decides itself — a review, a tutorial, something else.
Step two: look at what competitors publish
This is the step that produces the most usable information. Do your competitors have a channel? If so, look closely at what they upload and at how much their viewers actually engage.
It is also worth listing the topics nobody in your niche has covered, alongside the trending ones, because that list is where new content ideas come from.
Step three: produce it properly
Quality here is two things at once. It is content that interests the audience, and it is the video as a product.
Good resolution, sound and lighting are the baseline. Beyond them sit the details that decide whether anyone clicks at all — intro design and thumbnails among them — which is the part most businesses underestimate.
Step four: keep SEO in mind
Search engine optimisation uses keywords to place content in the top search results, which is what puts a brand in front of more people. There is no version of video marketing where this does not matter.
It is difficult work without experience in the field, and that is the argument for handing it to specialists: the same videos generate more leads when someone can find them. Our TubeBuddy review covers the tooling side of the same job.
Step five: read the metrics
YouTube metrics feed the ranking as well as your own judgement. The ones that decide whether a business’s content is working are the number of views, the average view duration, likes and dislikes, what kind of comments people leave, and how many viewers subscribe after watching.
Step six: promote the channel elsewhere
Gaining the first subscribers is the hardest part. Even with a strong ranking, a new channel has to be shared and promoted on other social platforms and websites, and a newsletter is a reliable way to reach an existing audience by email.
Have some videos up before you start promoting. An empty channel does not persuade anyone to subscribe.
To conclude
A YouTube channel will raise a business’s visibility, and producing good content with sensible SEO will take it a long way. Consistently competitive results are what specialists are for, and that is the honest version of the pitch.
Global Wizards works with current software and tools to create and edit video, and builds the promotion strategy around what a brand actually needs. You can see our services or read more on our blog.
If you are ready to start, contact us.
Frequently asked questions
Why should a business be on YouTube?
YouTube is a powerful marketing platform, and with the right strategy it is one of the faster ways for a business to find clients and grow. Creating a channel is simple and free, even for a business; making one succeed is the part that takes work.
How do you decide what videos to make?
Start by building customer personas and narrowing the target audience, then ask what those people actually want. Once you know their interests, the format follows on its own — reviews, tutorials or something else — because you are choosing for someone specific rather than for everyone.
What should you look at on a competitor channel?
Whether they have a channel at all, what they upload, and how much engagement their viewers actually show. It is also worth listing the topics nobody in your niche has covered, alongside the trending ones, because that is where the content ideas come from.
What counts as quality on YouTube?
Quality is both what the video is about and how well it is made. Good resolution, sound and lighting are the baseline, and beyond them sit the details that decide whether anyone clicks: intro design and thumbnails among them.
Why does SEO matter for video?
Search engine optimisation uses keywords to place content in the top search results, which is what puts a brand in front of more people. It is difficult work without experience in the field, which is why businesses hand it to specialists to get more leads out of the same videos.
Which YouTube metrics decide whether a channel is working?
The ones that feed the ranking: number of views, average view duration, likes and dislikes, the kind of comments people leave, and how many viewers subscribe after watching. Average view duration is the one that says most about whether a video was worth making.
