Can Youtube Be Used To Generate New Business Sales Leads?

The clear answer is yes. The question is why do most companies avoid using YouTube, or if they do start to use it, usually neglect to maintain and optimise their YouTube channel? Why do marketing managers not integrate the use of video as part of their social media strategy?

Maybe the reason is that a lot of businesses see YouTube purely as a place where individuals can gain traction, but companies but can't cut it. I want to dispel that myth in this post and explain what it takes for a business to do well on YouTube.

Remember when you're building a channel on YouTube you're not just planning to get people to find your business through YouTube. Since Google bought YouTube it's been including videos increasingly more in it's search engine results pages (SERP) and with the fragmentation of the SERP due to universal search, adding the use of video to your social media strategy is definitely a must!

Let's look at some case studies where companies have successfully used YouTube as part of their social media strategy.

(Note: I deliberately tried not to include big brands in these case studies – we haven't all got the budgets of Nike or Google!)

www.ehow.com 

This company produce 'How To' tips and advice on just about anything you'd care to mention.   They have successfully built you a strong fan base on YouTube. Their videos are well presented, but by no means has their been expensive production costs. The people in the videos come across as very knowledgeable about their particular field of expertise. Ok, so you might think this company is custom fit to produce videos  – no so. If you look at their website for an example, let's say How To Build a Light Meter this is all text, no video in sight.

YouTube Optimisation

Given that YouTube has over 90 million visits a day (in the US alone)  – why do most marketing managers ignore this valuable website as part of their social marketing campaigns?

What Exactly Is Youtube?

Seems an unnecessary question – surely it's a video sharing website and a repository of online videos?

Correct but it is also a search engine. In fact with 80 million visits a day it is the Number 2 search engine on the internet.

So, apart from music and comedy videos, people use YouTube to get more serious information and education. This means that by optimising their video content business marketers can make sure their product or service is easily found and gets lots of views and drives more website traffic.

The broad factors controlling the Youtube search engine rankings fall into three broad areas as follows:

1. 1. On-Page SEO Factors:

Videos need to be optimised in a similar way to website pages. However, instead of meta data and body copy, it is important to ensure that keywords appear in the title, description, and tags.

1. 2. Off-Page SEO Factors

Just as with a website there are many of these. A major one is inbound links. A YouTube videos should have external links with keyword-rich anchor text pointing to gain authority.

1. 3. Community Interaction Factors

In addition to links and the age of each video, YouTube also measures a video's authority based on the interaction that takes place in the interest community or the category in which it is indexed. This means the number of views, ratings, comments, and other interactions. So to have a chance at achieving SEO success in YouTube, the video content must be interesting, engaging, and compelling enough to make people watch it, rate it, and comment on it.

So does your SEO strategy include YouTube? If not it definitely should.