The second largest search engine across the globe, YouTube prides with over 1 billion hours of video that are watched daily on its infrastructure. Whichever site you are on, it only takes seconds to come across a YouTube video. The video content sharing bandwagon is growing day by day as more marketers hop in, hence the desire to keep up with YouTube creative best practices.
It is the most popular video search engine worldwide just behind Google, its parent company. And reached 1.8 billion monthly registered users.
Percentage of video content users as of January 2018, a country hierarchy
Source: Statista
While using videos, your audience, followers and customers get to experience your brand in a way graphics and texts cannot compete with. Starting a YouTube channel is a bit overwhelming and you need all the help you can get to keep up with YouTube channel best practices. It takes time and effort to create a successful YouTube channel.
Principal Characteristics of a Premium YouTube Video
Video content has to be great to keep people hooked and to entice them to watch the video till the end. The quality of your video content affects the performance of your channel. A great video has to score high on the points below:
1. Top Quality Sound
There is nothing that makes you turn off a video faster than poor sound quality. Nobody has the patience and time to struggle trying to understand what you intend to communicate. Most people will just hit the back button and move to a similar video rather than waste time on one with crappy sound.
With the comments session open, viewers are now free to vent and will leave very annoying comments on your videos if the sound quality does not comply with the expected standards. This affects the general performance of your channel, so pay maximum attention.
2. Excellent Visuals
This is a no-brainer, since we are speaking about video content. But since there are still tons of poor quality videos out there, it worth mentioning it again. Great visuals keep people glued to a video, thus this is of capital importance.
3. Awesome Theme or Message
All videos are targeted to a specific audience and your message needs to be engaging, educative, clear and entertaining to that specific segment of audience. Your theme should resonate with this audience. The first 15 seconds – the preview should have them hooked up and looking forward to seeing more of your content.
Check the example of an expert:
The Most Important YouTube Creative Best Practices
Here are some relevant tips to help you organize and create higher quality videos with magnificent visuals and amazing message.
· Plan in Advance Your Videos
It is notorious the fact that ‘failing to plan is planning to fail’. This is so true when it comes to YouTube videos. Take your time, prepare a short script that is action-packed, enjoyable and informative in order to be more efficient while recording. Planning will keep you from rambling and re-shooting a video over and over until it makes sense, or you get the desired quality of the registered material.
· Stable Lighting
If one is using natural lighting and the sun keeps going behind the clouds then coming back out, your video ends up having dark and bright shadows. Hence the need for consistent lighting to produce top notch quality videos.
You can get a set of lighting equipments and the time or day of video shoot will not matter as you will have consistent lighting available. If one cannot afford this, then it is advisable to pick a day that is completely gloomy or overcast or a day with a clear sky to have stable lighting in your video shoots.
· Edit Your Videos
Editing offers you the possibility to obtain top quality for your video recording. It refers to the improvements you can bring to your visuals like removing background noises and other unwanted distortion. You have several options at your disposal while editing:
1. Add some effects
Despite cropping the frame of your video, you can correct the colors or insert grading, adjust the speed of your clip, apply transitions or add background music or other audio. You can edit your footage when you want the viewers to pay extra attention to you, by cropping close or zooming in slowly until you achieve the desired outcome. This way you keep viewers interested and engaged in what you are saying.
2. Add text
Text can be added to emphasize on something, present additional information, or when transitioning in a video. When tastefully done it creates an effect capturing the viewers’ interest.
3. Cut the breaks from your shoot
Most viewers like videos that go straight to the point. The time you take to check your notes or think of what to say next can be cropped out and leave just the core part.
Ranking on YouTube as Business
YouTube marketing ecosystem is poised for exponential growth forcing companies and brands venture into this space. Content saturation is omnipresent; hence it is more than difficult for you to get noticed and stand out.
As business marketer, finding your niche audience is critical and should be your number one priority and the focus of your marketing efforts. Viewers’ expectations on video content standards, quality and production are dynamic and can change overnight.
As visual search engine, YouTube has an algorithm and optimization for search is a must, if you aim to see your videos ranking high on search engine results pages. Consequently, focusing on minor details to attract followers and viewers is sure path to success.
Most important factors that affect YouTube ranking
Source: Brafton
· Length of the video – The longer the video the higher the ranking possibilities as it is considered it provides more relevant content on the topic.
· Subscribers – The authority of a channel expands with the increase of the number of subscribers
· Dwelling time – The longer the period spent by users on a video page, the higher that video ranks.
· Video interaction – Subscribing, commenting, sharing and linking all contribute to the overall ranking of a channel.
All these factors should be considered while working towards enhancing the authority of your YouTube channel.
YouTube Search Optimization
To make your video content search-friendly to your targeted audience you should pay attention to the following details:
Title of the Video
As you may have noticed that the core pillar of YouTube SEO is the title, title makes or breaks the success of a video. An eye-popping title lures people to click and view the content even when the video is average. Clear and concise title is an imperative as it determines whether or not a viewer will click on the video.
Inserting keyword phrases in title is vital for increased videos visibility. Titles should be as close as possible to keyword searches in different niches. Take advantage of Google Trends to identify strong keywords to rank for. You have at your disposal an online estate of approximately 70 characters for a title before cutting off. If there is any keyword you are targeting, ensure it is displayed in your title.
Video Description
The description should include your keywords and straight to the point message. 1000 characters are allowed for the description, but only about 100 characters are viewed on search. Thus, try to deliver your message in the first 100 characters and have a detailed enough description so that YouTube understands which the topic of your video is.
Source: YouTube
YouTube Video Tag Optimization
Tags are used to inform viewers and YouTube about the topic of your videos. They give a general description of the content inside the video. Tags come in handy to help YouTube extend your videos reach and associate you with similar videos.
Keep them minimal and avoid having irrelevant taglines. Insert the target keyword among tags.
Thumbnail
A video thumbnail and a title are the first interaction your viewers have with your video. It directly influences the number of clicks you will get. They have brought a whole different game change when it comes to YouTube SERPs. Thumbnails have moved from being static to being automatically animated once a cursor hovers over the video. Customized thumbnails appear to be trustworthy, professional and polished.
They are responsible for the first impression, hence the need to customize them. Ensure the color schemes are appealing and the design patterns are eye catching. You can run a call-to-action with a thumbnail to get the most optimized thumbnail. However, only verified YouTube channels can run customized video thumbnails. Visit YouTube verify to have your account verified.
Customized video Thumbnails on YouTube
End Screens and Video Cards
Video cards are notifications that you can set up to promote your channel videos and your brand. It is a small white circle with (i) or a translucent bar that requests you to subscribe to the channel. A maximum of 5 cards can be inserted in a video. There are channel cards, donation cards, link cards, poll cards, playlist cards and fan funding cards. They are used to entice people to vote, go to another channel, donate funds, etc.
End Screens are similar to cards but they are only visible once the video is done viewing. Sometimes YouTube makes a decision for you between end screens and video cards and it is important to take the factors into consideration. Google has directions on how to insert End Screen.
Subtitles and Closed Captions
You can use subtitles and captions to optimize your YouTube channel by using the targeted keywords in them. Timed subtitle files or uploading supported text transcript files are used to add closed captions or subtitle to a video. Google has the step by step outline of how to do it.
Category
Choosing a category for your YouTube video ensures you are grouped with similar content on YouTube. Under ‘Advanced settings’ you can choose a category under which to classify your video.
Your Target Keywords Need to Be Said in the Video
Google algorithms are very dynamic and currently, what you say in your videos has an impact on your ranking. A great way to let search engines know what your videos are about is matching the title keywords with the message in your videos. It is also a good way to signal that your message and title match and that you are not spamming your viewers.
But do not overuse the keywords.
Encourage User Engagement
User interactions on your channel signal your perceived authority in a specific niche. After creating and posting awesome content, you must encourage viewers to share, subscribe, comment and link to your videos. This will increase your organic search presence.
Create Playlists
Playlists ensure your viewers can keep watching the video content on your feed in a raw, one after another. This way they spend quality time on your channel. You have their attention moved from video to video hence creating an opportunity to encourage people subscriptions and comments.
Optimize Videos for Mobile Viewing
Mobile apps usage has grown tremendously over the past 3 years. Most YouTube videos are viewed on mobile phones hence the need to create videos that are optimized for mobile devices.
One of the most significant YouTube channel best practices is consistency. You should ensure you have high quality content production and that it delivers according to a constant schedule, not once in a while.
YouTube analytics can help you track the performance of your channel. It also helps you better identify your audience and her level of engagement. You get to know which video types work best for you.
YouTube Creators Academy was created to offer you further insights on branding, channel development and to provide you with the highest odds of success. Chances of being discovered on YouTube expand if you have optimized your video content. Producing a lasting and powerful impression on your viewers can make your channel brilliant quite easy. You can easily outrank your competitors if you have an established YouTube optimization strategy in place.
Being a visual powerhouse, YouTube has the ability to grow your network and generate new leads for you and your business, if properly used. All these tips will help you build a community around your channel and grow your brand awareness.
Explore this goldmine!