Why You Need a YouTube Strategy

Do you have a YouTube strategy? In case you didn’t know, it’s the 2nd largest search engine on the planet and your audience is there every day. More video is uploaded there every hour than is housed in the Smithsonian. So I ask again, “Do you have a YouTube strategy”?

The Nashville Symphony has a very active strategy. Their goal is to post a new video every week. Wow! Imagine how much work that must be. But the Nashville Symphony’s goals are definitely aligned with that strategy. They want to be there to engage with their fans, and videos help create that engagement. And the demand of 1 video per week means every department in their organization gets involved at some point or another.

Another strategy is to set-up your channel like your website and drive traffic to your channel as a resource, not to specific videos. To use your YouTube Channel as a resource for your audience, first create playlists for each of the categories you feel would be useful to your audience (hint: look at your website navigation bar). Then when you’re customizing your channel check the box that says “show playlists” and uncheck the box that says “show uploaded videos.”

The nice thing about playlists is you can put any video in them, not just yours. So if someone else filmed you, you can add that to a playlist and it will show up on your channel page. Then your channel page will look a bit like your navigation bar with category buttons they can peruse.

A little known but extremely effective YouTube strategy harks back to the days of “Choose your own Adventure” books. Unlike those books however, we’re not going to be funneling people to the end of an adventure, but helping them find what they’re looking for. This strategy involves the use of the “annotations” feature in YouTube’s video editor.

Annotations are the boxes you see in videos that say things like “Subscribe to my channel”. YouTube allows you to put these boxes in videos and use them to link to your channel, your subscribe button, and other YouTube Videos.

To do the “choose your own adventure” strategy, you really need to plan it from the beginning. When you’re shooting a video, start by leaving an extra 10 – 20 seconds of dead air at the end of the video. That dead air at the end of the video is going to be where we put “annotation buttons” linking to other videos.

For instance if you are in the health niche and create a video about “Best Foods to Eat in Winter”, you could put links two links at the end of the video to divide your audience. This is the choose your own adventure part. One of those links might say “Top 10 Foods for Weight Loss” and the other “Best Exercises for Six-pack Abs.” Now your audience will divide themselves between those interested in exercise and those interested in nutrition.

Then at the end of every ensuing video, include links to two more of your videos. The great thing about annotations is that you can change them at will. Got a hot video? Take advantage of that traffic and move them to your newest video.

This strategy does one very important thing. It takes the eyes off the sidebar and keeps them on you. Once someone has seen two of your videos, you have the opportunity to become the expert in their eyes. When you keep moving them to subjects that appeal to them, you start making fans. And that’s where the gold is.

So, do you have a YouTube strategy? If not, do you sense the value you could provide if you did?

Dan R Morris is the founder of LettersFromDan.com, a website dedicated to improving your revenue stream from online efforts. Dan is an infomercial producer, niche website owner, product developer, author and Mastermind leader. Dan actively encourages marketers to take that extra step so that “Hope” doesn’t become the marketing plan.