YouTube’s Pros and Cons
We sat down with Marko Zlatic, founder of Whiteboard Finance, social media influencer and friend of LeadPoint Digital to discuss his ranking success on YouTube and how much time you should invest in YouTube versus your own website.
“When you’re creating content for YouTube and generating ad dollars, you’re playing on rented property.” Marko continues to explain that “…if you’re relying on income from being a YouTube influencer, the amount you earn can change at any time. In personal finance, the best investment is property you own and that goes for the web as well.”
However, YouTube is a great place to get started because it’s a Google-owned property and the 2nd largest search engine. Although ranking YouTube videos is still a long game, it tends to rank faster than a new blog or website would rank because of YouTube’s domain value and engagement.
Here are a few things you can do to start earning more views on YouTube:
Topic Selection
Like search engine optimization, success on YouTube begins with in-depth topic research. Strive to find a topic that has a bubble with high-search volume and subpar content ranking towards the top of YouTube and Google. You’ll need to be confident in the fact that you can create better content than what’s already ranking.
Titles
There is a balance and art to writing effective video titles that get found by YouTube, and also interest a viewer enough to watch your video. Your title should be highly relevant to the topic research you performed that ultimately influenced you to settle on it.
You also want to give the viewer a concise insight into what they can expect if they decide to watch. For example, if you create a video on “How to tie a tie?”, an ideal title would be “How to tie a tie? (8 Easy Steps)”.
Thumbnails
We bet a part of you clicked on this article because of the customized hero photo for this article. Here’s the point, YouTube wants more viewers to sell more advertising, a great way of getting more views is to stand out from the competition in the search results by making a customized thumbnail that is enticing and topical enough for the viewer to watch the video.
Engagement
Topic, titles, and thumbnails are all aimed at driving engagement. This is the big factor that ranks your video on YouTube and keeps you at the top. An ideal click rate for a YouTube video is 6-10%, which means every time your video appears in the search results, for every 100 people, 6-10 of them need to click and watch your video.
The same goes for view rates, the longer a viewer watches your video, the better. In addition, you want to earn social approval from your visitors to encourage them to interact by sharing, liking, subscribing, or commenting on your video/channel.
Consistency
YouTube has a real-time analytical dashboard so you can see how many people are watching your videos at different times of the day. Marko has identified that YouTube viewers have similar habits as primetime television (between 4 PM and 10 PM). He recommends creating and publishing videos regularly and posting them around the same time of day.
Video + Audio Quality
Invest in your equipment! The clearer you sound and the higher your video resolution, the better. This is important for multiple reasons outside of looking professional. With advanced technology, YouTube may actually be able to understand what you’re saying in the video which helps them index your video.
In addition, home streaming is becoming more popular with cord-cutters, so more viewers are turning to their HD televisions to browse YouTube and consumer content.
Descriptions, Captions, and Tagging
When it comes to writing descriptions, captions, and tagging your videos – relevancy is the most important takeaway. Don’t dilute the content in your video by listing a bunch of keywords or topics that are related to your video, but not the main topic. All you’re doing is confusing YouTube and the viewer. For captioning, better audio equipment will save you a ton of time because YouTube’s advanced closed captioning is highly accurate.
Here’s the Point
If you follow these best practices you are well on your way to increasing views on YouTube, but Marko emphasized that it’s all about your personality and believability “…you have to practice what you preach. Without that, your content can’t fill the gap that you found. Viewers want someone they can trust and relate to. Just be yourself but be self-aware.”
If you want to learn more about creating a successful YouTube Channel, add yourself to the waiting list for Marko’s YouTube Influencer Course, where Marko will go into detail on how to become a successful YouTuber. You can also follow Marko on his blog, Twitter, and Instagram.
You can see more tips about growing your YouTube channel with this video from Brian Dean on How to Start (And Grow) a YouTube Channel.
If you’re an influencer that’s looking to get off “rented property” and transition your audience to a digital asset you own and control, call us at 540.566.4886 or email us at sales@leadpointdigital.com.