Online Branding: Ignoring YouTube Is Not an Option

Back when I was an assistant editor fresh out of college, I worked for an online publishing company that was extremely interested in video. Up to that point, our content was almost entirely text-based, save for the occasional “audiocast” (what we used to call podcasts). But “multimedia” was blowing up, and we didn’t want to get left in the dust.

We invested heavily in a service that would allow us to host our own videos internally. As a result, editors began to experiment with the wonders of video creation, and new clips started popping up on our sites left and right.

The one place they weren’t popping up, however, was YouTube.

Even more surprising? This was entirely intentional, as many of us went out of our way to avoid posting our videos there. (Wait, did I say “us”? I meant them. Them! I would never be so shortsighted– eh, who am I kidding…)

The rationale was two-fold:

1.       Not wanting to give people a reason to access our content without visiting out sites.

2.       An irrational fear of duplicate content penalties from Google, based primarily on a complete misunderstanding of what duplicate content actually meant.

The fact is, if you are creating videos to build up your company brand, and those videos aren’t on YouTube, then you might as well not make them to begin with. There are several reasons why, the most important being that YouTube is the second most popular search engine on the planet and its videos have great traction in Google. (And frankly, you shouldn’t really need any more evidence than that.)

The two concerns I raised above are also completely baseless. It doesn’t matter where potential customers engage with your content; it’s only important that they engage with it at all. It’s not a stretch to assume that sites like YouTube are more popular than yours, so if you’re serious about online branding, you must have a presence there. And duplicate content penalties? Fictional (for the most part).

But why do you even have to create videos in the first place?

As content marketing megastar Joe Pulizzi has said hundreds of times, different people consume content in different ways, and not having a video presence runs the risk of not reaching those potential customers. So make videos. And podcasts. And eBooks. And get all over social media. It’s that simple.

As for YouTube, here are a few recommended tips for ensuring you get the most value and visibility out of your clips:

• It’s much (much!) easier to rank high around target keywords on YouTube than with traditional search engines like Google. One reason is that there’s less competition. The other is that titles don’t generally have to be as well-written (from a traditional sense, at least). As Mitchell Harper writes in this great article on boosting YouTube SEO, it’s a best practice to use your target keyword phrase twice in your video titles — once at the beginning and again near the end – to ensure maximum search value.

• Be sure to link back to your site as well. But wait, didn’t I just say that we don’t care if potential customers are engaging with your content someplace else? Yes, but that doesn’t mean we should make it hard for them to find us either. Leave a link to your site for more information in the video descriptions, ideally at the beginning so people don’t have to click the “Show More” options to see it.

• Finally, build your own channel. This page will act as a central hub for all your company videos, organized by series and easily accessible. The article by Harper above offers some great ideas for creating these, and Google provides some simple tips for branding your YouTube channel to perfection.

Are you currently posting to YouTube? Do you have any tips that you’ve found successful? Sound off below and let us know.

You can find more information on content marketing and editorial practices at the OpenView Labs website. You can also follow Brendan on Twitter @BrenCournoyer and find more from the OpenView team @OpenViewVenture.