Tips for Businesses on YouTube (TGIF)

(Note: Even if you’re not running a business, your goals as an individual are the same, to “brand” yourself, so, read on.)

“YouTube: An Insider’s Guide to Climbing the Charts” authors Alan Lastufka and Michael W. Dean are doing a five-day blog post series on “How to create and promote more effectively on YouTube.” Here’s part five of five:

More and more businesses are trying their hand at YouTube. The allure of millions of eyeballs taking in their products for an investment of nearly $0 is mighty tempting. But it’s also an illusion.

There are no overnight success stories on YouTube. Every channel in the Top 10 got there by either working hard for 18 hours a day and getting involved with the community, or paying for their placement. Success stories like Michael Buckley only prove what I’ve been hammering home since the beginning of this blog: You cannot fake it. And even the New York Times has noticed that Buckley has put in the time and work and talent to get where he is. And he’s now making six figures a year doing what he loves.

And the flip side of that? Fred. Well, his production company spent tens of thousands of advertising dollars getting their channel to where it is (number one Most Subscribed on YouTube.)

But that’s not to say that a business can’t find success on YouTube. You just need a bit of direction, and a bit of wherewithal.

First, don’t be afraid to use a call to action. In fact, use numerous calls to action. If you don’t tell your viewers what you want them to do, they won’t do it. If you want your viewers to buy a product, read an article or visit a website, simply ask them to. You can accomplish this in a number of ways:

• Have the host of your show say it in the video. If you’re a CEO, vlogging about your start up, tell people where they can find your site or more information about your products. If you’re Pepsi, hire a really hot twenty-something chick to tell people for you.
• Use a voice over. If you don’t appear in your video, record a voice over towards the end that directs your viewers as to what to do next.
• Title cards. Finally, you can use title cards at the beginning or end of your video to direct viewers. These can be as simple as “Please Subscribe” or “Rate, Comment and Favorite” or even “For more info, visit:”

Second, talk to people. Interacting is the single best use of your time on YouTube. Leave interesting, smart comments on other people’s videos. Viewers will see these and some will even click through to your channel. Anyone who has started a new website, blog or e-commerce site knows that the best way to drum up hits is to get backlinks from other sites. Think of comments, ratings and the like as backlinks to your channel on YouTube. Every time you leave a comment, especially on a high-traffic video or channel, you are getting free backlinks on a highly visited page.

That said, don’t spam. Nothing will get you ostracized faster than being labeled a spammer. In the same vein, don’t cheat. If your video has 50,000 views and only 7 comments, something’s wrong, and the YouTube community will call you out. It’s all been done before, and we’ve all seen it, so don’t think you can trick us.

Third, run a useful contest or start a discussion. Seeing who can comment the most on your video to win a $50 Gift Certificate is useless. It’s useless to you as a business, because that Most Discussed list only lasts for 48 hours and it’s useless for every single commenter except the one who wins $50.

Instead, run a contest that’s both useful to you, the company, and to your viewers. Ask viewers a question, and have them make video responses. Ask them to parody your first commercial. Ask them to make your first commercial! This accomplishes a couple things:

• For you, every time someone makes a video and submits it to your contest, all of their viewers will hear about you. Whether they have a hundred subscribers or ten thousand subscribers, each video made will be driving traffic back to your channel.
• For your viewers, it gets the creative juices flowing. It gets them actively participating. It gives them an excuse to make a video, which is, essentially, why they’re on the site in the first place.

For users who aren’t businesses, simply starting a discussion can drive a lot of new, interested viewers to your channel.

For businesses, make sure you offer more than one huge “Grand Prize.” There’s less incentive for people to enter if there’s only one prize to be had. It means your second place winner is just as big of a loser as your thirty-eighth place winner. I’d suggest offering the top three to five videos some kind of prize. With a much higher chance that I, as a content creator, am going to win something, I’d be more likely to enter my video.

Lastly, hire existing popular YouTubers to “pimp” your product.

The less people feel like they’re being advertised to the better. If they’re not being advertised to, at all, it’s even better. The best “product placement” you can get on YouTube is a usually an already popular YouTuber mentioning your product organically. (And you’ll get less “hater” comments. Channels that exist only to pimp a product smack of “The Man” and tend to elicit more of a “I’m going to anonymously slam you and your product from the safety and comfort of my mom’s paneled rec room” reaction from snippy Internet-savvy viewers.)

An example of this being done right: Hank from vlogbrothers uploaded a vlog the other day and mentioned my book “YouTube: An Insider’s Guide to Climbing the Charts” in his video, ran a contest to give away a signed (by me) copy, and put a link on the side to the Amazon page.

As of this moment, the video has 37,400 views and 2,027 overwhelmingly positive comments. Most of them are people trying to win the book.

Hank did this because we’re friends, and I’ve helped him out on YouTube. There was no monetary pay off, just a friend helping a friend. And he didn’t just post about the book, merely mentioned it in his morning video, which was mostly about giant squirrels.

As a result of him mentioning the book, which had just come out, sales rank for the book on Amazon immediately shot to #8,014.

That may not sound like a lot, but it is. Anything in the “top 10,000”on Amazon is impressive, especially for a tech book. (Remember, there are millions and millions of books for sale on Amazon.)

Some YouTubers even do this type of work for a price. Nalts, for instance, has done funny videos where he includes a product as a prop, such as this video of him trying to sneak a giant Mentos into a movie theater. He was paid to do this by the Mentos company, and it worked out well for both Nalts and Mentos.

If this type of branding becomes popular, there is the danger of YouTube turning into “ThemTube” (TV), which it started out as an alternative to in the first place. But as a viewer, if you don’t like what you see, it’s easier to “change the channel” on YouTube, and there are certainly more channels to choose from.

If you’re a business looking to hire someone to do this, start with the top-100 most subscribed list on YouTube and make some contacts (the list goes on for 5 pages, with 20 channels per page.)

If you’re an individual, think of yourself as your product and work on collaborating on other people’s channels. Placing yourself on their channel exposes you to all of the other user’s subscribers.

Bonus Tip. I mentioned branding in the introduction paragraph. YouTube allows its partnered channels some awesome branding options, from banners to links to control over channel designs. Use these. You paid all that money for a logo, make sure people see it, both on your channel page, and in your videos (in case someone embeds your video outside of YouTube).

If you’re a business who’s had a bit of success on YouTube, or a user who wants to know more about how they can use these tips on their own channel, feel free to leave a comment below.

Michael and I are both also available for consulting work in this area.

So, that’s the last post of the week for our “five helpful YouTube posts in five days.” BUT WAIT! There’s a secret bonus post. We saved the best for last. Well, we saved a post for last. And it’s pretty good. Tune in tomorrow for that! Same ‘Tube time, same ‘Tube channel.

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