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7 ways to drive traffic to your company’s YouTube videos

Sandra Fathi

Searchability and helpful tools enhance this already powerful visual venue

When it comes to garnering the attention of a target audience, many companies produce engaging videos and broadcast them on YouTube.

However, with YouTube streaming over a billion videos a day, many get lost in the shuffle. The good news is that there are a number of strategies and tools for driving traffic to your video and making it stand out.

1. Use of keywords. The title of your video is extremely important and is the most useful information for search engines. The video title should include keywords that you expect your target audience will search for and that are directly related to your company’s products/services.

2. Video description. The video description is another key factor in making your video more searchable. The text in the description should align with the keywords in your title, as well as the messages you wish to portray to your target audience.

YouTube fast facts
  • YouTube has the fourth-largest audience on the Web
  • The average user spends 2 hours, 38 minutes on YouTube each month
  • YouTube is now the world’s second-largest search engine on the Web, after Google

Source: ComScore, April 2009

3. Tagging. In addition to including a title and description, you can and should tag your video with certain keywords. These tags will make your video come up when people enter those words on search engines.

4. Link back. Include the link to your YouTube video or a video channel on other social media profiles and pages, such as the company Twitter handle, LinkedIn profiles, Facebook page or blog.

5. Give feedback. YouTube enables users to upload a relevant response video to already existing videos through its Video Response feature. Companies can use this feature to search videos that relate to the company’s message and keywords and then post their video as a response. This is a quick way to instantly expose your video to tons of new viewers in your target audience.

6. Gain insight. YouTube Insight is a free tool that enables account users to view detailed statistics about the videos they upload, such as demographic information about the viewers and at what point in they stopped watching the video. These statistics are extremely helpful in gauging whether your videos are achieving the intended goal, as well as in identifying areas that need improvement.

7. Promoted videos. YouTube allows you to promote your videos through keyword searches on YouTube, as well as through content partner sites. A little money can go a long way to jump-starting video viewership.

Sandra Fathi is the president and founder of Affect Strategies.

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