Is your YouTube channel going to build awareness or accelerate leads? Give your company its own Brand Channel Skip this step if you already have one, but there are two types of YouTube channels: personal channels (for individuals), and brand channels (for companies). Brand channels are created from individual channels, and if an employee created a brand channel from their personal one, it could be a problem. How to do it: Sign out of your current Google account Create a new Google account Name it after your company (or product line) Verify the account and click “Done” Go to YouTube Click your avatar in the top right, and in the dropdown, “My Channel” Click the blue button that says “Customize Channel” Click your avatar again and click the gear icon, advanced settings, and “Move channel to brand account” Begin customizing your brand channel (Optional) Add yourself and others as managers of the brand channel In the Group menu, click “Integrations” Select YouTube Sign into your YouTube account 3. Brand your channel Unkempt YouTube channels—especially those with grainy (or no) banner images—scream “nothing to see here, folks.” Brand your YouTube channels just as you do your website, and with the customer journey in mind. If people will discover it by searching YouTube, use the banner image to explain what your channel is about. If existing customers will find it by searching, “How to do X” in Google, let it be known that your channel is for support. Complete all your channel information: Description, logo, links to your site, and a contact email. Hide, add, or edit your videos If this is an old account, hide any videos that aren’t relevant to your customer journey, and make plans to update old ones. If you need leads, does your banner and channel description educate potential buyers?
“Build it and they will come”—wonderful advice for summoning the ghosts of legendary baseball players, awful advice for managing your YouTube channel.
Many companies, particularly those in B2B, launched their YouTube channels during the social media scramble of the early aughts when people said things like, “What’s your Google+ strategy?” without irony. For most of these companies, merely having a YouTube presence didn’t translate into traffic or leads and their channels grew stale and dormant.
Today, we’re going to dust yours off. YouTube has added a few new tools (and mercifully removed others) and it can be a valuable source of website traffic (paired with your video marketing platform) if only you clean it up.
Spring-clean your channel in five steps:
1. Decide your channel’s purpose
Before you go dusting digital shelves, plan. Is your YouTube channel going to build awareness or accelerate leads? Tell brand stories or explain the details of your product? Each approach requires a different strategy, and while your channel can do multiple things, it’s best to do one thing well first.
Not every product or service is a fit for YouTube. If you sell something super niche, YouTube might have trouble finding the right people to recommend your videos to, and any traffic you get will be low quality. If that’s your situation, consider creating a channel that’s of broader interest to your industry. Or, maybe don’t use YouTube.
How to do it:
- Consult your customer research. What personas will the channel influence, and at what stages in their journey? Write it down and keep your notes handy
- (Optional) Pick the keywords you’ll target with your channel
2. Give your company its own Brand Channel
Skip this step if you already have one, but there are two types of YouTube channels: personal channels (for individuals), and brand channels (for companies). Brand channels are created from individual channels, and if an employee created a brand channel from their personal one, it could be a problem. They’re the recovery contact if you ever forget the password. (Yikes if they’re ever sick. Double yikes if they ever leave.)
If you’re not sure who owns your current channel, create a new individual Google Account for the business (name it after the business) and use it to launch a Brand Channel.
How to do it:
- Sign out of your current Google account
- Create a new Google account
- Name it after your company (or product line)
- Verify the account and click “Done”
- Go to YouTube
- Click your avatar in the top right, and in the dropdown, “My Channel”
- Click the blue button that says “Customize Channel”
- Click your avatar again and click the gear icon,…
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