How To Use YouTube To Get Leads

YouTube is a great way to get traffic to your blogs or websites. It has 800 million visitors to its site every month. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. And it is ranked #3 in the world by Alexa. Every marketer should be utilizing YouTube. This article is designed to teach how to optimize the use of YouTube. It will teach you how to use YouTube to get leads.

 

 Three PayPal employees, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, are the founders of YouTube. According to Karim, the creation of YouTube was the result of the Super Bowl incident of 2005. This is when Janet Jackson's breasts were exposed on national television. Hurley and Chen claim the idea came from making a video version of an online dating service. In either case, the idea of YouTube was given birth in the early months of 2005. A beta test of YouTube was done in April 2005 with the first video posted on the site. It was named "Me At The Zoo". It was taken at the San Diego Zoo. The official launch of YouTube was in November 2005. And on November 13, 2006 Google Inc. purchased YouTube for 1.65 billion dollars. Since that time businesses have found video marketing to be a leading method of marketing their products and services. Consequently, YouTube has become a valuable tool to promote and gain greater visibility. Now, on to how to use YouTube to get leads.

Step 1 – Keyword Research

The single most important element to using YouTube to get leads is your keywords. It is well worth your time to research which keywords would be the most productive ones to use. You can create a fantastic video with awesome content. But if your video never gets seen, you have worked in vain. So, you need to research words and phrases related to the topic of your video. Google Adwords is a great software program for this. Simply put in your keyword or keyword phrase and look and see the level of competition for the prospective keywords you are considering using. You will also see the average number of global and local searches for your keyword or phrase. This will greatly help you identify which keyword will be the most productive to use. It is wise to target keywords which have low competition but yet have a high search number globally and locally. Some examples of these in the marketing niche would be review, global, and income. Your goal is to be found on the first page of a search engine search. So, that when someone does a search on your topic, they see a link to your YouTube video.

Step 2 – Your Title

The title to your YouTube video is very important. You want people to see your video when they do a search on your topic. You need your title to be keyword rich. The keyword research you have done on your topic should be applied to the selection of your title. Once again, your goal is to be found on the first page of a search engine search. So, that when someone does a search on your topic, they see a link to your video. Your title should draw interest, or curiousity, or cause objection to the reader. Whatever the reason, a main purpose of the title is to cause people to view your video. The purpose of a title is to get noticed by both search engines and viewers of your videos.

Step 3 – Your Description

The description of your YouTube video is a very important element of your video. The description should be comprehensive. Your description has much bearing on a search rating of your video.(Unfortunately, many people put little to no description to their videos. This produces a limited visibility.) The first thing you should put in your description is a link. It will automatically become a clickable link once you save your description. This link can go to another video, a blog site, or another web address. This is your chance to create a viral result from your video. You want to write an accurate description that once again is keyword rich. If you are placing your video in a blog, it is wise to use content from your blog in your description, as long as it is congruent to the content in your video.When a search engine sees valuable content in your description, the rating of a video climbs. Never put tags in your description, there is a section for that. The use of tags in your description will lower the rating of your video.

Step 4 – Utilize Tags

There is a section to fill out when you publish your video in YouTube called tags. This is a section you should take full advantage of. This section should list all the pertinent keywords applicable to your video. You should list them in order of importance. The keywords which are the most specific to your video and niche should be listed first. After that you should list secondary and more general tags. The YouTube site program will automatically generate suggestions for these secondary tags. It is important to not list tags that have nothing to do with your video content. This will lower the rating you receive from search engines. Remember, keywords are key. The top 2% of your keywords produce 80% of your profits.

Step 5 – Engage with your audience

As with all social media sites, it is important to interact with your audience. This can be done by asking for opinions, ideas, and feedback. The goal of this interaction is create a relationship with your viewers. Your YouTube channel makes this easy for you with a  comment section already functioning beneath your video. Encourage people to use this section. Simply ask for comments and feedback when you are coming to the conclusion of your video.

Step 6 – Do competitions

You can create a video contest or competition. This can draw large numbers to your YouTube channel. Here is an example of an applicant to such a competition:

YouTube Competition - Help Harry and Charlie win if you can

This video had over 205,000 views. If they can do it, you can.

Step 7 – Joint Ventures

Joint ventures is way of using someone else's sphere of influence or list to gain more visibility for your video. Find someone who you can interview or vice versa. You can then post the video of the interview on eachother's channels. This is a partnership that can benefit both parties.

Step 8 - Annotations

Annotations can be made to pop up on your video. They can be a picture, logo, or text. This will ad to the rating of your video. Make sure you do not place them at the very top or bottom of your video. This is because they can become obscured by other things like volume controls, ads, titles, etc. Also make sure the placement of annotations does not distract from the content of the video.

I'm sure you have found some information which you can apply to your YouTube videos. One last tip is to scroll to the bottom of the page of your YouTube channel and click on "Creators and Partners". This will bring up a page where you can select a box entitled, Creator Playbook. The Creator Playbook will give you extensive training on how to set up your YouTube channel and optimize your use of YouTube.

For further information on the business I apply these concepts to and the success with internet marketing I have obtained, click here.