Deploying YouTube Videos Wisely

Finally! You worked hard and you finished your marketing video and it looks great. But how do you get people to see it? Spending a little bit of time thinking about how you deploy your video is worth the extra effort. There's more than 72 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every single minute so strategically thinking about your release can help you stand out from the crowd.

1. Encode your video in as high of a resolution as possible and make sure your default settings are set to private to give you a little bit of time to update your metadata before you share your hard work with the world.

2. Video Metadata: Videos aren't inherently searchable to you have to surround your video(s) with text so crawlers like YouTube and Google have some idea about the content in your video. The YouTube Creators Playbook has lots of great tips on creating effective metadata, this includes things like:

• Video Title: A keyword rich title is imperative and in my experience is the #1 most important part of your videos ranking higher in search. It's important to balance your search equity and a compelling title that will entice a viewer to click on your video but remember the cost of being 'on brand'.
• Video Descriptions: YouTube gives you plenty of space to describe your video in detail so make sure you use it. Descriptions give your video additional context. Make sure you use some of the keywords you use in your title and tags and begin with the most important information first. Add links to related content like your other social profiles and encourage users to subscribe to your channel.
• Video Tags: Use quotes for multiple word tags like 'video marketing'. Order matters, use your most relevant keywords first. I use the YouTube keyword suggestion tool to help come up with ideas.
• Video Transcriptions: Captions are searchable and add search equity but the overwhelming majority of marketers are either unaware of this feature or don't spend the extra time it takes to do it properly. REEL SEO has published an exhaustive step by step guide to get you started. I like to edit the machine generated transcription for accuracy.
• Video Thumbnail: If you're not a YouTube partner you're stuck with the three options that YouTube gives you but select the most relevant option available to you.

3. Create Annotations: Annotations are a great way to add even more context, link between your other videos or encourage viewers to become subscribers.

4. Go Public! Now that you've got your metadata set up the way you want go ahead and flip the switch to make your video public. Last month YouTube announced improvements in the way you share videos with your subscribers. This gives you the ability to give your subscribers some context with how your video is shared. Write a compelling call-to-action that will entice your subscribers to check your video out.

5. Create a Video Response: Creating a video response on your own video can give users an easier way to navigate to additional videos after they are done viewing one of them.

6. Use Playlists: Playlists are a crucial tool that allows you to keep your content organized to make your videos easier to find. Playlists are also indexed in search separately than your individual videos giving you a second opportunity for viewers to find your content.

7. Share Your Video: Embed your video on your blog, share it on your Linkedin profile, tweet your video, post it to your Facebook profile, etc. YouTube allows you to do this automatically but I like to manually share my videos to give me the opportunity to create an individualized message across different social platforms.

Now that your video is out there for the world to see make sure you measure the results. Check YouTube analytics often an adjust your settings to make sure you are getting the maximum potential from your videos.