Think about it: by the time you finish reading this blog entry, more than a week’s worth of fresh video will have been uploaded to YouTube. We upload more content in sixty days than the three major U.S. Networks generated in the last sixty years. Over a billion people visit the world’s biggest website every month. Yet amidst all this enormity, views of brand-created content have grown 73%, year on year.
So you want to create a clip for your client and post it on YouTube? That’s adorable, good luck with that.
Oh it is definitely being done. A recent report from Pixability, a YouTube-certified ad agency, outlines a number of key findings regarding marketing on the site. Obviously, they are biased toward their own platform, but still their study of the world’s Top 100 Global brands and their 1378 verified channels uncovered some key findings (by the way, only one of those top 100 brands does NOT have a YouTube channel).
First off, while videos have an indefinite shelf life, they garner 40% of their total views in the first three weeks and the next 30% before the first three months. And yet, because so many videos are not promoted, more than half of these videos earn less than 1000 views. That’s a lot of wasted effort.
To avoid disappearing in those exabytes of data, Pixability recommends these best practices:
Make a lot of content: The most popular brands post almost 80 videos each month; 50% more videos per channel than the least successful ones.
Use social media. If you want views, link your content to Facebook and Twitter. Social media drives sharing. It never hurts to link your YouTube channel to traditional offline media either.
Vary video length: Post short ones to attract customers, longer ones to close those most interested. Basically, Pixability suggests creating a full sales funnel on your brand channel.
Optimize your content: YouTube is the second largest search engine so brands should utilize SEO, adapting for some specific YouTube channel architecture. One biggie is that Google prioritizes Web pages with YouTube video embeds. Another is to embed content with metadata, titles, descriptions and yes, brand logos, since clips can migrate so far off the YouTube platform.
Of course, I take issue with their data-geek bromide not to get caught in what they term ‘the overproduction trap.’ They claim lesser quality video works well too, but to my mind, they’re just trying to keep brands with no taste from feeling bad about themselves.
That’s ridiculous. You have a billion people coming to your door every month–put on a nice shirt and polish your shoes. You don’t live in a barn.
By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Olson