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Monday, May 11th, 2020 by Cynthia Freeney
Welcome back to the third installment of our Video Marketing Series. As we promised in our last post we are about to get busy with opening and optimizing YouTube channels and videos.
In this post, we will go over the YouTube channel basics. The vast majority of video views on any YouTube channel happens in the “Watch Pages”, meaning, the URL that hosts the video itself.Unless you are a YouTube celebrity, channel pages are seldom visited.
But that doesn’t mean that Channel Pages are irrelevant in Video Marketing for contractors. Au contraire, the way you customize, SEO, configure and organize content in your channel can literally make or break your YouTube Channel. So let’s get started with the basics, shall we?
NOTE: Every time you create a brand channel you also create a brand account linked to it. A personal channel can have several brand channels and accounts. If the account you are logged in already has a brand account associated with it and that account has no channel, you will be allowed to create a channel for the brand account. Otherwise, the brand account and the channel will be created at the same time.
Disclaimer: YouTube is constantly changing its platform and moving the settings around. We put together the instructions based on the dashboard features as they were at the time of this writing. We will do our best to keep the instructions updated but if you are a member of our program and have problems navigating the platform, please contact your Account Manager for assistance
One of the great things about Brand Channels is that they can be managed and administered by several people, even though they only have one Primary Owner, and as we discussed before, the Primary Owner should be the company owner or someone they trust.
Hired a new marketer or a social media person? No need to give them your login information. Simply go into Channel Settings and add them as managers. This way they can upload videos, answer to comments, look into channel analytics through their own Gmail accounts without ever needing your email and password. If they leave the company, simply remove them as channel managers.
While last years’ Christmas party, your TV ads and the little league softball team sponsored by the company might be fun features on your channel for a while, you might want to unlist them as soon as possible and leave only relevant, evergreen content set as public. Likewise, your sales team videos, who are meant only for Meet the Team pages, email marketing, and follow-ups, should remain unlisted. Customers will still be able to see them embedded on the Meet the Team pages and emails, but they will not be cluttering the channel or skewing your SEO.
YouTube is such a full-featured platform that it is easy to miss or forget about some very important settings and configurations. Things are always changing, it becomes hard to navigate and find the settings you are looking for when YouTube makes changes to the dashboard. Below are three video tutorials with step-by-step instructions on how to verify and configure your channel. The tutorials are based on dashboard navigation as it is at the time of this writing.
Always verify. Channel verification on YouTube give you access to different features that are otherwise not available.
1. Click on YouTube Studio.
2. From the dashboard, click on Settings.
3. From the settings window, click on Status and Features.
4. Click on Verify. (Use your cell phone to verify your channel as prompted.
You will notice that a few more features will open for you, such as the ability to verify your website against your channel.
If you plan to advertise on YouTube you can link it to your google ads.
5. Go back to settings and click on Advanced Channel Settings.
6. Under the Advanced Channel Settings scroll down to Associated Website, enter the website's URL and click Add.
YouTube Channel Customization Phase 1:
1. Click on Customize Channel.
2. Click on the About tab. To edit the description click on the pencil icon on the right and start to enter a keyword-rich description or your business; including the correct Name, Address, Phone Number and your website URL.
3. Under the About Us tab add links like your Google Maps Listing, Facebook Page or any other relevant social media to your Lead Form page.
4. If you have other business channels or a part of an organization, franchise or association, you can add those channels as Featured Channels in the About Us page.
5. In this section you can set a Headshot and a Cover your channel. These are important if you plan to advertise. Your Channel Cover image is used by YouTube to put together a Companion Banner that is served with your video ads.
In Phase Two if Channel Customization you will learn how to organize and display content in your channel.
YouTube Channel Customization Phase 2:
1. From the YouTube Studio, click on Settings.
2. On the Settings window, under the Basic Info tab add your Channel Keywords which should be service related as well as company name, city and state. Make sure you also set the location as U.S. or the country your company is in.
3. Since your main target is not children make sure to check that on your Advanced Settings Tab.
4. On the Branding window you have the option to include a watermark logo that will be shown across all your videos.
5. Including your website URL and adding your company name, city, state and phone number increases your chances for your video to rank in searches and also in the Up Next session of the watch page.
6. Click the Advanced Setting Tab and select default category for your videos and default language. This will generate automatic closed captions for the video upon uploading.
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