Chapter 4 – Developing Your Content Strategy
If you want your YouTube channel to be successful, then you need to develop a content strategy that includes how often you are going to post, as well as what kind of content you’re going to post. It's a good idea to have set days where you post new material because it creates a sense of anticipation for your subscribers. It can also help to keep you on track by providing you with a deadline for filming, editing, and posting new content.
The consistency of content is incredibly important if you want to grow a successful YouTube channel for your brand. While you won't be able to satisfy everyone, you must satisfy your target audience. Switching topics and focus will only confuse your viewers and result in fewer subscriptions to your channel. Only YouTubers who have a reality show style channel or you have gained credibility and respect over time can get away with producing videos on a range of topics.
If you have a fitness channel, you may decide to upload cooking videos showing viewers how to make healthy dishes on Mondays, training videos on Wednesdays, and update videos on Fridays.
Whatever you choose to do, the important thing is to remain consistent.
Types of Videos You Can Create
One of the reasons why many businesses have yet to jump on the video marketing train is because they feel they lack creativity.
Many smaller companies and entrepreneurs see articles and blog posts as the safe choice and much easier to manage. It may seem like it is much easier to write about a different topic each week, then it is to create a new and unique video every week. However, it doesn't have to be as hard as you think. There are a number of useful types of video content that your YouTube viewers will enjoy and that will help to separate you from the competition.
Video blogs or vlogs are easy to produce, won't cost you a ton of money to make, and are personality-driven, which can substantially increase your engagement with your audience.
However, few companies are taking advantage of this unique content idea. More companies are choosing, instead, to spend their money on product demos and polished business intro videos. While there is nothing wrong with taking this approach, vlogs are much cheaper to produce and can be created in as little as five minutes.
More and more businesses are embracing vlogging, so instead of trying to come up with new content every week, you could try documenting your journey through a vlog. Vlogging is a great medium to share your journey because of its intimacy and how easy it is to build a relationship with your target audience.
Company culture videos can make your business seem more human and more alive, and there is no better medium for tapping into this human element than videos. Culture videos can include birthday parties, pranks, slice-of-life employee interviews, and everything in between. The goal is to show your target audience that your business isn't just clockwork, but a social fabric with a ton of personality.
These days it can be hard for businesses to create unique and compelling content that cuts through the online noise. At some level, you will end up just regurgitating material that is already out there. The only way your company can truly stand out and be unique is by differentiating yourself through your personality, and the easiest way to do this is to lift the veil and provide your viewers with a behind the scenes look and what goes on in your company.
One of the best ways to become a thought leader in your industry is by interviewing other thought leaders. Video interviews are a great way to insert some authority into your library of engaging and humorous offerings. They can also help to build relationships with potential referral partners, which can't hurt. Video interviews can be an easy way to produce content quickly and gain a positive brand association by interviewing well-known guests.
One of the most valuable offerings you can give your viewers is webinars. Webinars are high-value and low-cost endeavors that require no scripts or actors. You can host Q&A sessions with clients, product demos with participating customers, or roundtable interviews with thought leaders in your industry. Webinars are also great pieces of content that you can promote through paid traffic. They can be incredibly useful gateways to your other content, where you can drive leads to a consultation call or sell them another product through an email series.
An event video is a step up from a webinar and covers the proceedings of a corporate event, in a polished and highly shareable manner. Traditionally, event videos take a lot more to produce than other kinds of videos, but with the popularity of 15- second Instagrams and Facebook videos, more companies are beginning to capture snippets of their events in a montage form. Event videos bring the excitement of the event to viewers who couldn’t make it to the party. A great event video will increase your online presence.
A presentation video takes the excitement of an event and combines it with the usefulness of a webinar. They can create a compelling and shareable narrative that will help you stand out from the crowd. One way you can use the excitement of presentations to your advantage is by providing a targeted presentation at a company event or at smaller-scale networking events.
Providing your audience with helpful content has to reach further than simple promotional tie-ins and soft selling because your target audience is smart enough to know when they are being sold, and it is never something that they like. Consider providing video tutorials that focus on helping your audience. For example, if you are a tech company, you might want to consider focusing on creating product tutorials, or if you are a health and wellness video, you could produce training videos that offer viewers helpful workout tips. You have to think of a way that you can provide an actionable resource that is relevant to your target vertical.
If you have an audience that trusts you, you can review products that they might find useful. The product reviews don't have to be reviews of competitors products, but instead, they can be reviews of products not in your industry that you believe will be useful for your customers. You just need to think of products that you trust and that you feel will help your customers in some way.
Choosing the types of videos that you will produce is almost just as important as the content that you are sharing with your viewer. Creating different types of videos that focus on the same topic can be a great way to keep your viewers from getting bored with your channel.