The Best Ways to Advertise Online With Social Media: YouTube

Welcome to the wonderful world of online advertising.

Since the rise of social networking sites, people have come to learn that using them to advertise has helped their business’ growth expand exponentially. There are so many different social networks in this day and age… but is any one better than the other? Do you need to use them all? And which one is best to advertise your business with?

Yes, you need to use all of them. With different social channels come different audiences, styles, and features. Today will go over advertising using YouTube.

YouTube was originally launched in 2005 and was bought by Google the next year at the tune of $1.65 billion. It has since become the third most visited website in the world, reaching around 88 countries with local versions in 76 languages.*

Here are some of the best ways to use YouTube to advertise your business:

Create Your Business Channel/YouTube Brand Account

There are two things you need to create a channel for your business on YouTube: your business’s Google Brand Account and a YouTube Account. This is the trickiest part so stay with me.

If you don’t have a YouTube account, you’ll need to make one. Since YouTube is a Google product, you’ll need to use your business’s Google Brand Account to create a YouTube account. If you don’t have a Google Brand Account for your business, you can learn all about them and create one here.

If you already have a YouTube account (yay!), you can create your business’s channel by just adding a channel to your account, finding and selecting your Google Brand Account, and filling out the details. Why make a whole different channel you ask? Your business’s channel (aka YouTube Brand Account) is different than your personal channel because you can appoint multiple managers or owners to it. Once your channel is created, you can organize your managers by following these instructions.

Create Playlists

Before you upload your videos, it might be a good idea to organize where you want to put them. Playlists are different categories for your videos that make it easier for your viewers to find a specific type of video. For example, you can make separate playlists for different topics such as informative videos about your business, tutorial videos, customer testimonials, and more.

Upload Those Videos

Now that the foundation of your business’s channel is created, it’s time to add your videos. On the top right corner of YouTube, you will see an upward arrow and if you hover your mouse over it, you will see it says upload. Select the video you want to upload from your computer, add a title, description, and tags. On the same screen, you can also manage the privacy settings for each video to either public, private, or unlisted. Since your videos are for your business, you’ll probably want public so that they can be seen and shared by everyone. Before you hit publish, make sure to add the video to any playlist you created that fits with the theme of your video.

Subscribe To Other Channels

Interested in what other businesses are doing on YouTube? You can subscribe to any channel you want by going to a video created by the channel you want to subscribe to and clicking the red button that says ‘Subscribe’. Just like any other social networking site, subscribing to someone puts your business’s name in their head. They might even subscribe to you back!

To find channels to subscribe to, YouTube suggests videos and channels on your homepage that it thinks you may like based on other videos you’ve watched. You can also browse for channels by category by clicking on “Browse Channels” on the left side of your homepage to see popular channels across different categories.

Every Tuesday during the entire month of June, BBB will be releasing a different blog post for each of the four most popular social media platforms of today with instructions on how to use each site to it’s full potential for your business’s benefit.

Keep a lookout for our feature on the best ways to advertise using Twitter next Tuesday.

Check out our post from last week on the best ways to advertise using Facebook here.

For more information you can trust, visit us at bbb.org/boston, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

*information and statistics provided by support.google.com/youtube and youtube.com/yt/press