10 tips for starting and running a successful
YouTube Channel for your small business

In today’s scenario, the rise of video marketing is getting increased due to the impact of covid. Popular social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter are also gaining importance in the marketing environment. But the usage of YouTube has witnessed tremendous growth, especially among small businesses in promoting  their product / brand. YouTube serves as a hub for more than 2 billion users worldwide and drives more than 30 million daily visits, making it a great platform for small businesses looking for marketing activity with their content.

As marketing has transitioned towards the digital era, small business companies might find some difficulties in engaging with users. If you understand a few tricks and certain basics in creating videos & publishing them, the process becomes less tedious. To help you along this process, we’ve provided some basic tips to set up your YouTube business channel and run it successfully.

1. Create a YouTube channel first!

Realizing the importance of a YouTube channel, the first step is to create a YouTube channel. Now, let us look at the below steps for setting up a YouTube channel.

(i) Create a google account (if you don’t have one already). You will be asked to create a user name & password followed by phone number verification

(ii) Install the YouTube app and sign in with your user credentials after creating the google account

(iii) Click your picture in the top right corner (desktop version) and Select “Create a Channel”

(iv) Decide if you want to use the name associated with your email address or create a custom name for your channel

(v) Add details to the “about” section

(vi) Customize the look of your channel with a cover photo and profile picture

(vii) Upload your first video

(viii) Add playlists, fill out your profile with more details, and link to your other social media accounts

2. Fix your niche :

Everything in this world is created for a purpose. The same analogy applies to your YouTube channel too. The success of your YouTube channel lies in its purpose. Anybody who wishes to start a YouTube channel for your small business must ask the following questions to themselves.

• What does your channel need to accomplish?
• Who is your target audience?
• Why the people/audience should watch your channel?

If you have a relevant answer for all the above questions, then half of the job is done.

3 .Face Up & Leap Out :

You might have heard of a famous proverb, “Face is the index of the mind”, which means One can fairly comprehend the mental state of a person through his or her facial expressions. This proverb plays a vital role in running a successful YouTube channel. Instead of using animated characters, it will be extremely beneficial if you take part in videos directly. When you show up your face, the audience gets easily connected, as a result, you will become more familiar to them. This is very important for a budding entrepreneur to attract the audience. But it is not necessary to expose your face every time, nevertheless make sure to engage your audience at regular intervals.

See the example below from marketing guru Adam Erhart

4 .Invest in the right video & audio equipment :

The common error witnessed in most of the budding / small business YouTube channels is lack of video and audio quality. In terms of video quality, usage of high-quality cameras like DSLR or mirror-less cameras is mostly preferred for recording videos in HD clarity. However, purchasing a high pixel camera should not be a top priority.

Either way, better usage of your smartphone along with essential accessories could probably achieve desired video quality. The accessories like tripods, lenses, studio lighting can be used for enhancing your video quality.

Likewise, focussing on audio quality is also an important factor in engaging the audience. If your video consists of background noise or imbalance (high or low) in speaker’s volume, then there is a chance of ruining your video although you’ve strong or interesting content.

Invest in good microphone such that it can be mounted on a camera or can be fitted in speaker’s clothes based on the need. Some examples of good microphones are Shotgun Microphones, Lavalier Microphones, Podcasting Microphones, etc.

5. Simple editing software :

Imagine if you’re publishing a video content having duration for an hour. You will surely witness a comment like video is too boring! in your comment section. Posting a video of longer duration, will drain viewers’ mind and they’ll lose interest in your content. So, to get rid of this, video editing techniques should be employed to keep your videos crisp & clear. In addition, editing also helps you to structure your content properly and also helps to identify errors that happened while recording the video.

You don’t need advanced video editing software (as used for editing movies) to edit your content. There is a lot of simple editing software like Windows Movie Maker or Apple iMovie available in the market which is user-friendly and free to use. Some examples of simple editing software are Animoto, VideoPad, etc.

6. Focus on SEO :

Another secret for increasing visibility to your YouTube channel is leveraging the best Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices for your content. YouTube is more than just a video platform; it’s also a search engine for videos.. By doing this, it helps in rank optimization such that your video may be ranked up the order.

Constructing your video by incorporating targeted keywords (e.g., video name / video title / video description) is one of the best strategies to drive traffic and increase the audience number to your channel. Perform a competitive search and find out what terms have been used relating to your content and incorporate them. Obviously, this will guide you how to do.

Once you choose a keyword, you should see which videos are currently ranking for that topic to ensure you’re on the right track regarding intent, and you should always optimize your title and description.. By doing this, you will generate more search traffic with SEO on YouTube.

Use a keyword tool like KeywordTool.io, which is specific to YouTube, to look for the most searched keywords in the niche you want to target.

7. Make use of YouTube analytics :

Once you have started publishing videos in your channel, then it’s time to obtain a birds-eye view of how it is performing. YouTube Analytics will help you in shaping/optimizing the videos for the future by providing insights on who are all the persons who have watched your video, average duration time (how long people stay on your videos), Click-through rate, Watch Time, etc.

The Click-through rate represents how attractive your title is and how clickable your thumbnails are. Firstly, check the click-through rate for your entire YouTube channel as a whole and then check the click-through rate on posted individual videos separately. This helps you to improve the quality of content in future scenarios grabbing more viewers.

Another metric called Watch Time tends to rank videos with longer watch times. However, making shorter videos doesn’t imply you must make longer videos.

YouTube uses these kinds of metrics/index to measure how your video engages the viewers. The more the factor of engaging, the ranking of your video will also be high.

8. Increase Your Uploading Frequency :

Consistency is important for videos. In order to expand your audience, you must increase your posting frequency say for e.g., one video per week. To achieve this, you need not search for a big marketing company or firm. You can do this with your smartphone itself.

Try to post the videos at the same time depending on your work schedule and keep your audience updated as soon as a new video gets published. This will help you to generate a routine plan for making and publishing videos at regular intervals.

9. Promote Your YouTube Videos on Other Social Channels :

One amazing thing about social media platforms is their cross-promotion. i.e., you can promote your YouTube channel videos on other social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, etc. in a simple way of growing the audience.

There are plenty of great ideas for social media videos. And if there’s a channel (such as Instagram) on which you have active participation, you can always do a trailer for the full-length video on YouTube, so you get better reach for your YouTube channel. Also, you can promote your YouTube channel through your blog; you can post your videos there as well! Additionally, if you have a podcast, it can be easily integrated with your YouTube channel.

10. Banner, Template, and Themes :

A well-known saying says, “First impression is the best impression”. Although you may have better content to engage with the audience, certain aesthetic factors like banners, themes, templates, etc. also play a key role in increasing subscribers. This may be a small thing, but it can create a huge impact!

Your YouTube channel banner is probably the first thing your viewers and possible subscribers will see when they visit your channel.

Final thoughts :

There are thousands of YouTube channels which are being created every day, in order to stand out from them, you need to consider the above tips like knowing your niche, facing up, implementing apt SEO strategy & YouTube analytics, and other requirements to connect with the audience seamlessly and share your expertise to the global community.