Before you begin creating your video content, you want to develop a video content strategy. Avoid the common temptation to just post about your products and services, and consider how you can create relevant video playlists which will meet a wide range of your target audience’s needs. Yes, this can include sales—but it’s time to think outside the box.
Posting just a handful of relevant and high-quality videos is always better than posting a high volume of useless videos. Use any combination of the ideas below as inspiration as content your customers will engage with.
Start with your FAQs An excellent place to begin is to take a look at your customers most frequently asked questions. This can include industry
questions and product questions alike. Answer the questions via a video or video series, and drive instant engagement.

Educational or Instructional
Educational and instructional “How To” videos are another
popular choice. Here are a few examples:

• Does your product require assembly? Great create a step-by-step video of how to put it together.
• Do you sell a digital product? Create a video of the screen shots for performing common (or advanced) functions using your software or app.
• Do you sell a tool that can be used for a versatile range of functions? Create a video highlighting its most common features. For example, a makeup demo.
• Is there an adjacent software, product, or tool your customers use? Create a video on how to integrate with your product. You can even create videos that you can use to train your team—and post them online in an invitation-only video playlist.

Client Testimonials
Your passionate and happy customers are often eager to share their great experience with others. The next time you receive a raving online review or direct email, ask the customer if they would be willing to record a client testimonial. And yes, it’s ok to incentivize them for their time.

Live Stream an Event
If you have an upcoming live event, fundraiser, speech, product demo, or convention—take a few minutes to record the event and upload it to your YouTube Channel.

Interviews and Team Profiles
One of the ways to connect and engage in our current digital world is to do an online interview or video profile. This can be short and sweet and answer a few questions. The goal is to make you and your team feel human and relatable. Also, take advantage of the opportunity to interview industry innovators you come across—and post the video to YouTube.

Mini-Commercials
Most small or mid-sized businesses do not have the budget to produce and place a TV commercial for local or nationwide placement, which makes YouTube videos the ideal alternative. In most cases, it is still best to have an online video expert produce and create your mini-commercial— including professional audio, voiceover, scripts, graphics, and
editing. However, the price will be far more cost-effective than a commercial designed for TV. That being said, you can turn to DIY video tools to create white board videos, videos from images, or to edit the footage you shoot. Some of the best DIY video tools include:
• Nutshell
• Magisto
• Animoto
• Videoshop
• iMovie App
• iMovie for Macs
Videos That Support Your Content
As mentioned in the statistics in Chapter 1, when given the choice 59% of executives would rather watch a 30 to 120 second video—opposed to reading a blog post, article, or email. Also, email marketing campaigns with videos have a 96% higher email open rate. This means you should look for

ways to create image, text, and white board videos that support your written content. The DIY tools above will help, or outsource to a video designer.

Share Your Story
Don’t discount the value of sharing engaging content designed to share your company’s story, or a story that will emotionally connect with your subscribers. For example, think of all the viral animal and baby videos that trend on YouTube. While babies and pets may not be relevant to your target audience, actively look for other ways to share stories that will
brand your business in a positive light.

Mapping Out Your Video Content Plan
Use the video categories above to break your video content up in to relevant playlists, and map out how many videos you want to create each quarter. Your organic, and your paid, video marketing plan must be integrated with your entire online and social media marketing plan. For example, after your video goes live you can add it to an upcoming blog post— as well as sharing it to your other social media platforms.

Posting Videos Outside of YouTube
One of the unique things about video content, is that unlike blogs and articles—you can post the same video in multiple places online. Look for every opportunity to post your relevant videos, and remember that you can share them more than once. For example, if your “How To” video is a hit on Facebook—post it again in a week or two. This will help increase views, likes, comments and shares. Here are just a few places to post your videos:
• Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, etc.
• Within articles and blog posts.
• Within relevant paid ads.
• Upload to relevant email marketing campaigns.
• Add to one-off relevant emails.
• Add to your newsletter.
• To relevant website pages.
• To the video section of your website.
Even if you have the option to add a video independently from the source file and not just from YouTube—upload the YouTube link. This will help to create more backlinks, and send more traffic back to your YouTube Channel.

Organically Optimizing Your YouTube Videos
Before you upload a new video to YouTube, you must make sure it is organically optimized. This is similar to optimizing your profile image and banner as detailed earlier, but a bit more in-depth.
Rename Your Video File
Before you upload your new video to YouTube, create an SEO optimized filename. Use Google Trends or a paid keyword tool to name and save your video with relevant keywords. For example, you may be tempted to name your videos chronologically—but “The Perfect Smokey Eye” is a better name than “Makeup Tutorial #12.”
Input All Metadata
If you are familiar with filling out the metadata for your webpages and blog posts, it is somewhat similar within YouTube. Title—your title needs to include the question and/or relevant keywords viewers will type in to YouTube when searching for the information your video provides. The more specific the better, just make sure your video name makes sense.

Description—Utilize the video description to highlight the key points within your video. While the description can be up to 5,000 characters—the first 160 characters (with spaces) is all that populates in search results. In other words, make sure there is a keyword or two in the first 160 characters. And don’t forget to invite your viewers to subscribe to your Channel! Captions and Subtitles—search engines can’t crawl for videos, but they can crawl and index your captions and subtitles so make sure they are SEO optimized.
Tags and Categories—filling out the related tags and categories is just one more way to get your videos showing up organically in YouTube’s search results and Up Next section.
Customize Your Video Thumbnail—add an optimized thumbnail to your videos as an often underutilized organic
method of SEO. Don’t Forget to Add Links—be sure to add relevant external links to your video description. While you will certainly want to
link back to your website, sales site, or other social media platforms—your organic performance will improve if you find quality links that are relevant to your video. For example, link back to the official source of your statistics. Where many B2B and B2C marketers fail, is in uploading videos to YouTube without organically optimizing their files

and metadata—and without a plan for posting their video content elsewhere. With the strategic approach above, and a steady stream of new videos, your subscription base and YouTube video views is sure to grow!
Now as great as all of this info is, it’s not going to be of any use to you or your business if you don’t apply what you’ve learned. So, roll up your sleeves and get ready to execute the steps in the following battle plan