As we go into the busiest and most competitive period of the year, it is important for businesses leaders and CEOs to understand and implement online strategies that can help build fame and acceptance for their candidates.
Creative people are some of the first set of people to understand the true power of the Internet. Take YouTube for example. Since its inception, music mega-stars like Justin Bieber and Psy, the man behind the latest music and dance craze Gangnam Style, have used the power of Youtube to connect to a worldwide audience.
In the same vein, Nigerians businesses can use Youtube to share information, knowledge and experiences in ways that were never before possible. YouTube is a truly 21st-century platform for consumer engagement, breaking down traditional barriers by connecting target customers around the country with brands and businesses that provide services.
Here are 3 crucial reasons why every business should maintain a strong YouTube presence:
- YouTube has more than 1 Billion users — that’s almost the size of every person in Africa, with over 300hrs of video are uploaded every minute. This presents an opportunity for brands who constantly need to communicate their message to large numbers of consumers.
- Reach: In addition to helping to reach large numbers of people, the YouTube platform will help businesses connect to more people across different countries. This is particularly useful to brand managers looking at expanding their footprints abroad.
- On demand: Because traditional TV operations are governed by schedules that determine what viewers see at every time of the day, YouTube content is always available throughout the day. So even in the case where most people miss your advertising on live TV, you can always be sure they will be able to see anytime they are on YouTube.
Here are three things to note when working on your YouTube campaign:
- Build your audience by engaging them: The most successful user constantly say that the more they interact with the YouTube community and create videos in a dialogue with their audience, the more views and subscribers they get. Converting viewers into subscribers is the key to wider distribution — it’s a solid base of thousands of views for any newly-released video — which is why the most-viewed user partners on YouTube tend to be the ones with the most subscribers (and ultimately make the most money). To increase subscribers, upload responses to other popular videos, request video suggestions, comment meaningfully on other people’s videos, and add annotations encouraging viewers to ask questions and subscribe.
- Use YouTube tools to maximize exposure and learn what works: you can also increase view counts by using free Youtube tools to program their channels strategically. Some users have used YouTube Insight to recognise the pattern in their views and decide when to upload new videos. You can use such waves of traffic to ride out their channel’s momentum: surfacing new content to users on days when you have the largest audience accelerates your view counts at a rate more likely to qualify your video as one of the most popular that day or week. Simply uploading a bunch of videos in one day is rarely the best way to increase views; bulk uploads can turn off your audience, making them less likely to watch any of the videos you uploaded at that time.
- Partner with others and cross-promote: You’re not the only channel trying to find your way on YouTube. Team up with others who have similar content and overlapping audiences, and collaborate. Create videos together, have video-to-video conversations, and direct traffic to each other’s channel. It works: tens of thousands of people will subscribe to both channels.
