Anthony likes helping people reach their true potential. Being the victim of his own fears and insecurities in his own business, he has decided to help others create more opportunities.
You may have thought about growing a Youtube Channel. It is a powerful tool to develop your business As part of Google, Youtube remains one of the main search engines. Its ranking system takes into account how much of your videos people watch, and what your keywords are. It can be a direct link towards your website and a perennial way to promote yourself. Companies using video enjoy 41% more web traffic from search than non-users. Not to mention, by 2019, global consumer Internet video traffic will account for 80% of all consumer Internet traffic (Forbes). This article gives you five tips to grow a successful Youtube Channel.
Perfection is your enemy
If you are intimidated by professional looking videos, don’t worry. Most successful channels were started with nothing more than a mobile phone. When you start, consistency is more important than making your videos perfect. The first videos are very seldom good anyway so you want them out of the way when your channel has very few subscribers. The video below looks amateurish, but it has seven million views. The author is an internet celebrity, but he says it took him one take, and sometimes he spent hours on videos that did not really work. What matters is that the content is original and interesting.
Consistency of content is another element that goes into the ranking. Much like a website that needs to update its content to keep up its ranking on Google, a Youtube channel gets a higher ranking when its videos are consistent. The bare minimum is one video per week. Another extreme is to post one video per day, but that is hardly sustainable. The best thing to do is to treat this as a viable marketing activity and select time slots for it, three times per week for example.
Choosing the right theme
The next crucial step in building a successful Youtube Channel is to catch the interest of potential customers. That means you have a good idea of what your target market is and what they want. Generally, people are not interested in seeing restaurant staff promoting their restaurant. The video needs to provide value to your customer.
The video above looks very professional and the food does look delicious. Apart from that, however, there is not much rapport built with future customers. It is too promotional. The top three most effective types of video content are customer testimonials (51%), Tutorial videos (50%), and demonstration videos (49%) (Forbes). As a restaurant, you can definitely show cooking tutorials or demonstrations. Another key ingredient is storytelling. If you can tell a story behind each dish that you have, you grab the attention of even more people. Additionally, if you can show your chef flawlessly working around a spotless kitchen, your business will have a shining image.
How to stand out from other Youtube channels
There are a lot of Youtube channels giving away cooking tips. The trick, and arguably the most difficult thing to master, is to have a unique message and a great way of delivering it. There is no need to see how Gordon Ramsay does it. Food fans know his videos by heart. Not to mention, you can’t reshoot a scene or edit it as many time as he does. Curiously enough, very few restaurants use Youtube at all. Most restaurant Youtube channels only have three or four videos. The video below is an exception to that rule.
What you want to stress in the first seconds of your video is the name of your restaurant, where it’s located, and why people are losing out if they are not paying you a visit. Tell the story of your early days. Guy Kawasaki says every company should have a mantra, a three or four-word phrase that declares your identity. What is trending nowadays is unprocessed food and health. If you can show in a few words that you know how to combine unrivalled taste and health benefits, you will undoubtedly score a lot of points. The next step is to watch out for other Youtube Channels that align with your philosophy.
Growing thanks to others
The goal of Youtube is not to be the best or to have more views than your neighbour. You will always find someone who has more views than you so compare only leads to despair. Some Channels, however, can feature your restaurant in their reviews. These people have an audience who will be exposed to you just by getting in contact with someone.
The person in the video above has 437 000 subscribers. That means when she features a restaurant in a video, it is bound to get exposure. Even your competition can be included in the mix. You can feature a renowned chef by inviting him or her to give a cooking demonstration at your place. By being featured on your channel, you make them shine so they are unlikely to refuse. They are also likely to share the video on their social media so you get more traffic.
The hidden potential of SEO
While all these techniques work, maximising the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) of your Youtube Channel is invaluable. That means before looking for the best camera and the best cameraman for the most professional looking videos, your SEO should already give you daily views. SEO experts are very numerous, and very few of them are competent. The safest bet is to use someone who has been recommended by word of mouth, with a proven track record.
Perfecting your videos also has a time and a place, but too many people sit on a goldmine by neglecting their SEO. People do use search words related to food every day. A real expert can tell you the most effective terms.
Wrap-up
As daunting a task as it may seem, growing a Youtube Channel is a step by step process. You first decide how much time you want to spend on it, and whether you want to delegate the task. Ideally, you will have aspects of it delegated, but maybe not at the start. Then, it is about tweaking, improving and getting in touch with the right people.
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