3 details to get right on your e-commerce store’s YouTube account – words Al Woods
A whole lot of revenue is up for grabs in the e-commerce industry. Per Statista, global e-commerce revenue is set to reach $4.8 trillion by 2021. Online brands that can engage users and provide value beyond those users’ purchases look poised for serious growth.
Merely operating an online store doesn’t guarantee a business any additional shares of the pie, though. If stores can’t find the right balance of marketing spend and customer acquisition, it’ll be an uphill climb. And while brands experiment with various agencies and channels in search of cost-effective solutions, most overlook the power of YouTube.
The second-most-visited website in the world receives 30 million visitors each day. Users upload over 300 hours of video to the platform every minute and watch over 5 billion videos each day. Simply put, anyone who uses the internet surely uses YouTube.
To set your store’s YouTube account up for maximum success, ensure you get these three details right.
Your Metadata
Having success with YouTube, like any search-ranking strategy, hinges on the details. Everything from your video title, video description and the tags you include impact how your video ranks. Be sure to do keyword research to inform your video titles using a free keyword rank checker to help you. Make sure all of your videos should have a lengthy description that targets various long-tail keywords naturally. If there’ll be a lot of talking in your video, especially instructional-based ones, then it’s a good idea to include a video transcript in the description.Keep in mind that your first few sentences will be all that shows unless the viewer clicks “show more,” so make them count.
It’s also a good idea to include a high-level link to your website whether it’s to a more in-depth blog article on the same subject, a link to a product you’re demoing o to your homepage. Finally, adding tags to each video allow you to target more keyword phrases and search terms that don’t fit in your title or description. This widens your search scope to new audiences. Be advised that metadata won’t make ordinary content perform well (you need to create quality content to do that) — but it is a prerequisite to ranking well.
The Content You’re Offering
It won’t matter how well you optimize your YouTube profile if you’re not going to offer the right types of content to engage your audience. Creating YouTube content is similar to creating content for a blog in that users don’t want to marinate in advertorial, brand-focused messaging. If they’re compelled to learn about your brand, they’ll do their digging.
Consider the intrinsic needs of your audience segments and brainstorm a content calendar that satisfies various user intents. If your store sells makeup from home on a hosted platform like Shopify, then it might be advantageous to highlight user-generated content on your channel to complement the independent feel of your brand. In general, it may seem like a lot of work to brainstorm a lot of ideas at once, but doing so requires much less energy and effort than coming up with ad-hoc ideas constantly. As you’re thinking of content ideas, keep in mind that longer videos will probably equal less engagement, particularly when you’re just starting and haven’t built a subscriber base.
Your Page’s Branding
Most viewers who land on a video of yours won’t be qualified leads. They might not even be interested in what you have to sell. However, if you have good enough content, they might stick around anyway. And if they do, you want them to feel your brand—its personality, ideals, and the value it offers. Where do you start? You’ll want to write an engaging About page’ that tells a story yet succinctly communicates your brand. It’s also imperative to have an eye-catching background image. If you don’t have enough understanding of what you want to spring for a designer, Adobe Spark offers a free YouTube background feature as does Line25. Branding your channel is an ideal solution, but it’s only offered through YouTube, and it’ll require a serious investment.
In an age of dwindling attention spans, you shouldn’t take user engagement lightly. Whether you’re trying to heighten brand awareness or support more bottom-of-the-funnel traffic, every detail you include on your YouTube channel should aid user experience. Don’t expect to get your channel situated perfectly right away, but if you’re dedicated and creative enough, you’ll add a valuable complementary channel to the rest of your store’s marketing tactics.
