Improving your blog using YouTube videos
How much time do you spend watching YouTube?
According to YouTube’s own statistics, almost one-third of all people using the internet are viewing YouTube videos. YouTube has now launched local versions of the video content channel in 88 countries around the world. In Australia, it’s estimated that 1 in 2 Australians use YouTube.
So how can you leverage the YouTube phenomenon to benefit your blog posts? Here’s our quick guide to boosting your blogs and doing some creative content marketing by using the best engaging and informative video content that YouTube has to offer.
Embedding videos
Using video content in blog posts makes your posts more engaging, giving your readers something extra to do on your page and adding a dynamic feature that also happens to be great for SEO by generating inbound links to your website. So how do you embed the videos rather than just share the link?
- Go to YouTube.com
- Under the video that you want to use, you’ll see a share button. Click it and you’ll see three choices: “Share”, “Embed”, “Email”. You want to “Embed”.
- Click “Embed” and highlighted code will appear. Copy this embed code.
- Go back to your blog post and in the place that want the video to appear in your blog, paste the embed code.
The How-to video
Australia’s most subscribed YouTube channel is the “HowToBasic” channel with 8,635,560 subscribers. The channel’s ‘how to’ videos are watched by an average of 830,045 people per day. The popularity of ‘how-to’ video tutorials is due to their ability to break down complex sets of instructions and ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’.
There is a ‘how-to’ tutorial for just about everything. We’ve left some of the less family-friendly subjects off our list of the top subjects for ‘how-to video tutorials, which – by the way- still don’t rank as highly as these:
- Cooking
- Drawing
- Magic tricks
- Tying bow ties & neck ties
- iPhone repairs
Just because your business isn’t about cooking or magic tricks – don’t despair. The whole point of using YouTube videos in your blogging is because it benefits your overall digital marketing strategy. If you can’t find a relevant video, think about creating your own. It’s easier than you think.
Why aren’t more businesses getting on-board?
Sometimes YouTube is overlooked in the content marketing mix because businesses are worried about having another social media channel to monitor and provide content for, which as we’ve just explained isn’t necessary. By embedding the relevant YouTube content into your blogs, you can easily leverage the power of this global social media giant and watch your blog posts reach new heights – and new customers.
If you’re looking for advice, ideas or anything else related to digital marketing, contact iFactory, Brisbane’s award-winning agency that provides the complete suite of content marketing services and digital strategy. Call us now on +61 7 3844 0577.
