YouTube 101: How to Engage

Engagement is a form of commitment. That may be a no-brainer if you’re looking at engagement as a precursor to marriage, but I’m talking about engaging with your online audience through YouTube.

Engagement has become a buzzword within the social marketing world, and for good reason—it’s important! Your audience is offering a portion of their time and attention and expecting you to make it worth their sacrifice. If you deliver, they’ll continue watching other videos you’ve produced, and so the commitment deepens.

Although this type of engagement might not be as expensive or as life changing as the one that you make on one knee, getting someone to watch one of your videos is certainly a relationship deepener.

But how does that type of engagement occur? We’ll share with you the nuts and bolts, and then leave the wooing up to you.

Get the ring

Create shareable videos

By creating videos that are entertaining or informative, or both, you increase your likelihood of having your videos shared. While the production of the video should look well-done, it does not have to be commercial-quality. YouTube users don’t expect or require that of brand videos.

Pop the question

Keep it short and sweet

Attention spans are short when it comes to online videos, and people want their information fast. Keep your videos at 4-5 minutes or less.

Decide on seating arrangements

Organize with Playlists

Organize your videos into playlists. This can be done by product or service line, or by video objective. Whatever your approach, make your most important videos easily accessible by placing them at the top of your channel where they are most visible.

Prepare your wedding vows

Add highly searched tags, titles, and descriptions

By using the Google Keyword Planner, you can find which keywords and key phrases are getting the most searches and utilize those in your tags, titles, and descriptions of each video. This will give your video the most chance of being discovered through the search engines.

Get a photographer

Upload transcripts

If your video was scripted, upload that script along with your video. This not only allows your video to be even more search-friendly, it qualifies it for captions.

Pick out the wedding invitations

Select appealing thumbnails

After uploading a video, you are given a few options of which thumbnail will represent your video. Be sure to choose one that looks engaging to give your video a better chance of being viewed.

Send out your save the date cards

Include calls to action

Whether it is an invitation to visit your website, or a request to engage with a comment, each video should include a call to action. This can be achieved in a variety of ways—verbally, through the description of the video, or through annotations.

Decide on a registry

If appropriate, use annotations

Annotations are text boxes that pop up at certain time(s) within your video. You select the text, when it appears, and how long it remains.

You also have the option to create a clickable annotation, which can direct the viewer to a specific website or video.

Send out the invitations

Embed elsewhere

Share your videos on your other social mediums—post to Facebook, share through Twitter, embed in a blog post. Give your video content the attention it deserves. 

Have a rehearsal dinner

Follow a posting schedule

Be strategic with what and when you post. Have a schedule that you follow. Laying a foundation of consistency and what to expect with your channel is key for keeping subscribers happy.

Stay on schedule

Monitor your analytics

YouTube offers very in-depth and useful channel metrics that allow you to determine which videos have the most views, how much engagement your channel is getting, and the overall performance. You can use this information to determine what is resonating with your audience and adjust your posting schedule accordingly.

Keep it within budget

Consider paid ads

Google allows you to create ads to promote your YouTube videos through TrueView. You can create:

• In-stream ads (your video plays before or during another video)
• In-slate (your video plays before YouTube partner videos that are 10 minutes or longer)
• In-search ads (your video thumbnail appears above or to the right of YouTube search results)
• In-display ads (your video thumbnail appears alongside other YouTube videos, or on the Google Display Network)

Say “I do”

Get producing!

Armed with these YouTube best practices you are prepared to create your own channel. Enjoy brand exposure, increased engagement, and a loyal fan-base by correctly utilizing YouTube.