Best practices for digital communication - YouTube : how to use it

The online video platform is the world’s leader in audio-visual content. Indeed, videos have become the most popular format on social media, appealing to Internet users and enabling their creators to achieve considerable engagement rates. YouTube has broken all the audience records with over 2 billion monthly active users.

It is the second most visited site in the world after Google (its parent company since 2006) and is available in over 100 countries and 80 languages. Its user breakdown is 45.8% female and 54.2% male, primarily aged between 18 and 49.

Over 1 billion hours of videos are watched every day by users throughout the world, which puts YouTube in second place in the list of the most used social networks, just after Facebook, according to a study carried out by Hootsuite in 2021. 70% of users access YouTube via their mobile phone.

Why use YouTube ?

YouTube is an indispensable communication aid if you want to exchange with your community or make yourself known to potential leads. With a very broad audience, the online video platform offers your followers direct content, which reaches out to them without requiring any effort on their part, primarily in the form of videos, an immensely popular format. This allows you to develop a high engagement rate with users (likes, comments) and establish a close relationship with your audience.

Offering great potential for all brands or entities looking to develop their renown, YouTube is characterised by the virality of its videos which can reach impressive numbers of views in next to no time at all. As proof, 90% of users say that they discovered new brands or products via YouTube.

This makes YouTube a real boon for your communication, allowing you to establish a strong position against your competitors by innovating and creating original, high-quality video content, in countless different forms: interviews, tutorials, institutional or educational videos, motion design, service presentation, partnerships with influencers, challenges and many more.

Features and how it works

Presence on YouTube is a communication opportunity not to be missed. The world’s most visited video platform’s popularity knows no bounds and establishing yourself here may be very favourable to the development of your image and interaction with your target audience, in a way that is endlessly original and creative.

Read on for how to create and configure your business YouTube channel :

1- Head to YouTube and connect to the Google account that you want to use to manage your brand account, then access your channels.

2- Here, you should see your personal account, all the brand accounts that you manage and the option to create a new channel.

3- When you click on Create a channel, you will be taken to a screen to create a new brand account. Choose a channel name for your new account and click Create.

4- Once your account is active, you need to update the channel logo by clicking on Customization, then on Branding to add or change your profile picture.

5- Then add a banner to enhance your image.

6- Fill in your profile under the Customization tab and then add a clear and concise description of your channel under Basic info.

Creating video content

YouTube offers numerous opportunities for creating original content that is specific to your mission, your values and ambitions. This gives you limitless possibilities to align your content strategy, provided that it offers users quality videos that lead them to enjoy your content and take an interest in your future posts.

There are therefore various content types that will enable you to stand out from the crowd on YouTube:

- Educational content : to share your experience and expertise with your audience and create a bond that fosters trust and exchange.

- Storytelling : which allows you to develop a narrative discourse via a poignant and inspiring video that Internet users can identify with.

- Entertainment content : entertaining videos that allow you to grab the attention of your audience due to their lightness, simplicity or humour. This content type should be used on the basis of the nature of your activities.

And don’t forget to create your trailer to attract the attention of new visitors to your channel. This should provide a representative outline of you and therefore needs to be convincing and well produced.

Advertising and influence

Over the course of its development, YouTube has become more professional and is now a considerable advertising space for companies looking to develop their brand awareness. Whether companies use YouTube Ads or even influencers, there are many good opportunities to gain a wider audience.

Partnerships with influencers are therefore on the rise and are as beneficial for YouTube as for the content producers obtaining payment. YouTube Ads are very short videos of barely 5 seconds and have become a common format shown at the start of a video viewed by a user. They are targeted and therefore allow their brands to capture the attention of those they want to reach.

To increase the promotion of your videos free of charge, YouTube also offers the possibility of promoting your channel on your other social networks, such as Facebook and Instagram, and thereby increasing the reach of your content while maximising the engagement of your audience.

To help you implement an effective (paid) advertising strategy on YouTube, follow the steps below :

1- Define the target audience you want to reach, based on their age, gender, language and fields of interest.

2- Determine the subject areas your target audience is interested in so as to better focus your strategy.

3- Find their country, region and city so as to define their radius and expectations.

4- Set up a budget and choose the right advertising formats to reach your target audience.

Statistics and performance

Consider conducting constant analyses on the return on investment of your YouTube channel and its development. For this purpose, YouTube offers YouTube Analytics, which allows you to access valuable information (watch time of your content, engagement rate, traffic sources through which users found your videos, change in subscriber rates from one video to another, times when you lose viewers’ attention, etc.) and enables you to manage the comments on your posts easily and efficiently.

Practical advice

- Implement an effective strategy to create your videos.

- Produce as many videos as possible and innovate in terms of content and shooting techniques to keep your viewers engaged.

- Work to constantly find new subject ideas to vary your messages.

- Ensure maximum visibility for each of your videos posted on YouTube to generate maximum engagement.

- Film your videos with professional equipment to guarantee high-end quality of your content and optimum sound quality.

- Constantly interact with your audience to create a lasting bond.

- Add a watermark to your videos to notify your subscribers about new posts and encourage new users to subscribe to your channel.

- Set up an automatic subscription request to invite visitors to subscribe to your channel.

Discover the complete guide : Best Practices for digital communication