This document provides an overview of YouTube and tips for developing an effective YouTube strategy. It discusses why YouTube matters for brands, things to know before getting started, key aspects of a YouTube strategy, and resources for further information. Specifically, it recommends understanding consumer mindsets, developing a P.O.E.M. strategy, leveraging influencers, optimizing your channel and use of playlists/chapters, and measuring important metrics. The goal is to help brands approach YouTube strategically as a social platform rather than just a video hosting site.

1. YOUTUBE:
THENEXTBIGTHING
ISALREADYHERE
RachelPeters
NoahEchols
11ThingsYouneedToKnow

2. ABOUTUS
A LITTLE ABOUT US
Noah Echols
Immersed in digital for over a decade, Noah charts paths for clients that lead to
compelling digital experiences for consumers. Working across departments, he
curates insights to create multi-channel strategies that meet client objectives
and deliver value to the consumer.
Rachel Peters
Rachel enjoys all aspects of user experience, from interviewing customers to
designing interactions to testing those designs. Before becoming an experience
architect, she was a technical writer, creating help documentation, interface
copy, training demos, and functional specifications.
Associate Director of User Experience at IQ Agency
Associate Director of Strategy at IQ Agency
@nvechols
@rachelhpeters

3. HERE’SWHATWE’LLCOVER
Why YouTube Matters
Before You Get Started
What You Really Need to Know
1
2
3
5
Features to Guide Your Strategy4

4. WHYYOUTUBEMATTERS

5. Most brands have ignored YouTube while a few have
embraced it as a powerful tool in their channel mix. Not
only do you have an opportunity to get ahead of your
competition, but there are several other reasons to take
YouTube seriously:

6. WHYYOUTUBEMATTERS
Remember
when this
happened?
Everybody paid
attention.

7. WHYYOUTUBEMATTERS
What
about this?
Nobody paid
attention.

8. 5REASONSTOPAYATTENTION
YouTube has 1 billion active users every month
YouTube is the second largest search engine on the Web
Visual content, especially video, has become the content type of
choice among consumers
The communities on YouTube are large, active, and passionate
Most of your competitors are probably not using YouTube effectively
1
2
3
4
5

9. STILLNOTCONVINCED?
!
• 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
!
• According to Nielsen, YouTube reaches more US adults ages
18-34 than any cable network
!
• 20% of global YouTube views came from mobile devices
!
• Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on
YouTube

10. These
brands get
it.
Look at the small
brands, they can
compete with the big
boys.

11. AFEWTHINGSBEFORE
YOUGETSTARTED

12. GETTINGSTARTED|GENERALTIPS
To approach YouTube strategically, you have to change
the way you think about it. It is not a video hosting site.
It is not just a place to watch funny cat videos. It is an
flourishing social networking site where users connect
around shared passions.
CHANGETHEWAY
YOUDEFINEWHAT
YOUTUBEIS

13. GETTINGSTARTED|GENERALTIPS
Trolls are real and vicious, and they will show up in
your video’s comment section. Don’t turn off the
comments. Just ignore them and let other users take
care of it.
DON’TFEEDTHE
TROLLS
DON’TFEEDTHE
TROLLS

14. GETTINGSTARTED|GENERALTIPS
Google+ and YouTube overlap in a lot of ways, so treat
YouTube like you would a blog post in terms of SEO.
You will increase your brand’s authority and ultimately
its page rank.
BEONGOOGLE+
TOO
BEONGOOGLE+
TOO

15. GETTINGSTARTED|GENERALTIPS
Content posted to YouTube needs to be YouTube-
centric, not just content that was created for other
channels but uploaded to YouTube to check a box.
POSTYOUTUBE-
CENTRICCONTENT
POSTYOUTUBE-
CENTRICCONTENT

16. OK,HERE SWHATYOU
NEEDTOKNOW

17. 1.UNDERSTANDCONSUMERMINDSET
Create content that
meets consumers
where they are in
their journey.
Brands that really get it, know what content
consumers need to move them along their
journey to purchase and then beyond
purchase into advocacy.
TRIGGER
LOYALTYLOOP
MOMENTOF
PURCHASE
PASSIVELOYAL
ACTIVELOYAL
PASSIVEEVALUATION ACTIVEEVALUATION

18. YouTube offers the
opportunity for Paid,
Owned, and Earned
Media.
While you should be posting unique content
to your channel mostly, your strategy should
included paid and earned media as well.
Paid
Earned
Owned
2.WRITEAP.O.E.M

19. 3.USEPREROLL…CAREFULLY
Preroll interrupts the
viewer and delays
them getting to the
content they want.
With that said, it should be a part of your
strategy – but you have an obligation to
carefully consider how you use it.
!
You will do more harm for your brand by
annoying users with bad content if your pre-
roll isn’t useful or entertaining.

20. PRE-ROLLCANBEENTERTAINING

21. PRE-ROLLCANBEUSEFUL

22. POSTINSPIRINGCONTENT

23. POSTHELPFULVIDEOS

24. 4.LEVERAGEYOUTUBEINFLUENCERS
Tap into communities
that already exist by
renting the legitimacy
of influencers.
YouTube recently launched the Video
Creation Marketplace to connect video
creators with brands. There are several other
services though that do the same thing
though, so find the right solution that allows
you to connect with the right person.

25. LEVERAGEYOUTUBEINFLUENCERS

26. FEATURESTOGUIDE
YOURSTRATEGY

27. 5.THERE’SAPARTNERPROGRAM
• Allows you to share in ad revenue
!
• Partners can link to external websites in their video
!
• Google is incentivizing brands to create great content

28. 6.IT’SYOURCHANNEL
Brand and organize
your channel and it
will be optimized
across devices.
YouTube One Channel allows you a lot of
flexibility to organize your content
creatively on your channel as well as link to
your website, social accounts, and other/
partner channels. See the resources at the
end for help with branding.

29. 7.PLAYLISTSMAKEITEASY
Think of YouTube
playlists like Pinterest
boards or mix tapes.
Group content together by theme or topic to
make it easy for users to find what they are
looking for and to share a package of videos
with others. You can also embed an entire
playlist on your website.

30. 8.JUMPLINKSENABLECHAPTERS
Create chapters with
links, allowing users
to skip to relevant
parts
By adding a time code to the video url you
can create a link to a certain point in the
video. For brands this is most useful for
chapterizing videos in the description or in
the copy of a website where the video is
embedded.

31. 9.ANNOTATIONSENGAGE
Entice viewers to
engage further with
the brand.
Provide links to relevant videos or external
content. Do not just add a link to the next
video though. It should be relevant.

32. 10.DESCRIPTIONSANDCLOSEDCAPTIONING
• Only 160 characters of your video description will show in search
results, so make sure the first few sentences of your video description
are the most compelling.
!
• Titles should entice users to click – think Upworthy, but a little more
useful.
!
• Uploading a closed captioning script allows more of your content to be
indexed by Google.

33. 11.METRICSTHATMATTER
Views
Demographics
Playback location
Devices
Audience Retention
Subscribers
Likes/Dislikes
Favorites
Comments
Sharing
Annotations
[Things
you can
measure

34. SOMEHELPFULRESOURCES
YouTube Channel Art Guidelines
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2972003?topic=16630&hl=en
!
YouTube Creator Playbook
http://www.youtube.com/yt/playbook/index.html
!
YouTube Video Creation Marketplace
https://videocreationmarketplace.appspot.com/
!
YouTube Trends Blog
http://youtube-trends.blogspot.com/
!
YouTube Insights Study
https://docs.google.com/vie
wer?url=http://think.storage.googleapis.com/docs/youtube-insights-jan-2014_research-studies.pdf&chrome=true
!
Effectiveness of YouTube Ads
https://support.google.com/partners/answer/2770862?hl=en

35. WanttoKnowMoreAboutIQ?
Contact Kevin Smith at 678-449-2014
or kevin.smith2@iqagency.com
!
www.iqagency.com