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Published February 10th 2020

Your Comprehensive YouTube Marketing Checklist From BuzzSumo

YouTube marketing made simple with our handy checklist to get you started in video!

You already know YouTube marketing is valuable – but how can you perfect your YouTube content strategy? It’s tricky: you want to upload videos that promote your brand, but you also need to create content your audience wants to watch and share.

Too many marketers make two big mistakes with YouTube:

  1. They don’t upload videos consistently.
  2. They don’t upload the right kind of video content.

People don’t visit the second-largest search engine and second-most popular website to shop, they hang out on YouTube to be entertained or educated. Here’s how to do it.

Your Ultimate YouTube Marketing Checklist

Follow the steps below to optimize your YouTube content strategy for more engagement and better results.

1. Choose KPIs for Monitoring YouTube Analytics

Before anything else, you’ll want to nail down your key performance indicators so you can track your YouTube analytics and watch your strategy’s performance.

Consider this: view counts are the YouTube marketing equivalent of Facebook reach. Watching your video doesn’t mean much if people don’t click links, share, comment, and embed your video onto other websites.

According to YouTube, its algorithm takes many factors into account when ranking videos – especially how long a viewer stays on its website after viewing your video.

The goals of YouTube’s search and discovery system are twofold: to help viewers find the videos they want to watch, and to maximize long-term viewer engagement and satisfaction: YouTube Help.

2. Figure Out What Kind of Videos Your Audience Likes

To create an effective YouTube content strategy, you’ll need to start with interesting and engaging content. BuzzSumo makes it easy to find trending and viral video content ideas.

Let’s say we’re working for a website that sells herbal supplements and essential oils. If we type “essential oils” into the Content Search and filter for video posts, we can see that doTERRA videos perform well on YouTube.

Buzzsumo doTerra results

Looking at the first result, we may want to consider making a video about how we source our essential oils and supplements due to the high evergreen score doTERRA has for their video.

We could also head over to the Facebook Analyzer to see what people are sharing. When we filter for video posts and sort by share count, lots of great content ideas appear!

For more info on how audience data can help your Youtube strategy, check out how to create a data-driven YouTube strategy for more views.

The right Youtubers can also help engage with the right audience, and there’s new talent cropping up all the time. Learn who the top 10 YouTube influencers are.

Essential Oils Facebook Analyzer

3. Create a YouTube Content Strategy Calendar

Instead of creating a YouTube content strategy that builds on your blog post topics, create a unique calendar just for YouTube content.

Let’s look at the Facebook Analyzer results for “essential oils” above. We could create a calendar for three months with two videos each month:

  1. Top 3 essential oils for pain relief/5 essential oils to calm your nerves and clear your mind
  2. 7 cleaning products you can replace with essential oils/5 essential oils with antibacterial qualities
  3. Essential oils and kids: are they safe? /Funny essential oil comedy video about husband and wife

4. Perfect Your SEO for Better YouTube Analytics

Unfortunately, you can’t “set it and forget it” with YouTube marketing content. Take SEO into consideration as you upload your content.

  • Titles: Include a long-tail keyword and write something engaging. While YouTube analytics allow up to 100 characters, Google will only display 66.
  • Description: Grab attention with the first two lines and include a few keywords. Optimize below the “show more” for share links and a long-form description with a call-to-action.
  • Tags: Include specific topic and broad category tags. Include some tags your competitors use for related videos to improve your chances of showing up in the suggested videos.

Resist the urge to write clickbait titles.

Misleading, clickbaity and sensational titles and thumbnails impact viewer satisfaction and engagement. Viewers can and often do report videos that are misleading, clickbaity and sensational: YouTube Help.

5. Create Relevant Playlists

For YouTube marketing, think of playlists as the equivalent of categories on WordPress—they supply an extra layer of meta information for algorithms to read.

Create relevant playlists for each category of videos you plan in your calendar. Make sure to include a combination of primary and secondary keywords in the title and description, too.

Dane Golden of Tubular Insights recommends including a curated or user-generated playlist as well.

If people are making videos about your product, what you can do is create a regularly-scheduled “Fan video of the week,” and add that to a playlist of the same name. … Then you can tell that creator, you’re our video of the week, and they may even tweet about it or talk about it in another video.

MadFit YouTube Channel

Source: YouTube | MadFit

6. Take Your Thumbnails Seriously

YouTube is a visual platform. Thumbnails matter as much – if not more – than titles. 90 percent of the best-performing videos display custom thumbnails.

Again, YouTube takes clickbait seriously. The video platform recommends avoiding images that shock, disgust, or mislead your audience in any fashion. YouTube suggests checking feedback in comments to see if your thumbnails accurately represent the video content.

7. Give Your Brand’s Page a Makeover

Show YouTube that you care about your brand’s page.

  • Upload a new profile picture and cover photo that fits YouTube’s dimensions.
  • Include your social media links.
  • Link to your website or landing pages.
  • Write a thoughtful and long description with plenty of keywords.
  • Follow relevant channels to “tell” YouTube what you’re about.

As you watch your page come together, you’ll see why playlists are so important:

MadFit YouTube Playlist

Source: YouTube | MadFit

8. Create a Link Building Strategy

Links help drive traffic to YouTube which is good for the whole platform. Make sure to share your YouTube link on other social media platforms and embed your video into relevant blog posts.

YouTube is good at finding and punishing spam links, so make sure your link building is strategic and deliberate.

Find Trending Video Ideas Now

A valuable YouTube marketing strategy starts with interesting video content. Once you nail down a calendar with some topic ideas, it’s easy to optimize the finer details like SEO.

BuzzSumo can help you find interesting video content that your audience is already sharing with no guesswork. To help, we’re happy to offer you a 30-day free trial to get started with no strings attached. Start analyzing now!

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