Ask NCET: YouTube and Customer Engagement
Have a business or technology question? Send it to ask@NCET.org and if selected, NCET’s panel of business and technology experts will answer it in our new monthly column.
What’s the best way to use YouTube to promote my business?
Cinammon Davies
Are you optimizing your YouTube Channel for your business? When I consult in the field, I often hear from prospective clients that they have claimed a YouTube channel, but they haven’t really put effort beyond that into this digital property. With 1.5 billion users per month, YouTube is a great place to post video content about your business that will help to educate your customers about how you help them best.
Let’s review the basics:
Make sure your YouTube Channel is linked to your website, and that your website links back to your YouTube channel. It’s important these two digital properties are connected so your prospective clients can easily move back and forth between your website and your YouTube Channel.
Use the description box. You can get a lot of SEO value by having a robust description of your video in the description box space. The text information you place here not only helps Google and YouTube understand how to serve your video to searchers and watchers, it helps humans who watch your content understand what next steps they can take to connect with your business. I challenge you to look at the description boxes from videos of YouTube channels you follow for inspiration.
Create content! You can get started with your smart phone making videos that help your customers connect to your business such as: How To’s, Unboxing (where you literally unbox your product), FAQ’s, Troubleshooting, New Product Launches! The only limit is your imagination.
Cinammon Davies is an account executive for LOCALiQ, part of the USA Today Network (www.localiq.com/markets/nevada/) and NCET’s VP of Social Media and Newsletters.
What’s an effective way to engage my customers?
Peter Fishburn
What is your marketing/branding plans as you look forward in 2021? Are you executing the same plans as before?
Now is the opportunity to explore new options. The key is making sure you are actively engaging clients.
Here are some questions to consider: What is new? What do you want your customers to know and do? How will you motivate referrals? Attract new customers and retain current ones?
To answer those questions, you may need a new approach. If you are thinking about how you did it in the past, stop. Give thought on how to actively engage your customers. One option is to consider including promotional items into the mix.
What is engagement? When you receive a promotional package, do you wonder what is inside? Opening the package is the initial part of the engagement. Who sent it, why, and what is it? The sender’s creativity can stir more interest. You turn it over, read the copy, try it out, see how it works and discover any unique features. If you like it, you will keep it close by and use it and be continually reminded of who sent it.
What has been accomplished by including promotional items? Branding, recognition, memorable experience, improved perception of your business, and top of mind months into the future.
Handing out a promotional item does not address all the issues, but you have directly engaged customers which is what you set out to do. Talk with a promotional consultant to discuss ways to engage and wow your audience.
Peter Fishburn with Brown & Bigelow has been in the promotions industry for over 25 years. He has helped business with their branding, marketing, and special event projects through the use of promotional products and apparel to be top of mind with their clients. (peterfishburn.espwebsite.com)
NCET is Northern Nevada’s largest member-supported non-profit that produces educational and networking events to help people explore businesses and technology. (www.NCET.org)