People who begin their path as business trainers often run into a common problem. When they were actively engaged in business, marketing and getting new leads was all about building the brand of your company. In the world of business trainers, the best results come from building a personal instead of corporate brand.
Aspiring entrepreneurs will be more likely to work with you if they know you personally, not your company as a whole. Creating a YouTube channel for your business training program is a great step for this type of branding, but it takes effort to master.
In this article, you’ll learn how to excel with YouTube as a marketing channel, from video keyword research to getting traffic to your videos.
Why YouTube is great for business trainers
In a business coaching career, it is best to use multiple marketing channels like your website and social media. YouTube is arguably the best marketing channel for this line of work, and here is why.
By showing your face and talking to the camera, you let your potential leads get to know you. This fosters authenticity and helps you build a personal brand. Leads will have an easier time trusting you if they already saw you, even if it is a bit of an act for the camera.
YouTube also lends itself to content marketing, a strategy that all business trainers should use. The easiest way to get leads is to share valuable advice, and YouTube videos are a great format to use.
Finally, with YouTube, you can direct a lot of traffic to your content because over 100 million people use the site daily. This will help with both recognition and conversions. Optimize YouTube videos, and they will appear in search to people who are interested in business advice and may convert easily.
What is YouTube SEO
Search engines, whether it’s Google, Bing, or YouTube, decide which content to show users for their searches based on multiple criteria. Most of them include both technical requirements for the site or video posted and scanning the content for keywords to understand what it is about.
Search engine optimization is the practice of tailoring your content to the search engine demands to make sure it will be displayed for the right searches. YouTube SEO is mostly concerned with appearing in searches on YouTube, but it can also be used to get your videos to appear on Google searches in the video section.
YouTube videos don’t have as many optimization opportunities as web pages do, so you have to make the most of the elements of the video that you can optimize. You should also pay a lot of attention to planning and research. That is where YouTube SEO starts.
YouTube SEO planning
Before optimizing your videos for YouTube, you need to do a lot of research and preparations. This mainly falls into two categories: finding SEO tools and doing keyword research.
Keyword research for YouTube
In regular SEO, a lot of attention is given to the technical optimization of the website. But on YouTube, the only thing you have to be worried about is the video page itself.
The main optimization opportunity here is finding the right keywords and adding them to the page.
The principle here is simple. When a user searches for a particular keyword, YouTube will only show relevant videos that contain this keyword or a variation of it on the video page.
Your job with keyword research is to use a YouTube keyword research tool to find keywords that people would use to find your videos, analyze the search intent, and then use the list of keywords you find to optimize existing videos. Keyword discovery can also help your content marketing strategy, as you can create new videos to cover relevant keywords.
- Start by creating a list of seed keywords — keywords you suspect people would use to find your videos.
- Then, search them on YouTube to see what autofill suggests.
- You can also use Google Keyword Planner or a specialized YouTube keyword research tool to find similar and related keywords.
YouTube SEO Analytics
After you get a YouTube keyword research tool, the next step is setting up analytical tools.
You need to monitor how well your videos rank in search to know whether your optimization strategy works or not. It can take weeks for optimization efforts to work, and monitoring data can help make informed decisions in real time.
The first choice of analytical software is something every YouTube business account owner has access to — YouTube Studio. In the analytics tab, you can access statistics on your reach, impressions, click-through rate, and viewership.
This is good enough, but YouTube Studio is focused more on analyzing content performance, not SEO results.
If you want to reliably track how well your videos rank in YouTube searches, you will need a tool like the YouTube rank tracker by SE Ranking. It will allow you to monitor how your videos go up in the search for the targeted keywords across different locations.
You can also look into adding a few analytical extensions to Chrome. A couple of good choices are vidIQ and TubeBuddy.
YouTube video optimization
Once you have set up analytics and found a list of keywords, it is time to optimize your videos. Again, start with keyword optimization.
Keyword and video optimization
Each of your videos should have a few keywords associated with it. Check keyword metrics and go with the keyword with the most search volume as your main keyword. Now, add the main keyword to the most important parts of the video:
- Video title
- Video description
- Video tags
- YouTube hashtags
Here is how keywords might look in a title.
Make sure to add a few other keywords to the video's description. With that done, keyword optimization should be taken care of. Now, work on optimizing other aspects of the video.
Create a thumbnail that would engage the audience and improve the click-through rate. The best practice is to use your photo and a bit of text that explains the video. Experiment with the thumbnails and create a unique design that stands out.
Creating an engaging video
Keyword optimization is not the only thing determining which videos end up ranking the highest for a keyword. Another important aspect that contributes to it is engagement metrics.
- The number of users who have watched your video to the end,
- Comments,
- The number of people who subscribe to your channel after watching a video.
All of this will increase the likelihood of your video ranking well.
This means that the quality of your content is just as important as optimizing it for the right keywords.
Start with working on making better videos. This includes both the quality of the information you provide and the way you provide it. Be engaging with how you present in your videos and use real cases from your practice to give your audience the best value. Also, consider inviting experts to interview them.
Invite the viewers to engage in the comments. If you are giving business advice in your videos, your audience is likely to have experience in the field and may share helpful information.
Ask them to tell their stories, like them, and reply to their comments, and you are going to boost your engagement metrics.
Do not forget to remind your viewers to like the video and subscribe to your channel.
Video optimization for SERP
YouTube search is the primary target of video optimization, but you can also get traffic from Google directly because videos can appear in regular searches. The bulk of optimization here is covered by the same principles that work on YouTube.
If your video is well-made, optimized for keywords, and ranks high in YouTube search results, it will rank well in regular searches on Google as well.
To make that more probable, include keyword research for Google search at the planning stage. Sometimes, the keywords in Google and YouTube can be a bit different. Adding keywords that appear on Google can improve your chances of ranking in regular searches.
Another aspect you have to pay attention to is the key moments. It is a quick way to check out video sections from Google search. It expands and shows the video’s ToC.
Having this feature means users can explore your video without clicking on it. If they like the content they see, the likelihood of them going on to see your video can increase.
To get this feature, you can simply add timestamps in the description of your video. You can do it in a bullet-point list, but just adding timestamps to a more detailed description works as well.
If you embed your YouTube video on a page on your site, add structured data to the page. Use VideoObject schema to add a thumbnail, video duration, and other information about your content. You can do this with Structured Data Markup Helper or get an AI tool to create that code for you.
Promotion for YouTube SEO
Since engagement metrics and viewership can help you improve both ranking and traffic numbers, promoting your videos and your personal brand is a part of YouTube SEO. Here are a few strategies that any business trainer could use.
Collaborate with other creators
The best way to promote yourself is to appear in videos of creators who have already established themselves in the niche. This means their audience will get to hear you and might be more interested in watching your content. At the very least, they will learn who you are.
The typical way you can collaborate in the business training niche is by appearing in podcasts and other types of content that feature a dialogue with the host. Another opportunity is to appear in short content as a guest, whether it is a 15-second voiceover or filming a business-related sketch.
Search YouTube to find creators who do similar content, reach out, and offer them to collaborate. If it is not for a podcast appearance and you have to create a video together, it is best if you come up with the idea yourself to make it easier for the other creator.
Do not stop at being in other people’s videos. Ask others to make appearances on your channel as well. Sometimes, getting to talk with a well-respected person on your channel can build up your credibility.
Promote on social media
It is smart to use the resources you already have. For instance, if you have a successful Instagram or LinkedIn page, always post your new content there once it comes out. Performance on the first day of posting a video can determine whether the algorithm picks your video up to suggest it to users. Social media subscribers going on to watch the video can improve your chances here.
You can also participate in discussions online and leave a link to your video in the comments if it helps the people involved. The best places to do this are Reddit and LinkedIn.
Take advantage of paid promotions
Finally, use paid promotion opportunities if you have the budget to do so. Whether it is YouTube ads or a shoutout from a large channel, this can go a long way in both building brand awareness and getting traffic and leads.
If you do want to spend money on promoting your videos, make sure you do so on channels and videos similar to yours. You want to be in front of an audience that’s interested in your content and services; otherwise, it will not perform well.
You should also work on content quality beforehand. It is no use trying to promote videos that do not perform well organically. They most likely will not do well with paid traffic, either.
Summary
YouTube for business trainers is a great marketing channel because it helps you both attract new audiences and build a robust personal brand. YouTube SEO helps you grow traffic to your videos in a predictable way instead of relying on your videos going viral.
To optimize your videos for search, research the keywords you want to target, add them to the video title and description, and work on making better videos.
Analyze how your strategy performs and experiment with different title variations, thumbnails, and other elements of the video. Find what works for you and stick with it.
And remember, in B2B video creation, it is not about going viral; it is about targeting the right audience and making sales.