Social Media Marketing: YouTube

January 23, 2017

Today, we are going to discuss how restaurant owners and managers can use YouTube to build their brands, engage customers and bring in more business. Not convinced businesses can use YouTube to bring in customers or build a brand? Take a look at just a few of the statics collected last year about YouTube users:

The total number of people who use YouTube – 1,300,000,000.
300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute!
Almost 5 billion videos are watched on Youtube every single day.
YouTube gets over 30 million visitors per day
In an average month, 8 out of 10 18-49 year-olds watch YouTube.
By 2025, half of viewers under 32 will not subscribe to a pay-TV service.
Female users are 38% and male users are 62%.
User Percentage by Age 18-24 – 11%, 25-34 – 23%, 35-44 – 26%, 45-54 – 16%, 50-64 – 8%, 65+ – 3%, unknown age – 14%.
9% of U.S small businesses use Youtube.

The general public is using YouTube. Period. However, only 9% of small businesses are taking advantage of this opportunity. This is where we come in. Below are our tips to help businesses utilize YouTube to improve themselves.

Use your resources

Making a high-quality video does not have to be expensive. Yes, you can spend hundreds and/or thousands to hire a tech and sound crew, use actors and script writers. But now the game has changed. Smartphones, like the iPhone and Android Galaxy phones, can be used to create great videos and photos. Utilize the staff in your business for ideas and choose one or more to be the ‘face’ of your videos. The videos are more genuine and employees feel the pride and excitement of being a part of something so public. Use them as ambassadors to spread the word. And this leads us to our second tip.

Find friends and bloggers to promote the brand

Build relationships with local residents and business owners to spread your new videos. Discuss social media and advertising partnerships to use that can benefit all people involved. It cannot be a one-way street. In addition, learn who some popular area bloggers are and invite them to write about and share your business and videos.

Share across all social channels

When you make a YouTube video, do not just leave it on YouTube alone. Yes, it will be seen, but when all your social channels share the same story or video, the traffic will flow in. Utilize Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, email and smoke signal – use everything you have available at your disposal. Just remember that people receive information through different channels. So make sure to hit them at all points.

Create more and new videos

Find what works for your audience and fans: are recipe and how-to videos popular? Is it more behind-the-scenes and human aspect? Whatever it is, try and experiment and remember to have fun! These videos do not need to be full of hard sells. Be useful and educational and the views will come in.

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