‘Own an audience, don’t just rent one’: 4 ways to build YouTube success

YouTube is no longer the home of funny cat videos and 2-3 minute video content by rote. It’s the world’s second biggest search engine. It pulls in 2.49 billion users – that’s 48% of all social media users. And its content formats have changed in recent years. The platform’s eyeball-grabbing, 60 second YouTube Shorts are wildly popular. Meanwhile, 10-30 minutes ‘mid-form’ content is also on the rise, giving marketers the chance to deepen audience engagement. And then there’s the inevitable counter trend to the short-form boom, with a growing love of richer, more immersive, 30 minutes plus long form content. So, which should marketers opt for? And when?

Graham was exploring how marketers can squeeze more value out of this ever-evolving, brand-building and revenue-raising machine, in an exclusive webinar with The Drum, alongside Nick Savage, senior vice-president, digital monetization & strategy, NBCUniversal and Greg Rose, digital, content and communications director at Virgin. Some of their key rules included:

1. Strategize – and play a long game

A sense of purpose should be the lodestar for any YouTube content creation, the experts agree. Rose advises marketers to ask themselves: “Is it for quick awareness? Do you want to grab people's attention and then move them on? Or do you want to use it as an education tool to drive that deeper connection? Essentially, what's the point of it? The audience is smart and will only engage with something if it has that purpose.”

That strategic starting point will then act as a guide for when and which content formats to pick up. Short term content is “a lower barrier to entry. It’s a chance to say things more directly, potentially market more directly, and have a little bit more fun or be more lo-fi with what you produce,” Graham says.

Meanwhile, Rose highlights how leaning into YouTube’s unique ultra long-form engagement capabilities deepened brand engagement for Virgin America. The brand’s famous, six hour BLAH Airlines spoof launched on YouTube as the longest pre-roll video ever produced and became a cult hit worldwide.

And when it comes to measuring those strategic KPIs, go long haul. Even if marketers dip their toes in with a Shorts campaign, they should be underpinning that with a mid- to long-term strategy of what YouTube could deliver over a year or more, Graham advises, reminding us that it’s a “long tail” platform with audiences still eating up content that was uploaded three or four years ago.

2. Get to know the platform

Creating something that feels authentic to the space is just as important as being purposeful and strategic, when it comes to generating engagement. The experts advise marketers to spend time understanding engagement data, watching successful creators or checking out competitors’ content. That will also help guide whether you need to create new content or create something new with old content – extracting as much value as possible out of existing assets.

Savage goes further in recommending: “If you haven't done anything in the social or the YouTube space, then look to partner with experts that have and know that space.”

3. Remember – creation is only half the job

Driving eyeballs to your content should take up as much headspace as its content, the experts agree. As marketers have less than a minute to get viewers to click onto their content, “You have to think about how people are going to find that video and how they're going to engage with it…. What are your thumbnails? What are your titles? How do they speak to one another? Are they compelling? How do you think about SEO? How do you think about tagging?” Graham says.

And, investing in a paid strategy should also be aligned with an organic seeding strategy – driving earned and organic engagement, she adds. All of which leads us neatly to…

4. Build a community, own your audience

Marketers do well when they spend time analyzing the engagement peaks and troughs of their own channel, to be able to create a community of fans and advocates around that content. That’s when “you don't just rent an audience for 30 seconds. You own them,” Graham says.

Savage thinks of it as a snowball effect, with a community growing over time. And that’s a community that can be influenced to try similar content, inspired to create their own user-generated, brand-building content or be drawn into a value-exchange where they shape future brand content.

He says: “For example, we would poll fans about their favourite moments from one of our shows, and then produce a video of those moments.” Ultimately, these deeply engaged followers are then more likely to share content and click through to monetized versions on other platforms.

For lots more actionable advice and best practice insights into how marketers can unlock brand success with YouTube content strategies, watch the full webinar now.