Are you starting your business YouTube channel but you’re wondering where are your views going to come from? How are you going to build an audience? It can seem daunting knowing where to start so to make things easier I am going to give you my top 12 ways of sharing your video outside of YouTube. Watch the video below or scroll down for the old fashioned text version.
1 - Facebook Business Page
Let's start with the social side of things and Facebook. The first place to post is on your Facebook business page but unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Facebook have cracked down on posts that include links to external sites, they want you to stay on Facebook and only Facebook. In practical terms, this means that they won’t show your post to as many people if it has a link in it.
However, there is a workaround. Try making a shorter teaser video just for social. This way you can give people an idea of what they will learn in the full video and why it’s important. Then at the end of the video tell them where to go to see the full video, for example ‘head on over to YouTube and search for Dennis’ Doggie Delights to find the full video’.
2 - Facebook Personal Page
Once you have posted on your business page don’t forget to also post on your personal page as your friends and family will always be the first to support you.
Bonus tip! Share the company page post on your personal profile, this will help boost the reach of the original post as well as telling more people about your business.
3 - Facebook Groups
The other place to post on Facebook is in groups. I am probably a member of around 30 groups on Facebook. There are groups for all different topics like small business, digital marketing, business owners, businesses in Kent.
Try and find groups that will find your content helpful, are populated by your potential customers or are in your business sector. That great thing about posting your helpful videos to groups is that it won’t be seen as spam as you are positively contributing to the education of the group.
Facebook aren’t quite as harsh when posting external links in groups so feel free to link directly to your YouTube video. Just make sure you add some descriptive text that makes people want to click on your video.
Bonus tip! Don’t post the same thing to too many groups, you will be banned from posting for a few days. Instead, after posting the same thing in 5 groups change the text and use slightly different language.
4 - LinkedIn Company Page
Moving on to LinkedIn. Again you can post to your company page. LinkedIn also want you to only stay on their site and so they penalise the reach of posts with external links. You can use the same method as Facebook or you can try tagging people in the post or comments who you think would be interested in your video or might share their opinion. Just don’t overdo it with the tags.
Bonus tip! Is your company page lacking followers? Currently LinkedIn are allowing you invite your connections to follow your page. You can only invite 100 connections a month so make sure you are going on to your company page and clicking in the top right-hand corner daily until you have gone through your connections.
5 - LinkedIn Personal Profile
Again you can share the post from your company page to your personal profile. To try and increase your reach why don’t you ask for a bit of engagement. Try ‘I’d love your feedback on this video, leave a comment’ or ‘Did you know that you can do this? How are you going to implement it in your business?’.
6 - LinkedIn Groups
There are also a lot of great groups on LinkedIn and they will be more business-focused than on Facebook. On both of these platforms make sure you have notifications turned on and always reply to any activity on your posts. You are trying to build a fan base here and one of the quickest ways is by engaging with your audience one to one.
7 - Instagram
Instagram is all about photo and video. A major drawback is that you can’t include clickable links in posts. Why not try re-purposing the video you made for Facebook or create a custom image with the link written on it. Use the description to tell everyone what your video is about and why they should take the time to watch it and don’t forget to add your hashtags.
8 - Twitter
Twitter doesn’t care if you link to external websites. Well, they currently don’t anyway but by the time you read this blog that all could change. The challenge with Twitter is that a post has a life of a few minutes if you're lucky. To take advantage of Twitter try posting a few times throughout the day, with different text so that you capture different audiences.
9 - Email Lists
Do you have an email list for your business? If not then you should. Internet platforms will come and go but if you have an email list then you always have an avenue to talk to your potential customers.
If someone has signed up for your email list then they are already interested in what you do. How much value will you add to their life by sending them helpful weekly videos? It’s the little touch points that move people to start using your services.
Bonus tip! Make sure you have a link to subscribe to your newsletter in the description for all of your videos, you can even add it as a call to action in your videos.
10 - Google My Business
Are you on Google My Business? It’s a fantastic free tool that allows you to show up in local Google search results as well as allowing your customers to leave reviews. You can add update posts using either an image, like your video thumbnail or the teaser video you created for Facebook. You can also add a ‘learn more’ button which will link straight to your YouTube video.
Posting regularly on Google My Business will also help your Google SEO rankings. It’s a win-win.
11 - Blog Posts
Let’s move on to repurposing your video content. As I have spoken about before, it’s always a good idea to write full scripts for your videos. Here is another reason, you can quickly edit your script and turn it into a blog post for your website. You can add an embedded version of your YouTube video at the top. Now your customers can decide whether they want to watch or read.
Bonus tip! Take your blog post and turn it into a LinkedIn article. This can be as easy as copying and pasting.
12 - Email Signature
How many emails do you send a day? Include a link to your YouTube channel and your latest video in your signature. If you are contacting someone for the first time they will probably look at your signature. Your YouTube channel is showing them how much value you offer.
Bonus tip! Use the free tool TubeBuddy to get a custom URL which will always link to your latest YouTube video.
That’s A Wrap
Which sharing method have you found most helpful? Do you have any of your own tips that I haven’t included? Let me know in the comments. If you have learnt something from this post share it with someone who will benefit from it.
Do you want to make sure your YouTube channel is bringing in profits for your business? Then make sure you check out our new video series ‘Your Essential YouTube Checklist - 5 ways to make sure your channel boosts your business’ right here!