With over 30 million unique visitors per day and thousands of hours of videos uploaded every day, Youtube is the world’s largest video search engine. In fact, Youtube is currently the world’s second largest search engine for online content in general. What does this mean for your business?

It means that if you can find a way to harness Youtube, you can drive a ton of traffic to your business, increase your industry relevance, and become a go-to resource and well-known authority in your niche.

However, like any platform, it takes time, effort, commitment, and more importantly, knowledge of the right strategies to enjoy significant success on the platform. We’ll discuss a few tips here to get you started.

Find Popular Videos and Mirror Their Content

They say that imitation is the finest form of flattery. Well, you’ll have to do the same here. We’re not saying that you should go and duplicate existing content — that would be unethical. But we are saying that you need to learn everything you can about the competition. If someone has tried to do the same kind of thing you’re considering in your own marketing, find out who’s done it before and how. If they did something that worked, find out how. If they did something that didn’t, find out why. And whatever they did, do a better job, whether it’s through the tactics of the medium or the quality of the content.

To do that, therefore, do a search for the most popular channels in your industry and Youtube in general. See what they are doing, and take copious notes of their methods. Some of those videos may not have any direct correlation to your industry, but you could learn a thing or two from the concepts. For instance, if you own a plumbing business, instead of just creating how-tos, you could create a series of videos about funny or worst job experiences. This will grow your brand and popularity on the platform.

Optimize Your Videos and Channels

Create a fully optimized and branded Youtube account. To do this, use target keywords in the name of your channel, and always optimize all your videos with the appropriate keywords so that they benefit from high visibility in Youtube and Google searches.

Create short videos, just a few minute long at the most. Most people are now averse to watching videos that are 20+mins in length. Instead of just creating one long video, create four 5min videos, upload them to Youtube, and create a playlist so that people can watch them one after the other if they want that 20 minute Youtube experience.

Produce Top-Notch Content

Nothing works better on Youtube than creating excellent content. You may not need to hire a professional film crew to accomplish this. Just get comfortable with the camera and remember that all the entertainment and education your video may offer is meant to be part of a dialogue with your audience, and simply have that conversation with the camera.

For those who are too camera-shy, and for those niches that support it, you can use screen-recording software and record a voice-over for it. This can illustrate what a person could do, say, with a software product you may be trying to showcase.

In case you want to interact more with your audience, you can create interactive Q&A sessions using Google Hangouts or Live Events, which you can make available to people and list as part of your content.

Find Leading Influencers in Your Niche and Engage Them

There are often leading influencers on Youtube that you can get to promote your business if you’re so inclined. If you don’t want to go the long route of building an authority niche and are willing to spend some money, you could locate some of these influencers and get them to promote your business on their channels and videos. Whether you do this manually or through a simplified service like NeoReach’s social media influencer marketing platform, you can find established personalities on Youtube that can support your brand and marketing efforts by lending your business their reach.