Is YouTube Really Worth it for Your Business?

If I told you to add another social media platform to your to do list or to create another piece of social media content, you probably wouldn't be very happy with me and you would tell me to bug off. Am I right? But what if I told you focusing on YouTube could actually help you reach more people? But as business owners, we need to know if spending time on a new platform, spending time creating a new piece of content is worth it. So what is YouTube going to do for you? That's exactly what I'm going to share with you. In today's episode, we're going to walk through whether or not YouTube is really worth it for you as a business owner. Welcome back to another episode of the Video Refrain Podcast, where we help coaches, service providers, and course creators reframe the way they think about video content to help them drive more leads and more cash to their business without adding more stuff to their to do list. I'm your host, Trina Little, and I thank you so much for listening today. Like I said, we're going to walk through a couple different reasons why YouTube may actually be worth it for you to invest time and money in. First, let's talk about SEO search engine optimization. YouTube is prime for organic traffic. Now, in a previous episode, I talked about the difference between organic and paid for traffic. And kind of the mess that's happening with Facebook ads right now. If you really want to double down on that organic traffic, that traffic you don't necessarily have to pay for. Search engine optimization is the way to go. Now, since YouTube is owned by Google, creating YouTube videos instantly gets you to the top of Google search. And if you're creating blogs already and you turn those blogs into YouTube videos, you then embed, embed the YouTube video to your blog post. You could likely have two hits on the front page of Google. You could have your blog post that goes directly to your website and you could have a YouTube video all showing up on the front page of Google. So we know search engine optimization is really important and how YouTube can help you really double down on SEO. But what about your opportunity to reach more people? A lot of the times people tell me, Trina, my audience just isn't on YouTube, so I don't need to focus on it. Well, YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world with a staggering 2 billion users. Google, like I said, being number one, owns YouTube. So when you tell me that your audience probably isn't on YouTube, there are some people on YouTube that may be perfect for you, and if not YouTube, your audience is probably using Google. Now let's talk about conversion, because that's the key point. If you're creating content that isn't converting, what's the point in creating content? So according to Brightcove, 76% of users are more likely to buy a product line after watching a video. And overall, marketers who use video grew their revenue 49% faster than non video users. The math adds up to a positive ROI for your business. Return on investment. If you're going to take the time and the money, you're more than likely going to see that come back in return. YouTube's algorithm is designed to help users find the right video to answer their question. And if you can keep them engaged and watching, they're going to be more likely to want to buy any of your digital products, get one of your freebies or lead magnets, or want to work with you one on one. More importantly, it's estimated that by 2022, just next year, at the point of recording this podcast, online video will make up 82% of all consumer Internet traffic, 15 times higher than what it was in 2017. And a large reason for this is that individuals simply prefer to watch videos than to read an article. Yes, there are people that will prefer to read and some people that would prefer to watch. But if you're just creating the content that people read, you're really missing out on the other piece or the other opportunities for people who like to watch. And after the pandemic, so many of us are using video content for on YouTube, on TikTok, on Instagram, to entertain ourselves and to pass the day. There's also been a study that 59% of executives actually opt for video creation over text. And the reason is because video makes things easier to understand. Viewers are likely to retain 95% of a message when they watch a video, compared to 10% when reading it in text. So this is why when you go to YouTube, there are so many how to videos. Because you're teaching somebody. And what's best about this explainer? Content, this how to content. When you're teaching people, you're building trust with them. Because more than likely they're going to YouTube, they're going to Google because they have a problem. They're trying to figure out how to do something. And if you can teach them for free with your free content on YouTube, you can. You immediately get their trust. And what it does is it allows them to want to come back and learn more from you. And the more they learn from you for free, with your YouTube content, the more willing or the higher conversion rate you're going to get for your paid for stuff. Because if your free content has helped them, they're going to be super excited to see what you have that's paid behind the paid wall, because they already know the free stuff was great. The stuff behind the paid wall must be amazing. In fact, 72% of customers would rather learn about a product or a service by way of video than alternatives like text and infographics. And because video is so effective, it often gets shared a lot more than text and imagery. In fact, studies show videos can generate over 1,200% more shares than then images and text combined. This is a real easy way for you to build your visibility, get in front of more people. When other people share your content, you don't even have to pay for this, right? If you're creating video content, it is more likely to get shared. Okay, so so far we talked about whether or not YouTube is worth it for your business. And we talked about the conversion, how well the conversion is on video. We talked about your opportunity to reach more people and how SEO all fits into this equation. But let's talk about longevity. You don't have a lot of time on your hands. If you are running a client based business or you're building courses, maybe you're doing that nap time hustle. And you can only work when your kids are napping or twice a week. You want to be focusing that time, that precious time on content that's going to live longer, right? Why would you want to put time into a Facebook post that on average lives for six hours? And what about an Instagram post that on average lives for 48 hours? Twitter longevity. The lifespan of a Tweet is only 15 minutes. And TikTok and Snapchat are even less than that. Those posts on TikTok and Snapchat start decaying immediately unless you hit it viral. And then if you're looking at LinkedIn, those posts could live for about 24 hours. But everything that I talked about here, these other posts that you could be creating, this other content you could be creating, is all gone within two days. So you're going to be on this constant hamster wheel of creating content every two days to stay at the forefront of your potential customer's mind, right? But on YouTube, the average longevity of your YouTube videos is 20 days. But more importantly, that content is searchable, like I said on Google. And people can find that for years to come. In fact, I had a video that was three years old, that was still driving me leads and driving me customers, customers who wanted, clients who wanted to work with me one on one from a video over three years old. Can you tell me what Instagram post or what Facebook post has done that for you recently? So I know we have very minimal time to focus on creating content and I know sometimes most of us hate creating all this content, but what if you focused on one king piece of content, that YouTube video? Because we're going to move into this other reason why YouTube is worth it to your business, and that is the repurposed power of video. If you start your content creation with a YouTube video, it is so much easier for you to repurpose it into 10 plus pieces of content. My business coach, Julie Stoen explained it as YouTube being at the top of the waterfall. If you think of YouTube at the very top, it can then filter out all these other pieces of content, content you're creating separately. That's taking you more time. So in my business, the way this works and the way we do this for our clients and our agency is we focus on creating one strategic YouTube video every single week. All we need to focus on is filming that YouTube video. Once we have that YouTube video filmed and edited, we can then repurpose that into a Facebook post. We can then repurpose that into an Instagram TV post. We can then pull clips, pull key takeaways, and put it on the Instagram feed with captions over top of it. Because like Instagram announced recently, Instagram is no longer a photo sharing app. So if we aren't posting content, video content on Instagram, it's going to be very hard to grow your visibility. So I mentioned a YouTube video could be turned into an IGTV video, a, a Facebook video, an Instagram feed video. You could take clips and put it on Instagram stories, you could take clips and put it on LinkedIn. We put clips on Pinterest. We also use it as a blog post. So we will get it transcribed and have a blog post with that YouTube video embedded into that blog post, which helps us increase our traffic from Google. And we also use that video as the primary piece of content for our weekly email newsletter. Many, many entrepreneurs that I talk to really have a hard time staying consistent with their weekly newsletters. And this is a great way to always stay at the forefront of your email list, to always be providing them value, to always letting them know you're here for them with great content to help them in whatever. You're the expert. So really, when you think about putting the time, think about all the time you're using or all the time it takes for you to create the content you're creating. Now. You put that time into that one YouTube video and you just flood it out everywhere else. How much time would that save you? Now, I do want to talk about some other reasons why YouTube is really worth it for your business that don't really get talked about a lot for business owners. And that first one is cash in hand. So when you have 1000 YouTube subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time on your channel, you can start making money from YouTube. It's called AdSense, and some people can make an extra $500 a month. I've seen clients make an extra $5,000 a month just by putting their content on YouTube and having ads on them. You're not getting a check from Facebook, you're not getting a check from LinkedIn just for creating content, but YouTube will write you a check for creating content for their platform. So this could be extra cash that you use to hire a video editor, to hire a virtual assistant. I really find that once business owners get consistent on YouTube and they start seeing the money coming in from AdSense and they're really happy with it and they put it back into their business and hiring video editors are more help to repurpose that content. Another reason is the visibility YouTube gives you, whether that's with brand deals. Brand deals. Brands are going to want to work with you if you're visible, if your audience is engaged, and engaged audiences watch video. And you're going to make more money from brand deals with video content because of that engagement. You're also going to be more likely to book some speaking engagements. When conference organizers are looking for people to put on stage, they want to know that you have a good presence, that you really know what it is you're talking about. So if you have a YouTube channel really highlighting your expertise and your speaking capabilities and your presence, you're going to be more likely to book more speaking engagements that you possibly apply to. Or you may even just start seeing more inquiries in your inbox about speaking on podcasts or speaking at conferences. Because a lot of conference organizers are searching YouTube to find people to be guests or to speak on their stages. Let's also talk about writing a book. Maybe you want to write a book and you want to get a book deal. Publishers, again, are looking for people who have a community and have a visible presence. You can't just hide behind social media posts anymore. You really got to be on video showing your presence, making that connection because it also helps build your credibility, right? Anybody could be writing something behind the computer screen, but for you to get up on camera, be on video and speak about your expertise with confidence, that's instant credibility that you're going to get. And I know me telling you that YouTube is another thing you need to add to your list seems daunting and overwhelming. But I think I explained today in this episode how YouTube could really be worth it for your business. I didn't just cover one thing that it could do, but multiple things that it could do to really be worth it for you. To put the time, the money and the investment into creating just weekly YouTube videos, I actually have a free YouTube success guide that's over 15 pages that will walk you through all the steps to take to make sure your YouTube channel is optimized for success. Now that's whether you have a brand new channel, whether your channel's been sitting dormant for a while, or you're just not seeing the results you want from YouTube. This guide walks you through each step to optimize your channel for more organic reach, and has video tutorials to show you how to do each step. You can actually download that YouTube success guide by going to trinalittle.com forward/roadmap and I'll also have it linked in the show notes below. I want to personally thank you for listening to this episode of the Video Reframed Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode of the Video Reframe podcast, please leave a review on itunes and I may just shout you out in the next episode episode. Then make sure you're tuned in over on my YouTube channel for more in depth trainings and tutorials on using YouTube in your business. And you can always check out what I'm doing behind the scenes over on my Instagram as well. Thank you again. Until next time.