How to create a successful YouTube video?

Over 500 hours of new content is uploaded on YouTube every minute. Whether it`s an ad, music video, product video, review, vlog, business video, or the recording of your event, what do you consider as more important for viewership of your video?

1. Make it with a camera that costs 20 K dollars, use a drone, crane, props, breath-taking locations, celebrities and numerous bit players, or
2. Give the video a good preview picture, subtitles, tags, legend, relevant triggers for the target audience, support video by influencers, and set up a performance ad on Facebook and Google.

First option is the traditional one and works well in the cinema and TV, where the visual quality is the main factor to determine the success.

The second one is modern and works well on YouTube where the online marketing approach and well thought trough strategy make the difference.

Whether we are talking about talented music band, that creates visually attractive music video but only gets small amount of views on YouTube, or a company that posts on its own channel the epic corporate video and reaches 100 views after one year, while 90 of those from the employees. Both situations show the fact, that:

Make a visually HQ video on YouTube is far away from enough!

So, let`s have a look at 5 tips that we prepared for you, sourcing from our more than 7 years of experience with famous Czech and Slovak YouTubers and dozens of campaigns with millions of views:

1. Preview picture

Well-chosen preview photo increases the CTR (Click through rate) of the video. It means it is more likely that the viewer will click on the video. This picture is like a store window that attracts the attention. What works the best as a preview picture?

• , ideally in a detail. Since the prehistory, people are well able to recognise a human face between other subjects to avoid danger from other tribes. That’s why successful YouTubers have on their previews strong facial expressions with a lot of arrows and pictograms.

Furthermore, there are pictograms, colour frames and icons, headlines, that help viewers to understand what the video will be about.

On the other side, there should not be unknown subjects or blurry photos. So, to choose a snap and use it as a preview isn`t a good idea. Bad preview can destroy even a very expensive ad, and that is the key problem.

This YouTuber knows exactly what to use to get the attention from his viewers. It is well chosen preview, thumbs up! Successful previews consist of face (with lively expression), icons, pictures and accentuated headline.

This preview is from Kofola ad, personalities are small and blurry, we would choose a closer look, maybe a semi-whole to raise the CTR. It is possible that by the fast scroll through YouTube this scheme will remain unnoticed and the user wont click on it. That would be a part of a further testing.

In this ad for T-Mobile we see a well-chosen preview. A surprised face of this guy in a strange costume creates curiosity and it is very likely that a viewer would click on the picture. This ad has a higher CTR, the better targeting. It was enough to just find a great moment from the video and here we go – better performance.

1. Keywords

YouTube can recognize sentences and words that are mentioned in the video with the 90 % accuracy! When you say “Today, I’m going to give you 5 tips for your business”, in your video, it is highly possible that YouTube itself will sort your video in recommended videos in business category. And that’s the target that you should aim for, because from the recommended videos, you get the highest click and view rate compare to the organic research or channel followers. If your video is between popular recommended videos, it’s a half victory.

Recommended video = right column of videos next to the currently playing one. To be one of the recommended ones of the others is a win-win that gives you extra views.

1. Subtitles

Give your video English subtitles even if the voiceover is in English. Why? Because most of the videos are being played without sound – in a bus, school, at work or in a pub. If there are no subtitles, viewers will just continue scrolling without paying attention to your video.

We tested the subtitling of a product video with one of our clients and the results were several times better in number of views and clicks on e-shop than for the video without subtitles. Making the subtitles took about 20 minutes but the result brought additional thousands $ in the sales. And that’s just worth it!

1. Legend/description

The legend of your video is something like a first paragraph in the news. It should briefly summarise what is going on in the video. YouTube is “Reading” the legends and according to the keywords in the legend gives your video the position in the research. Once the video has no description, it’s like an ad with no slogan, it will be just lost in space and won`t help your video at all. Place your website and Facebook page in the video description! That helps to build the references network.

One of our clients didn’t use the descriptions for his videos. After analysing his channel, this was one of the things we changed to improve the search engine. Following, we analysed tags, preview photos and made other improvements.

1. Length of the video

Longer videos have better potential on placement in the search and between the recommended videos. Why? Because YouTube`s target is to hold the viewers on the platform as long as possible. Logically, longer time spent on the platform means more ads, and more money for YouTube.

Which video has better placement potential, according to you?

1. Two minutes’ video with the average view length of 1:03 minutes
2. Ten minutes’ video with the average view length of 3:03

Even though the first video has better relative audience rate (over 50 %) and the second one only 30 %, the second one will have better placement because it keeps the viewer longer on YouTube. Don`t make your videos too long, remember this:

“The video is wonderful, I wonder why it is not more popular.”

I hear this kind of sentences all the time and they confirm the fact that the movie quality and a great scenario is not enough for a successful video any more.

The job of a traditional film studio ends by handing the finalized video to the client. In this moment, the video lives its own life, and even more often gets sunk in the ocean of digital content because the competition is relentless.

Our work after handing over the video is the most important added value. At the end of the day, everyone can make a nice video, but it doesn’t mean that it would be a successful video on YouTube that will collect views and clicks on your web.

What we see as the most important added value is the years of our experience with creating YouTube content, analysis of relative audience rate, audience engagement and other metrics, and cooperation with the most successful Czech YouTubers, which means those who know the best how to break through and engage within the YouTube environment.

We create videos that are preceded by project/clients` business analysis, keywords, identifying targets we want to reach by the video, customer/audience research, and on-line marketing strategy.

Do you want to be part of the revolution of the digital age?

Let us create a video that will collect views, reactions and reach your goals.

If you are not planning to make a video, we would like to help you improve your YouTube channel or we can make an on-line consultation. YouTube is an ecosystem that`s worth to understand. For a very little money, you can get incredible results.

Contact us!

We are looking forward to work with you!

Author of the article:

Mgr. Marek Dvořák 

marek.dvorak@markusfilm.com

+ 420 736 427 252