YouTube has become a resource for both professionals and consumers. The epic video-sharing website serves more than 1 billion monthly active users, and Brafton recently reported that YouTube hosts more than 6 billion hours of video content. However, the Google-owned website also has a vested interest in tailoring its features for brands. Video marketing is an emerging practice across the content space, and YouTube is the perfect social video hub for brands to compile all of their newly created media.
In mid-April 2013, YouTube promised updates to its homepage or “sub box.” The change would improve the user experience for Channel subscribers, putting more video content above the fold. Subscribers will see a variety of new content immediately upon logging into YouTube, which could increase views and referral traffic rates for advertisers. YouTube’s Norberto Guimaraes also notes in a YouTube Creator Blog post that the site will present fans with suggested posts on their homepages, too. This should prompt prospective and current customers to engage with additional visual media produced by their favorite brands.
In addition to a revamped sub box, YouTube also edited the video upload process based on user feedback. YouTube engineer Balazs Dezso writes that the video-sharing site has updated the publishing function to notify brands when their videos go live. This also allows companies to schedule and embargo posts for specific times. Using social content analytics, companies can understand when their YouTube clips generate the most responses and chatter, and time new content to launch at those exact moments.
More, marketers who upload new content to YouTube will get more time to edit and revise description copy to reflect their companies’ core messages. In the past, YouTube videos would go live immediately after upload, and users would scramble to get all of the right information cued up to have a greater impact online. Now, marketers can take their time to polish each line of copy they include next to a visual clip, and develop an editorial calendar that gets content out to the public when its most effective for sales and brand awareness purposes.
