by Rena Sandou

Created on: July 04, 2010   Last Updated: July 06, 2010

YouTube is the most popular video sharing social media website nowadays. Measuring more than 2 billion of daily active users globally, YouTube has become one of the best marketing tools to promote you and your business and gain exposure and recognition. But, to make that happen, you need to build a loyal audience to promote your videos, comment on them and share immediately any new video you post.

In particular:

1. Target Audience

The power of your videos mostly relies on the ability to target specific groups of people. Start by creating how-tos, news videos, music videos, sports videos, vlogs, ads or anything else that will define your target market. Doing so, you maximize your chances not only to boost your videos traffic but also maintain your viewers. Once you choose your possible group of viewers, create the best value videos for it.

2. Be Straight and Forward

Almost all YouTube viewers demand to see what they have searched for from the first seconds of a video. Otherwise, they simply click onto the next one. Hence, try to get to the point from the start. Avoid ads and intros and be direct.

3. SEO

Optimize your videos using the appropriate keywords and tags. YouTube visitors most frequently search something in particular; ease them at their quest using simple, short and straight keywords describing the best your video content. Search Engine Optimization techniques effectively increase the volume and quality of your videos traffic.

Pay extra attention to the meta tags you will use. The meta title, keywords and description need to be precise maximizing not only the overall traffic but also keeping your viewers happy and satisfied to come back again. For that reason, avoid by all means spam-tags; do not add the most googled keywords if they are irrelevant to your videos content. This will only make your viewers mad.

4. YouTube as a Social Networking Site

Keep in mind that YouTube is the third most popular social networking site. Viewers favorite videos, subscribe to RSS feeds, comment, exchange ideas, like and share them via the Twitter, Facebook and email buttons. For that reason, it is highly suggested to use all the available social networking tools to make the most of your videos sharing.

Consider YouTube as a blog; log regularly into your account and answer to comments, suggestions or even demands for a specific video. If possible, add your own comments on a daily basis and give your viewers the change to follow your posts by subscribing to your feed.

5. Keep on Posting

To maintain your audience you need to constantly upload new videos. If there is nothing new, viewers will soon their interest. You need to keep them motivated to come back. What is better than a brand new video?

Important tip: you need to stay consistent. Your reliability depends from the quality and volume of the videos you upload. Target your market group and choose videos ideal for them. For example, avoid music videos if your main audience is how tos videos.

6. Choose the Right Video Format

Keep in mind that you need to upload the right format videos. FLV videos are preferable than anything else and ideal for YouTube videos.

7. Create Your Own YouTube Website or Blog

Advertise your YouTube channel by creating your own web site or blog. Alternatively, you can market your channel in your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace profile or any other social networking site you use. Remember that socializing is important to build a loyal audience.

YouTube is currently the biggest video sharing community online. Create your own YouTube channel, attract thousands of users, follow the above tips and build a loyal audience that will follow and share your updates with the rest of the world.

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