One key to suc­cess on YouTube is in find­ing a for­mu­la that works for your brand. How can you cre­ate video con­tent that peo­ple will love and start gen­er­at­ing more busi­ness from YouTube?

One of the sev­en ways to improve your video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy is to “cre­ate con­tent that is unique, com­pelling, and enter­tain­ing or infor­ma­tive.” Iron­i­cal­ly, YouTube put that phrase at the top of a check­list in its Cre­ator Play­book with­out com­pil­ing any impor­tant tips, best prac­tices, or strate­gies that tell mar­keters how to cre­ate con­tent that peo­ple will love.

For­tu­nate­ly, 10 fun­da­men­tals have emerged for cre­at­ing con­tent that changes hearts, minds, and actions. All you need to do is cre­ate video con­tent that is:

1. Tar­get­ed
   • Study con­tent that’s sim­i­lar to yours and try to deter­mine who is engag­ing with it.
   • Take a look at any of your exist­ing con­tent and deter­mine who’s respond­ing to it.
   • Design every ele­ment of your con­tent to reflect who you would like to reach.
2. Authen­tic
   • Cast sub­ject mat­ter experts or indus­try pro­fes­sion­als to add cred­i­bil­i­ty to your mes­sage.
   • Show­case real-life fan sto­ries to make your mes­sage relat­able.
   • Con­sid­er telling the back­sto­ry of your brand in a spe­cial video or chan­nel trail­er.
3. Dis­cov­er­able
   • Make videos around trend­ing events.
   • Cre­ate “ever­green” videos that will be searched for over time, such as how-to videos.
   • Remem­ber that the algo­rithm can’t watch videos, so ful­ly opti­mize meta­da­ta, includ­ing titles, tags and descrip­tions.
4. Share­able
   • While you can’t guar­an­tee any video will go viral, you can make it more share­able by using some proven tac­tics:
     • Iden­ti­fy trend­ing sub­ject mat­ter.
     • Con­nect through emo­tion.
     • Appeal to your audience’s val­ues.
     • Cre­ate ongo­ing series with break-out poten­tial.
5. Acces­si­ble
   • Always con­sid­er the new view­er when writ­ing and pro­duc­ing con­tent.
   • Fold in con­text if nec­es­sary, but don’t refer to videos the user most like­ly hasn’t seen.
   • If you do host ser­i­al con­tent, include quick recaps at the begin­ning of episodes to bring new view­ers up to speed.
6. Con­sis­tent
   • Devel­op video ideas that can be expressed over mul­ti­ple episodes.
   • Cre­ate a struc­tured for­mat so you don’t have to rein­vent every video.
   • Upload on a reg­u­lar sched­ule.
   • Make sure your videos have a clear point of view that reflects your brand.
7. Con­ver­sa­tion­al
   • Give fans oppor­tu­ni­ties for feed­back or, bet­ter yet, involve them in your con­tent.
   • Let view­ers know their com­ments mat­ter, and that you’re lis­ten­ing.
   • Respond to view­er com­ments, both in video and on social media.
8. Inter­ac­tive
   • Give view­ers a range of options for how to par­tic­i­pate.
   • You can share view­er ques­tions and feed­back in your videos, or incor­po­rate their actu­al con­tent into your chan­nel.
   • In some cas­es, you can let view­ers dic­tate the con­tent itself.
9. Sus­tain­able
   • Plan your cre­ative con­cept care­ful­ly: does it have longevi­ty?
   • Imple­ment recur­ring for­mats and a pre­dictable pro­gram­ming sched­ule.
   • Make sure you have the in-house or agency resources to sup­port this effort for the long term.
10. Col­lab­o­ra­tive
    • The audi­ence you’re seek­ing already exists on YouTube – you just need it to find you.
    • One effec­tive method is to col­lab­o­rate with estab­lished YouTube cre­ators who already reach your tar­get.
    • Iden­ti­fy poten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tors.
    • Remem­ber: YouTu­bers are brands them­selves.

Now, that’s a lot of advice – per­haps, a lit­tle too much advice. What should you do if peo­ple don’t love your video con­tent? Do you dou­ble-check to see if your con­tent was share­able and inter­ac­tive, or wor­ry that your top­ic wasn’t dis­cov­er­able and you didn’t con­verse with view­ers? Or, if your authen­tic­i­ty and tar­get­ing seemed great, would this indi­cate that your acces­si­bil­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy need work? Or, if sus­tain­abil­i­ty doesn’t appear to be a prob­lem, then – and I’m just spit­balling here – could this mean that your col­lab­o­ra­tion sucks?

This reminds me of the scene in “The Pale­face”, the 1948 west­ern com­e­dy star­ring Bob Hope, when Peter “Pain­less” Pot­ter (Hope) is told before the big shootout:

• “He draws from the left, so lean to the right.”
• “There’s a wind from the east, so you’d bet­ter aim to the west.”
• “He crouch­es when he shoots, so stand on your toes.”

Of course, “Pain­less” turns all this advice into, “He draws from the left, so stand on your toes. There’s a wind from the east, bet­ter lean to the right. He crouch­es when he shoots, bet­ter aim to the west. He draws from his toes, so lean towards the wind. Ah, ha! I’ve got it.”

Since 10 fun­da­men­tals are sev­en more than “Pain­less” could remem­ber, many mar­keters will be tempt­ed to do what most cow­boys do: Shoot first and ask ques­tions lat­er. But, you don’t have to uti­lize all 10 of these fun­da­men­tals. You just need to fig­ure out which one of them will work best for you.

For exam­ple, Roken­bok uses a con­sis­tent for­mat to make YouTube videos like “T‑Rex, ROK Blocks Snack Time!” Why did the toy com­pa­ny insti­tute a recur­ring show or series that can be repeat­ed again and again? Roken­bok gen­er­ates 50 per­cent of its cus­tomers from YouTube, which explains why it doesn’t stray from a for­mu­la that works.

Next week, we’ll look at anoth­er way to improve your video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy: Sched­ul­ing your con­tent.

Are any of these 10 fun­da­men­tals part of your video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy? What has worked for your brand? Tell us in the com­ments.