Approximately 6,000,000,000
hours of video are watched on You Tube each month by 1 billion unique visitor hits
per hours.
Facebook, which has 1.3
billion subscribers, gets 757 million average daily users.
But hardly anybody
in the bowling industry is using YouTube. Why?
Oh, I see a few
random photos of tournaments and birthday parties, but I rarely, if ever, see a
video, that has been edited and presents a nice 2 minute story about your bowling
center.
With all this
snow, somebody must have a great Facebook story to tell; how you helped a
customer start a car; how the staff had a snow ball fight or how customers felt
about the weather or how nice n cozy the bowling center was and what a relief to
have a place to take the kids since schools were closed so much.
Well? Well? Do you have any of that good stuff that builds
your brand? Send it to me if you do and
I’ll post it for others to see your good work
Now while I am far
from a technophile when it comes to You Tube, I have picked up a few tips (from
attending webinars) along the way and I wanted to share them with you.
1. Create a
Branded YouTube Channel
This step is often
overlooked by small businesses. Your YouTube channel is basically your house
for the videos you create and upload, the videos you have selected as
favorites, and those that you have organized into a playlist.
A customized
channel gives you the opportunity to add and showcase your center’s branding
with specific colors, information and links to your website and/or relevant
social media pages. A channel also gives viewers an option to subscribe to your
content with the click of a button. Just follow the guides and tutorials on You
Tube.
2. Make Sure Your
Content Fills a Relevant Need
Try to provide
your customers with information about your center that is RELEVANT to them. Whether
it’s the weather, Kids Bowl Free or new open play programs, you have a plethora
of content to share. For example, you
can send some Learn to Bowl lessons for new bowlers and then encourage them to
come in and try it.
If you host a band
on Saturday nights, then post videos about the band’s performance and the crowd
reaction. Or post videos about a fund
raiser you had. And get great
testimonials as well. That way your audience will see that you are a part of
the fabric of the community.
By doing this you create valuable information and
interest in you and your center, thus generating loyalty and trust.
3. Develop Videos
that are Quick, Simple, Engaging, and Professional
Decent video
cameras are no longer expensive, so you can make a professional video without
breaking the bank. Pay attention to lighting the area, sound quality and
shakiness of the camera. Your best bet is to use a tripod. It is important to
plan an outline and a script prior to making your video.
Much like writing a
story, you will want to include a beginning, middle and end. Make sure your
video has a purpose. Keep it simple and short. It’s recommend 2-4 minutes for a
video. Preferably closer to two minutes.
4. Optimize Your
Video
YouTube claims
that more than 24 hours of video are uploaded every minute, so the number of
specific videos on the site is constantly changing. It is important you do
everything you can to make your video easily found.
Your videos should
be findable both within and outside of YouTube. Videos often appear on the
first page of search engines, and are a proven method of leap-frogging your
competition to the top of the search results page. The fact that Google owns
YouTube can’t be overlooked.
To make your video
more findable, you’ll want to focus on three key areas
-Title: Make
sure your targeted keywords are in the first few words of your title. Another
trick is to add a colon after your initial keywords and rephrase your
title for maximum effect.
-Description: Two
things to keep in mind here: 1) start your description with a full URL, and 2)
don’t be stingy with your description. Be as descriptive and keyword-rich
as possible. This will help you get found more easily by people searching
YouTube for your type of content.
-Tags: Be
sure to include any and all related keywords in the tags field. These aren’t
the only variables in getting found, but they’re the easiest to manage and
control.
So get out there
and start using YouTube like a pro…and have some fun too!
