Social Media Considerations for Advisors: YouTube
YouTube, owned by Google, is a free video-sharing social networking website developed in 2005. YouTube allows users to upload, watch and share originally created videos. Anybody can watch and share videos on YouTube but to access additional features a person must register for an account. YouTube users can communicate with each other through comments, responses, shares, and private messages.
YouTube Demographics & Statistics:
- More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month (YouTube.com)
- Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube—that’s almost an hour for every person on Earth (YouTube.com)
- 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute (YouTube.com)
- Reaches more US adults ages 18-34 than any cable network (YouTube.com)
- Millions of subscriptions happen each day. The number of people subscribing daily is up more than 3x since last year, and the number of daily subscriptions is up more than 4x since last year (YouTube.com)
Financial and Insurance Advisors are always looking for new and more effective ways to communicate with current and prospective clients. Video can be a highly effective medium that can allow you to create engaging content that reaches the masses. But can it be an effective medium for Financial and Insurance Advisors? You may be asking yourself, how, as a Financial and Insurance Advisor could I use YouTube?
Advisors and YouTube
There is no question that online video is soaring. In fact, 60% of baby boomers and 40% of seniors consider watching online video on sites like YouTube an important part of their day. 75% of boomers and 68% of seniors report calling or visiting a business or organization as a result of seeing a particular online video.
Many people are looking for a quick and easy way to consume information without having to read a lengthy article. If you are an Advisor that is constantly creating original content and sharing your knowledge, but aren’t big on writing or creating blog posts, creating videos could be a great way to demonstrate who you are, profile your services and attach some personality to your brand.
Establish trust, transparency and an authentic voice
YouTube videos can provide you with a medium to show your clients and prospects who you are, and allow you to establish a trustworthy, transparent and authentic voice. Videos could be used to provide your prospects with useful information and great content. Producing useful, engaging and relevant content via video can help to send the message to your target market that you know what you are talking about. As an Advisor, YouTube videos can also be used to tell your unique story, vision and philosophy to help build a connection with your prospect.
YouTube is a Google product, owner of 75% of the search market share. Search engines and Google generally love video and reward its own users in their search engine. Uploading videos on this platform can be a good way to help your business’ visibility in Google’s organic search results. Videos are also said to be 53 times more likely to appear on the first page of search results than text pages.
Publishing Videos to Social Channels
YouTube videos can also be embedded or featured on your website, blog or to any of your social networking sites to help increase traffic and brand awareness.
YouTube videos can be used as an effective way to enhance current and prospective clients communications, however, this is not to say that YouTube can replace text all together. As many marketers have experienced, combining multiple channels is exponentially more effective than using them as standalone campaigns. Motivating consumers to connect with your business in more than one way strengthens brand association and motivates valuable engagement.
