Social media is here to stay, but that doesn’t mean you need to be on every single platform available. Your time and budget are limited so you should spend it where you’ll get the most impact.

We get asked a lot about how to make the most of corporate YouTube pages and our response is often: don’t do it. Here are our honest thoughts on the do’s and don’ts of corporate YouTubes.

Give your customers what they want. Consider what information your customers need from you—not what you want them to know, but what they want. Corporate YouTube pages should provide information that your customers are seeking—how-to’s, best practices and educational content are a good start.

Ensure the content fits the audience. Be sure to respect your audience. If you’re a tech company, and your customers are high-level IT professionals, videos explaining things that are simple to them like “why ethernet cables are cool” may come across as condescending, implying that you don’t really know your customer. Create content at their level.

Tap into the power of influencers. You might want to create videos about all of your products' awesome features, but that may not be what your audience wants to hear—at least not from you. Consumers know that you’ll speak highly of your products; sometimes an influencer can say it better. Having an influencer review or talk about your product/services allows you to tap into their brand and an audience that trusts their opinion. They can say the same thing you would but with drastically different results. 

Use it as a closer, not a counter. Clients often ask how they can get their videos to compete with someone else’s view count. YouTube pages are not there to drive leads or rack up a big audience. YouTube should reinforce the rest of your corporate marketing, promote consumer confidence, stimulate customer loyalty, and express your company culture and values. It exists to help later in the sales cycle by providing answers to the final questions a prospective customer might have.

A corporate YouTube can make sense if you have the right goals in mind and if you maintain focus on how best to use it. Ultimately, you need to know both your target audience and your actual audience, and what their wants and needs are. If both audiences are one and the same, that’s great! If not, adjust your content and outreach so your corporate YouTube page makes the best use of your team’s time and energy.

If you’re looking to learn more and/or to get an honest opinion about your corporate YouTube ideas, contact Lightswitch Video.