Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

When I was just a wee lass and HubSpot was first starting to make a name for itself, inbound marketing was a brand new idea. Marketers were learning that they couldn't just publish a high volume of content -- it also had to be high-quality and optimized in ways that made it as discoverable as possible through search engines.

And once upon a time, that content was largely limited to the written word. Eleven years later, that's no longer the case -- a comprehensive content strategy includes written work like blogs and ebooks, as well as media like podcasts, visual assets, and videos.

That last part -- video -- continues to be on the rise. According to the 2017 State of Inbound, marketers named video as a huge disruptor. "I mostly write content right now," one respondent said, "but I'm afraid it may begin to diminish more and more with video." And with the rise of other content formats comes the need to optimize them for search. One increasingly important place to do that is on YouTube, which is a video distribution website used by the masses (HubSpot included).

But how does that work? What are the steps you need to take to optimize your YouTube channel for search? We've outlined some major tips below. And if you're short on time, no problem -- check out the video summary here....

Ready to get started on YouTube? Or wish your YouTube Channel were performing better? I’m here to help!

YouTube is effectively the second largest search engine in the world (behind only Google). With video becoming more and more important (we even launched Buffer for video last week!), now is the perfect time to start optimizing your YouTube Channel and begin reaping the benefits of a strong video strategy, including connecting with new potential customers, getting a better search presence and building your brand.

I’ve had a lot of fun exploring YouTube optimization and wanted to share what I’ve found. Here is everything that I have learned and would do to optimize a channel....

My two-year old son has become enamored with a colorful character named Blippi. He's one of the hottest rising YouTubers who has quite literally swept the children's educational market on the world's most popular video platform, soaring well past the billion-plus view mark. By curating content specifically geared towards helping children during their most important fundamental developmental stages, he's effectively carved a massive niche and a surprisingly large following.

One day, as my son sat enthralled by one of Blippi's videos, where he sings and dances and teaches children about all the various parts and components of a garbage truck, I knew that I needed to learn more. As someone who's entrenched in the online marketing industry and obsessed with things like passive income, I knew that what Blippi had achieved was nothing short of fascinating and amazing.

In fact, what I discovered from a rather extensive interview was even more amazing to me. Let's set aside the millions of dollars of revenue that Blippi has made, which is the brainchild of Stevin John, a creative professional from Washington State who once worked in Hollywood's film industry, behind-the-scenes, and let's look at the bigger picture here. From a branding and merchandising perspective, Blippi is sheer brilliant....

Though it has some competition, YouTube remains the premier video site on the web. With a staggering amount of videos uploaded every day, some people even make a living from the service. No matter if you’re a casual YouTube user or go looking for the craziest channels you can find, there are all sorts of ways to tweak YouTube to make it just right for you. Let’s look at some URL tricks to get more out of the service....