Grow your business online. Start setting up your small business channel on YouTube! For a business to grow, you must know all the places, online and offline, where your target audience usually hangs out. YouTube just happened to be one of the most visited social media platforms. This is the reason YouTube becomes an ideal place for small businesses. They can freely promote their brand and interact with their potential customers at the same time.
How to Set Up Your Small Business YouTube Channel?
1. Create A YouTube Account
In creating a YouTube account, you must’ve an existing Google+ page or Gmail address. If you have one, you can sign in to YouTube using your email address. After signing in, click on the user icon at the top right corner of your screen and you’ll see a gear icon, click it to get to your account’s settings.
If you don’t have Google accounts, you can still create an account on YouTube by clicking the “Create account” link.
2. Create A New Channel & Brand account
Next on the list is to create the channel itself. On your account settings, choose “Overview”. Look at the lower part and you’ll see the “Create a new channel” link, click it. The new page is where you’ll put the name of your channel and its category. In naming your channel, you can always choose whether to place your name or business name.
If you decide to create your channel and name it after you, and not your business, your channel becomes a personal account. You have to create a new channel in order to create a brand account. Don’t worry, YouTube allows users to maintain multiple channels in one account. So, no need to create a new account. You just need to repeat the steps on creating a new channel.
3. Configure Your Channel
In configuring your channel, you must consider several factors to help your channel easy to find and stand out from the competition. The factors you need to consider are as follows:
- The logo must be clear and represent the style of your business and the content you’re publishing. This way your viewers will get a good idea about your business and content’s topic.
- The Description is one important factor, you have to ensure to make it interesting, informative and entertaining as possible. Creating your channel that way will surely convince the viewers to stay and get hooked on your videos. Always remember, there are billions of videos on YouTube, so, people will never think twice to leave your channel if they found your content boring and unhelpful.
- The main purpose of setting up your business online is to drive engagement and for your channel to maximize it, make sure to link all your social media profiles and website to your channel. This is an effective way as well for your viewers to know where else to find you and your business.
- In adding channel links on your channel, click the YouTube Channel setting gear icon and turn on the “customize the layout of your channel” option. If you see a pencil icon at the top right corner of your channel art, click it and you’ll see “edit links”. Click that link and it will bring you to about page and from there, you can see the “add” button. Upon clicking the add button, a new line will appear where you can input the link title and its URL.
- Just like channel links, the email address is also good to include on your channel. If viewers enjoy your content, they will surely find a way to contact you – either inquire on your business’ products or simply make a connection. Whatever reasons they have, you must make it easy for them to find you. With YouTube’s feature, adding your email address makes it easy and hassle-free. Just click the “Email” button next to the “For business inquiries” section.
These are the important things in setting up your small business YouTube channel such as appropriate equipment, good marketing and a lot of patience. But remember, YouTube is a fast-growing company that continuously updating their functionality. It’s always best to stay updated to ensure that your business will get the attention and popularity you deserve.