In the last 1.5 years, the consumption of videos has exploded. In tandem, YouTube — the visual content format’s default home — has seen a tremendous rise in its usage. During the worldwide-stay-at-home orders, for instance, 15% of all the global traffic was from YouTube. For the smaller screen, it accounted for as much as 25%!

So how can your brand leverage the increased consumer attention on YouTube to your advantage? For starters, you need a YouTube channel. From there, you can leverage the YouTube stats and trends I share in the infographic below to inform your strategy. 

Here are the key ideas that you can use as a starting point:

Go live to connect with your audience...

As people craved social connection, they fell back on interacting with their favorite YouTube creators. It was their way of coping with the absence of physical events. Indeed 58% of surveyed viewers found live streams as a way to feel connected with something bigger than themselves.

As a brand, live streaming provides an opportunity to know your audience better while helping your YouTube growth. You can either entertain, educate, or inspire your viewers by going live. Frase.io, an AI content stack, for instance, conducts webinars on their channel around subjects of interest for their audience.

Crack jokes, teach, and have fun

Comedy has always been among the most popular YouTube videos. But as people took stock of their mental health last year trying to navigate through the new normal, the demand for positive-themed and comic videos increased. Here were the top trending videos last year:

Besides you can consider putting out gaming content if it’s relevant to your brand. Other trends were picking up hobbies, working out at home, and learning new skills ranging from gardening to baking — again all of these remain opportunities for your brand to find a place in your YouTube audience’s lives.

Indeed the YouTube Culture & Trends report highlights that videos with “beginner” in their titles collected over 9B views in 2020, thereby demonstrating the increase in amateurs who want to pick up skills.

It’s time to look beyond YouTube subscribers…

I know, I know. You might have seen numerous websites for buying YouTube subscribers for growing your channel. But the value of subscriber count for channel owners was based on the premise of repeat viewership. 

Now while you can unlock monetization features, brand opportunities, and social proof via the vanity metric of YouTube subscribers, they don’t indicate the current health of your channel. 

As YouTube has opened the platform via “Shorts” to more creators, there’s an immense uptick in competition. This has meant your subscribers from years ago might become dormant and have started watching other creators over you.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t focus on growing your channel’s subscriber count. But a more important metric launched by YouTube that you can consider integrating in your strategy is returning viewers.

You can further consider growing your viewership into a paid community using a VOD platform such as Uscreen. Or even starting a podcast on YouTube, which ensures you at least own your audience on iTunes. 

Final thoughts

YouTube continues to offer a great opportunity for brands to connect with its billions of users. You can create tutorials, conduct webinars, or even launch a dedicated interview style video podcast. Ultimately, you should consider how you can diversify your video marketing efforts by integrating other video hosting providers that offer complete control of the user experience. 

Whether you already run a channel for your brand or plan to get started in 2021, here’s an infographic with key trends and statistics to devise your content strategy:

Designed By: Graphic Rhythm