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How South African Marketers Use YouTube to Grow Bottom Lines
YouTube is one of the fastest growing social media platforms in South Africa, having taken off here a little later than in other countries. Whether through advertising or the use of YouTube content creators; companies are capitalizing on the rapid embrace of this platform.
Marketers and Content Creators
YouTube content creators are individuals who produce, edit and share their own videos for entertainment purposes (rather than advertising). South African marketers (much like in the rest of the world) are increasingly using these YouTubers to their benefit.
Becoming and staying relevant on YouTube is becoming ever more difficult, with research saying over 400 hours of content are posted on YouTube every minute.
Here are three ranking factors every marketer is using as they commission content from YouTubers
Creating and publishing long videos
Longer YouTube videos tend to perform better than shorter ones. The main reason behind this is that it is one of YouTube’s most important ranking factors. Total Watch Time is important to marketers and YouTube because the platform wants to promote videos that keep people online for longer. It’s no coincidence that review or how-to videos are longer than necessary these days.
Whether through advertising or the use of YouTube content creators; companies are capitalizing on the rapid embrace of this platform.
Audience Retention
Getting the viewer to click on the video is the first challenge. Keeping them there is the next. This is why marketers and YouTube insist on content creators maximize the impact of the first 15 seconds of their videos. If the first 15 seconds summarize what the video is about, viewers know what to expect and are more likely to watch to the end. Through this strategy, the YouTuber, the platform and the marketer all benefit.
Relevant Keywords
Putting your keywords in the title is one of the tools YouTube uses to rank content. When you search for something specific, you will most likely find videos titled with your exact search words. This ranking tool not only increases YouTubers’ video ranking position, but it increases the viewing numbers, which is likely to result in a subscription for them and a sale for the marketer.
YouTube openly shares and explains the functionality of its ranking algorithm on its creator academy. To learn more about search and discovery on YouTube, click here.