In the current social media landscape, brands are consistently vying for audience’s attention through educational and entertaining content. While the likes of TikTok and Instagram compete to dominate the short-form video market, YouTube’s unique features, extensive reach and openness to long-form video make it an invaluable tool for educational content, providing a platform that effectively supports and enhances social media strategies. Working with a specialist YouTube marketing agency can help brands and businesses alike tap into the list of benefits that have been outlined above.
Below we have dived into my detail as to why YouTube should be at the heart of your social media strategies and how working with a YouTube marketing agency can help.
Extensive reach and high engagement:
YouTube’s over 4.9 billion highly engaged monthly users provide an unparalleled audience. For organisations within the education space, this massive reach translates to a substantial potential viewer base. Additionally, YouTube users often spend significant time watching videos, which is crucial for educational content that requires viewer attention and retention. Our extreme woodchopping client, STIHL TIMBERSPORTS®, has been able to leverage this extensive reach to educate and drive new audiences through dedicated and thrilling competition content, which consists of a mixture of format explanations, player profiling and more.
Superior SEO capabilities:
As part of the Google ecosystem, YouTube videos benefit from enhanced search engine optimization (SEO). Optimising video titles, descriptions, and tags increases the likelihood of educational content appearing prominently in both YouTube and Google search results, driving organic traffic and enhancing visibility. Our recent work with leading hearing specialists, Pindrop Hearing, is a great example of how YouTube content can significantly increase a brand’s online presence.
Leveraging Paid Social:
Through Google Ads, brands could reach audiences actively searching for products and services. With sophisticated targeting options that includes affinity and in-market capabilities, it allows businesses to target people based on their search queries and their location. This has proven particularly successful for our client Jonny Hurst, Senior Lecturer at BPP Law School. As YouTube is a popular platform for students, educational institutes and examining bodies to facilitate knowledge exchange, we have had to devise a targeting strategy that has resulted in 500 subscribers from scratch, over 300,000 video views and one of the top YouTube channels for SQE-related content.
Community building:
YouTube’s comment section facilitates direct interaction between creators and viewers, fostering a sense of community. For educational content, this interaction is particularly valuable, allowing creators to address questions, receive feedback, and engage with learners, thereby enhancing the educational experience.
Versatile content formats:
YouTube supports a wide range of video formats and lengths, from Shorts to long-form videos. This variety allows brands reach audiences at all touch points. Shorts replicate the shop window display to entice viewers while piquing their interest and long-form provides an in-depth analysis into topics providing a rounded content experience which is particularly useful when it comes to educational content. Brands can experiment with different styles and formats to best convey their messages and meet the needs of their audience.
TikTok’s expansion into Long-Form Content
In response to YouTube’s dominance in long-form video, TikTok is testing videos up to 60 minutes. This move aims to capture a segment of the long-form content market traditionally dominated by YouTube. While TikTok has excelled in short, engaging videos, it remains to be seen how it will perform in the long-form content domain.
From a social media perspective, TikTok’s expansion offers a new platform for disseminating longer educational videos, potentially reaching a younger audience segment. However, YouTube’s established infrastructure, including robust analytics, extensive paid targeting options, and superior SEO capabilities, continues to make it the primary choice to disseminate valuable educational content.
Conclusion
YouTube remains a cornerstone in a robust social media strategy. Its vast reach, high engagement levels, and versatile content formats make it an ideal platform for delivering educational content. While TikTok’s testing of 60-minute videos is an interesting development, YouTube’s established strengths ensure it remains the superior platform, especially for channels looking to educate and entertain.
If you would like to discuss how we could implement and deliver a YouTube social media strategy for your business, get in touch today.