Social Media for Your Performing Arts Marketing Plan – Part Four: YouTube

Despite the fact that it is the most popular video sharing site, YouTube is often overlooked by small businesses as a social media marketing tool. YouTube receives upwards of 30 million visitors worldwide each day and is the second-largest search engine on the Internet! In fact, comScore Video Metrix® revealed that in March 2014, 187.8 million U.S. residents watched 46.6 billion online content videos. This data demonstrates YouTube’s overwhelming reach within the U.S. and worldwide.

Since it began, YouTube has proven its effectiveness as a successful lead conversion method. In general, videos are more entertaining than reading text and visual content is also more likely to have a longer retention rate. Best of all, registration is free and once your channel is set up, it is very easy to integrate YouTube presence onto your organization’s website, as well as any other social media platforms in your performing arts marketing plan.

How to Create Great Content

Quality and content are top priorities. Try to make your video look as professional as possible and create content that will appeal to your target audience. Videos provide a fantastic opportunity to connect with your audience. They have the chance to see the faces of your organization and hear someone speak to them directly.

Videos also open up a world of possibilities for performing arts organizations because you can treat your videos as an extension of your performances and events. Why not upload a clip from a dress rehearsal? Or an interview with one of the performers or artistic staff? These types of videos can be incredibly interesting…and incredibly interesting content is more likely to be shared on other social media platforms!

I came across a great social media marketing campaign titled “I’m Going to the Opera” put together by Opera Lyra Ottawa. Prior to the re-launch of their company, they conducted video interviews with Ottawa locals about the significance of opera and why they choose to attend productions.

Here’s one of my favorite videos from this campaign:

Four Tips to Optimize Your Video for Searching

1. Choose strong keywords. Keywords help YouTube determine your video’s relevance. Use approximately ten tags that describe the video category, video content, shoot location, as well as the names of anyone in the video.
2. Include keywords in your title. Your title should tell viewers exactly what they will see if they click on your video. Try to keep titles around 120 characters.
3. Optimize the video description with keywords. Work in those strong keywords naturally.
4. Customize the video thumbnail. First impressions matter – your thumbnail has to be clean and enticing so that it encourages people to click on it.

CC Image by Andrés Monroy-HernándezWhile the chances of your video going “viral” are slim, YouTube does offer a great option for your performing arts marketing plan. Remember to focus on creating useful, engaging videos that are optimized for searching and sharing. Tug at their heartstrings and fuel your audience’s excitement to attend upcoming events and support your organization!

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