As introduced in our article, "Video is the Undisputed King of Content Marketing", we introduce why there's no greater asset to your digital presence and funnel experience than the creation of videos and webinars. In a world where we want people to 'know us and like us', video provides the perfect platform upon while to quickly build this digital rapport. It's for this reason that Yabber supports a large number of video and audio features, such as extensive Wistia integration, and OmnyStudio podcast tools, Further, we provide a raft of other features such as automatic uploading of videos from Instagram to YouTube (and just about everywhere else), YouTube chapters, the automatic creation of a video archive on your website, integrated video blocks for Elementor, full video statistics, and far more.

The high-performing broker website we provide brokers supports SEO markup as a standard, but also includes the full markup necessary for search engines to ingest videos for the purpose of enhanced search results (we also serve advanced video feeds based on the videos identified in posts). To further illustrate the importance of video, our Inference API (our AI engine, also known as BeNet) identities your website, subscription, and other data, to automatically update various video marketing assets so your website is serving the content most likely to be consumed (such as a front page video). To further illustrate BeNet's fancy-pants features, the AI can automatically update your YouTube channel banners and layout based on emerging website or industry trends... thus reflecting a perceived expertise (you may, of course, manually schedule YouTube banner changes based on seasonal or company-specific events). The list of features goes on and on.

Video is vital if you have a digital footprint, and it's why we've invested a large amount of applied research into the development of a complete management solution. So, when we talk about why we return more business than any competing agency in the space, and how we guarantee more leads and conversions, the promise is backed by the most sophisticated technology available to the market - we're not referring to just our leading Facebook Program. While there are those that claim to return three-or so settlements per month on the back of (usually non-compliant) advertising, what we're suggesting is that this business will be attracted to you anyhow if you have a properly structured digital presence. Add a little SEO love and paid promotion into the mix and you will achieve far better results for a tiny fraction of the cost.

Yabber provides a number of primary YouTube functions: uploading of videos, management of playlists, management of channels, and the aggregation of detailed daily statistics (and more). All features are absolutely necessary if you take YouTube seriously, and mandatory if you choose to venture into the often ignored world of paid YouTube promotion. This article describes Yabber's YouTube support in brief.

Platform YouTube Features

We’d ideally like to include all of YouTube’s features in Yabber to fully replace the YouTube studio you're probably already familiar with... and we’re not far from achieving this goal. This tight integration gives our Inference API (AI engine) more interactions to evaluate and modules to modify when it identifies emerging traffic or industry trends, and it provides Yabber subscribers with an enjoyable interface upon which to manage their YouTube experience.

Video Upload

Videos may be posted directly to your YouTube account from the Platform. Rather than have you upload videos directly, our primary means of uploading YouTube videos is directly from a Microsoft OneDrive folder. We create a number of child folders under a OneDrive ‘BeliefMedia’ parent folder, and any video uploaded to your ‘Video’ folder (from your PC and synced to Drive) is made available for upload. This simplifies the upload process and lends itself to some of our other automation features.

Videos may also be uploaded via direct URL, from your Instagram video library (also automated via Instagratify ), or they may be cloned from Wistia.

  Pictured: Uploading a video to YouTube. Select the source, populate the required fields, and submit. The video is sent to your queue and uploaded to your primary YouTube business account. A standalone option is provided for a direct video upload.

  Pictured: Selecting the video source from the YouTube upload panel. We want your upload experience to be an easy one and provide numerous options to enable quick and easy video uploading and editing.

Aggregator and Propel clients may bulk upload the same video to multiple channels with full and unique company branding - this also applies to larger businesses (such as franchises) with multiple users.

Video Thumbnails

The video thumbnail is the image presented to a user before they click the play button. In order to improve upon play conversions your single image in itself should tell a story (the default image created by YouTube is rarely appropriate).

  Pictured: Thumbnail creation feature. You may optionally load thumbnails into a library where you may assign them to appropriate videos.

We’ve developed a thumbnail upload system to quickly and easily add a thumbnail to any uploaded video. The system will soon be developed to support the addition of a default thumbnail for those videos that a part of a very specific group (such as a podcast, or your Instagram videos).

YouTube Playlists

YouTube playlists are videos that are grouped together in a channel-based ‘category’. The grouping permits you to feature them on the front page of your channel or include them in your website as a group, and it provides a mechanism for a user to consume relevant videos in the order in which they were intended.

Our platform supports the creation and editing of playlists (with drag and drop ordering) and we provide extensive playlist-level statistics so you know what parts of your video program are performing.

  Pictured: YouTube Playlists management. Videos may be dragged and dropped into an appropriate order in any playlist. The green panels indicate those active videos in a playlist while the grey panels indicate those videos that are eligible to be included. The creation, deletion, and editing of playlists is accomplished quickly and easily. For compliance purposes all changes are tracked.

When using our Instagram social tool you may specify what playlist you would you would like to include that video. We generally like a playlist called ‘Instagram Videos’ (or similar) so your audience is aware of their origin.

Channel Branding

Channel branding is a topic more significant than this brief article provides. As mentioned earlier your channel branding is significant not only because it captures user attention, but because it represents and reflects your brand, and is used to draw visitors into your marketing funnel.

Channel branding is represented in two primary ways:

• Your channel banner (the large banner at the top of your channel page).
• Your primary channel sections (the videos shown on the front page of your channel).

The 'problem' with channel branding – not just with YouTube, but elsewhere as well - is that the need to alter your appearance changes regularly with seasons (Anzac Day, Australia Day, Easter, Christmas etc.) and with most up-to-date products, interest rates, or Government grants. In fact, you should be changing your branding to take advantage of trending consumer behaviour on a local and general level. For example, if consumer confidence picks up in the first home buyer market you should be quick to alter your banner and channel sections to meet the needs of that market (thus representing your expertise with a trending market). The problem is that very few businesses have the necessary resources to entertain this type of activity.

Our solution to the problem described above? We’ve completely automated the process.

  Pictured: YouTube channel branding. The image shows the panel for changing an existing YouTube banner - you may select a new image or select from your existing banner library. The selected banners are shown in the lower table. Note that we archive all banners since compliance mandates you record all consumer-facing marketing assets.

You may have your branding altered in three primary ways:

• Manually uploading a banner image to Yabber via your banner library (simple drag and drop)
• Creating a 'seasonal schedule' on Yabber (this automatically changes the banner based on a specified date range).
• Have your branding altered based on identified trends (with data sourced from your website traffic, Facebook campaigns, email campaign data, and link clicks etc.)
• Opt into Belief’s automated branding program.

Yabber provides the facility to update featured playlists on a channel, and the order in which those playlists are shown. This automated behaviour is important because it invariably improves upon your channel ROI, or the number of those that dig a little deeper into your video content.

  Pictured: YouTube season banners. Discussed in an article where we introduce how YouTube seasonal banners should be used, Yabber simply schedule banners based on significant national or company events.

We’ve made our system super-simple to use and automated much of the process to relieve you of the burden of tasks you may not ordinarily complete.

Our opt-in banner changing program is one that is predicated upon on the trends we identify based on the thousands of interactions Yabber records every single day, or the trends identified via your website and other interactions. An example of one of our last changes comes by way of the massive uptake in first home buyers as result of the Government’s HomeBuilder grant. Our system gained enormous confidence in the trend and uploaded a generic image to all participating channels which gave off the immediate impression that this was the business’ specialty (we create a single image and apply your logo when uploaded). Every now and again we’ll change banners for participating businesses manually before the trend is identified (maybe in response to a budget or significant rate cut).

The automation we apply to YouTube is a good indicator of how an integrated marketing system works in that Yabber alters its appearance based on a number of digital indicators. This is a level of machine-understanding that is very rarely (if ever) seen in consumer-facing products.

  Pictured: YouTube automation. Shown in a panel that defines the 'First Home Buyer' profile. If our AI detects a need (based on "probably certainty" it will update your channel based on the provided data. This system is discussed in an article titled "Changing Your Facebook and YouTube Banners Based on Website Traffic". Note that automation will update the banner and sections (those playlists that show, and the order in which they're shown). It's an extremely powerful hands-free system.

The banner library is simply a collection of images you’ve uploaded yourself for the explicit purpose of sending to YouTube at certain times. The process to send a new banner to YouTube from your library takes about a second.

Because of strict compliance requirements requiring us to maintain an archive of all consumer-facing marketing assets, we record each change of banner. This is a mandatory feature we often see ignored in the finance industry.

Channel Sections

Channel Sections are another area that is largely ignored because of the perceived complexity in its management (and it can be a nuisance). While automation may apply as described in the previous section, you may obviously alter your channel appearance manually at any time. We’ve made this process extremely easy via a simple drag-and-drop option to enable and order each section that'll appear on your YouTube Channel page.

  Pictured: Creating YouTube Channel Sections. The 10 permitted panels are shown, with the active panels shown in green. You simply select what video content or playlist you wish to have returned in that block, order by dragging-and-dropping the element around other selections, and ‘Save’. Your changes are immediately sent to YouTube. Having section management is a vital component to our broad and slightly more advanced marketing efforts because our automation can alter your playlists, or playlist order, depending upon the known or determined interest type of your audience (via information garnished via your website, email marketing campaigns, and other sources). The table underneath the section options presents a summary of section data.

YouTube Statistics

The importance of YouTube statistics cannot be overstated. In fact, if you’re a data-driven marketer – as you should must be – having reliable measurements of your marketing is imperative.

Part of the reason we have a vocal disdain for some of the Kindergarten methods floating around the industry is because the data-driven aspect of campaigns is largely ignored. While you’ll always need to test, split test, and test again, you cannot do so reliably without good microdata giving clear indication of your success.

  Pictured: Basic YouTube statistics. Stats are available on a channel level, video level, playlist level, and they include basic and demographic-based data. BeliefMedia is the only company in the finance space to provide a true mechanism upon which to provide effective YouTube marketing and paid video promotion. Clicking on a channel returns the second panel which shows aggregated stats for all your registered channels. Clicking on any video link returns detailed statistics on an individual video.

Pictured above is a daily aggregation of video views from all channels (also available for individual channels). This is information unavailable by default (via YouTube) but we collect the information because of its importance to your ongoing video and content strategy.

Knowing your most viewed videos in previous weeks or months is important because it indicates trending interest, and graphing is obviously an immediate indication of performance. If a video is popular it stands to reason that you’ll make more on the same subject.

  Pictured: Playlists statistics and aggregate data are represented in isolation of broad channel statistics because of the importance of understanding the micro-performance of each playlist you have created. A number of graphs are excluded in the image to enable the screenshot to fit to the page. Clicking on any link returns detailed information on that playlist or video.

YouTube Advertising

YouTube advertising has attractive CPM rates and consistently delivers good results (If you haven’t tried it you should probably give us a call). Targeted options are extensive and you're piggybacking Google's contextual algorithm to improve upon video delivery. While it’s particularly profitable in the property sector we’ve seen mortgage brokers return over 100m in just a few months as part of a highly aggressive campaign.

We were recently working in the office with YouTube playing in the background (as we always do) and an ad for a mortgage broker started playing. At the cessation we all started laughing in hysterics. We’d never seen the advert before so we can’t say for sure if was ‘templated’... but it definitely felt like it. Our 'templated' assumption conclusion comes from the lack of the company name mentioned at any point, the lack of company logo or company colours, the absence of any branding, and the generic call-to-action. It was complete and utter garbage. The voice-over was generic and did nothing other than point to those elusive 'three points' that’ll pay your loan off faster. The fact the company name, phone number, or logo was absent in the PowerPoint-style slide presentation video made the advertisement somewhat pointless; it literally sidestepped all the absolutely essential ingredients of a good video ad. However, it's typical of what's making its way into the market.

A video is an opportunity to showcase your brand, implant subliminal call-to-actions, tell a real story, possibly inject a little humour, and engage with a viewer on a real emotional level. In the example mentioned above – because of the generic nature, and since we were watching on a TV – we no way of engaging (you cannot click a link within a TV). Your video should be optimised for all platforms, and watching YouTube on a television rather than a smartphone is becoming more and more common (please, at the very least, include a phone number).

Our fear is that brokers will be drawn into these emerging and seriously low-performing generic or templated programs that may return a small result... but they come a long way from maximising your return on investment.

The mentioned video used a ‘generic’ example of a 'sample client' that "saved thousands on his home loan" but no disclaimer was shown and no ACL (or ACR/ASL) details were ever visible. In other words it was completely non-compliant. If in fact this was a templated video it’s another example of a poor marketing agency introducing non-compliance into broker's operations. Never ever use a templated video for any kind of advertising.

Our highly integrated YouTube analytics, account management, and artificial social intelligence isn’t what guides our clients into profitable campaigns... it’s the creative minds you have access to any time via our office. If you’re interested in YouTube advertising we challenge you to find anybody that can guide you into a more profitable campaign than Belief.

Video SEO

SEO is a big topic – it’s covered in our 400-page SEO Manual which doesn’t come close to addressing all one needs to know in order to satisfy technical requirements. However, there’s really only requirement that matters: content. Content is still king. As explained in an article on SEO automation, we turn SEO into a task that is completely automated; this includes page markup, video markup, and appropriate structure attached to other in-page resources. In addition, we record the structure of your internal links, build video profiles for each page, and evaluate the performance of each page based on these indicators. However, you should think of search engines as a stray cat; if you keep feeding it, it'll come back for more. Ignore it and it'll find love somewhere else. You need to feed search engine with the expert, high-quality, and authoritative content that they crave, and original and high quality video is the equivalent of top-shelf cat food.

While our email follow-up or autoresponder programs (a one-click creation process most of the time) will deliver content to your lead on schedule, we must assume that the same person goes looking for information everywhere else as well. This places a requirement upon us to create video as often as we can to create a fresh presence on all social channels, and to routinely demonstrate our expertise and authoritativeness to our follow-up audiences (our Instagratify tool makes this simple).

With all that content uploaded to YouTube it’s a little like uploading a needle into a haystack... when the haystack is the size of an ocean. Creating videos with SEO in mind tends to mitigate this invisibility and enables your videos to be found (remembering that YouTube itself a search engine). Since most people prefer watching video, Google’s organic results will more often than not return 'related' videos in search results. Are you one of them?

Branding YouTube

You must have a YouTube channel if you’re serious about your marketing, and you must have it branded in a manner that differentiates you from the competition. To ensure your channel stands out from the mediocrity you should upload a logo, a customised background, and ideally create a 'trailer video' to introduce the purpose of your business or channel, and you should create and structure relevant playlists to showcase your content. It's also a good idea to create a very, very short outro as a personalised ending that is appended to selected videos you upload (we’re in the process of testing a feature that will enable this by default for videos posted to Instagram). Discussed shortly, and as introduced earlier, we provide a feature to automate the cycling of your banner and channel appearance to cater for changing seasons and the trending interests of your audience.

People follow brands, and most often people – not products. If your brand differentiates sufficiently you will build an audience. And for most small businesses, you are your brand.

Once again, Yabber seriously simplifies the process of channel branding.

Instagratify

Instagratify is a module that manages your social media via Instagram. In summary, the system evaluates all hashtags associated with the post and filters the media to defined social media platforms. Designed to make your social media life extremely easy, Instagratify supports the uploads of videos to YouTube (and Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Wistia, Omny, Twitter and other networks). It removes all the complexity associated with the dissemination of short videos, and encourages the use of video sharing.

Yabber Integration

Described when we introduce the relevant modules, YouTube is available everywhere, such as landing pages and forms, via the use of simple select menus. In creating an integrated platform that supports your agile marketing, we've made it possible to deploy highly effective campaigns in seconds.

  Pictured: The drag-and-drop YouTube Elementor website block is exactly the same as the Wistia block, with the exception of YouTube options. The Wistia module is introduced in another article.

  Pictured: The front page video panel is made up of Wistia and YouTube videos. You simply select the videos to show from within Yabber and they're immediately rendered. Many front page elements are selected or created in the same way.

Your website's front page video may be altered with the click of a button, and escalating panels of three videos may also be created in a few seconds by selecting those videos you choose to show to your entry audience. Further, and when building content on your website, we provide our own YouTube block that - like everything else on Yabber - won't require copying and pasting of video; you simply drag-and-drop a block into your website and select your video from a select menu. It really couldn't be easier and faster to actually showcase your YouTube efforts.

Conclusion

This article touches on many features of the YouTube module but as you might have determined from the menu items shown in the various images, it's far from exhaustive.

We plead with businesses all the time to ignore those flawed and competing messages in the marketplace that seek to deflect your marketing budget into just Facebook at the expense of virtually everything else. We've dealt with video for over 20 years and we can conclusively and definitively state that it'll empower your business, connect you with referral partners, and allow you to take advantage of markets you didn't even know existed. Further, video will explode the effectiveness of any existing marketing or social program, and it will genuinely supercharge your funnel (through real education and edutainment). It's a small but significant reason our clients consistently outperform their competition in seriously significant ways.

Those that utilise the powerful Yabber Suite will choose to use video, or possibly defer their involvement until another time. Either way, when and if you choose to invest resources into video creation you'll have access to an amazing suite to support your creative endeavours.