How One Top National Brand Is Killing It On YouTube — And How to Snag Their Strategy

When it comes to branding and marketing, Nike is an example to learn from.

They've established and maintained an incredibly strong brand that's a household name, and that's the product of decades of strategic marketing.

Naturally, Nike's marketing department has kept up with the times, and today, they're seeing a lot of success on social media.

Nike is more than just an apparel brand — it's a lifestyle brand. It's a brand that stands for something — courage, performance, beating the odds.

Like their television commercials, Nike's social media posts are carefully crafted to cultivate their inspirational brand image and messaging across numerous platforms.

One of these platforms is Youtube.

Making videos might sound a little daunting, but today, creating great Youtube videos is easier than ever.

Video is becoming an increasingly important form of online content for brands, and even the most cash-strapped of solopreneurs can easily create professional looking videos.

Succeeding on Youtube with brand content is all about strategy and storytelling.

In a recent post from the SEMRush blog, the author explains how you can create killer Youtube content your audience will love.

Making a Killer YouTube Post

If your aim is creating a truly successful YouTube video, think strategically.

People can always watch one stand-alone video, but you need them to watch more.

A series of videos that add on to your previous videos is really an effective way to get your audience to watch more and more.

There are tons of tips on how to film, cut, and format videos, but you have to go beyond the technical aspects.

You have to create a video that grabs the user. Tell an exciting, breath-taking, and captivating story.

Stories, when done right, stir emotions and create trust.

When you offer repeated greatness your videos will lead to more and more subscriptions to your YouTube channel.

Nike is known for their inspirational videos, and it was the core of their content during this campaign. They created a series of pre-story videos with runners and posted them on YouTube on May 4th.

They used these videos to create an introduction to their social media campaign and to help tell their story.

Their video content was not about Nike, and it was not about the marathon itself.

It was about doing the impossible, and the audience loved it. And let’s not forget about how beneficial the frequent exposure was for the brand.

Their most successful video got 7,118 likes and 380 comments.

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Tips For Creating YouTube Content

1. Tell a story. You need someone that can handle the producer role or hire the one.
2. Optimize your YouTube channel. Use YouTube's internal SEO elements: pay attention to the titles, pick the rights tags, write descriptions thoroughly. People may not read it, but it is essential for crawlers. Let the audience find it through the millions of other similar video content.
3. Analyze your content performance. Use an analytics tool to manage your social media success and measure each video performance.
4. Unite all your content within a campaign. Interconnect your videos with content from other social networks. Use the same hashtags, similar descriptions, etc.
5. Try to keep videos at 2 minutes in length. The average recommended length of a typical non-educational video is 90 seconds these days, as a significant increase in length leads to audience engagement loss. Here is a cool guide on understanding your video audience retention.
6. Pitch the product at the climax point of the campaign. It is like Super Bowl commercials, they offer a great story and mention the product or service at just the right time.

You can learn more about Nike's social media marketing strategies over at SEMRush.