One of the most important stages of insurance agents' careers is marketing their services and reaching new customers. Cold-calling, email marketing, and referrals are some ways brokers may rely on to spread the word about their products.
In contrast, agents may also rely on different social media platforms. With the developments of these platforms, YouTube has become a great option to market your insurance plans and/or company. The giant search engine is easy to use by agents and accessed by millions of users daily, making it a great way to reach big audiences.
However, starting your YouTube channel and maintaining it requires great effort and dedication, especially since you already have a busy schedule. In addition, some brokers may feel demotivated when they see their videos not reaching the target audience at the speed they wish they would.
If you are also struggling with that issue, make sure you continue reading this article to find out the tips you can use to boost your YouTube visibility.
Why should insurance brokers think of starting a YouTube channel?
You should consider setting up your own YouTube channel because of how widespread and accessible the platform is. YouTube is the second largest search engine, only behind Google. According to statistics, 74% of US adults watch YouTube videos, so this is a big market you would like to target in your marketing strategy.
The platform is growing exceedingly fast, and let's face it: People love watching videos. They are much easier media forms to consume than articles or social media posts. Some popular video forms you can find on the platform are how-to, explainer, and training videos. This is excellent news for you as an insurance agent since these are the types of videos that you are most likely to produce in your career. After all, there are still many misconceptions or frequently-asked questions about the different insurance policies, so shooting videos that explain these insurance plans dramatically benefits you and your audience members.
Additionally, since Google owns YouTube, you have a much better chance of ranking high in the search results. This helps you reach a broader audience in little time, especially if you follow the tips mentioned in this article to boost your YouTube visibility.
How can you boost your YouTube visibility?
Being an online platform with more than 2 billion active users, YouTube can be an excellent means for insurance agents to grow their businesses. However, simply shooting videos and uploading them to YouTube without optimization will not help your videos rank high. Like any other online platform, YouTube has its own set of rules that you need to respect if you want to boost your YouTube visibility.
To help you do so, we have gathered the most critical and reliable tips you need to remember before starting your YouTube journey.
Tip #1: Understand how YouTube works.
To optimize your YouTube visibility, you must first understand how the platform works.
Like any search engine, YouTube delivers results close to the search query. For example, suppose a user is looking up a video on income insurance. In that case, the top results will be related to that insurance type and not another one. So, before you upload any video, clearly understand what your audience members might be searching for.
Once you know what topics you wish to discuss in your videos, you need to use keywords. Like other search engines, YouTube visibility heavily depends on SEO (or Search Engine Optimizations). In other words, your videos will rank higher if you know what to include. Incorporate keywords in the title of your videos, in their description, and the hashtags. Ensure that the keywords are relevant to your videos and that people commonly search for and want to know more about them.
Tip #2: Develop high-quality content and upload videos regularly.
Good, high-quality content attracts more viewers. Your audience members will not stick around nor share your videos if your content is misleading, wrong, or "lazy." Viewers are savvy and can smell from a mile away whether you have put enough effort into developing your content. You should remember that good content helps build a trusting relationship with your viewers. And when you're selling something like insurance policies, you are selling your clients a promise, which heavily depends on how much they trust you and your products.
So, how can you ensure you deliver credible, quality content?
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Prepare well for the video: Do the necessary research before you start shooting, and keep your audience members in mind while preparing for the video. If you feel that you're using too much insurance jargon, which your viewers might find difficult to understand, make sure you simplify the terms or include their explanations as inserts.
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Use video captions: When working on your YouTube videos, you want to make sure that they are accessible to as many viewers as possible. Using video captions helps you reach more users and increase your viewers' watch time, which is very important for the videos to rank high. Additionally, divide your videos into sections that you include in the description to make it easier for users to jump to the desired part of the video.
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Engage with your viewers: At the early stages of your YouTube journey, you need to respond to your viewers' comments. Check the users' feedback and learn from it. You can answer their questions directly in the comment section or use them as topics for future videos.
Tip #3: Analyze your competitors' channels.
Before starting your own YouTube channel, it is recommended that you do competitor research. This will help you know what other insurance brokers are uploading and what topics they are discussing. This is not to say that you need to use the same ideas and content as other YouTubers, but they can help you identify the starting point of your channel. In addition, you can learn from your competitors by analyzing their videos and content strategies.
How can the competitors' videos benefit you?
In addition to the previously mentioned benefit of knowing what topics are currently trending, looking at your competitors' posts can help you as follows:
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Knowing which video categories are getting the most views so that you can focus on them
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Checking which tags and hashtags are currently trending
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Seeing the comments that the users leave on those videos can inspire you for future video topics
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Seeing the number of likes and comments on each video can help you have certain expectations for your content
Tip #4: Keep an eye on YouTube metrics.
Similarly to other online platforms, YouTube has metrics you can and should keep a close eye on. Metrics are your way of measuring the success of your videos and channel. Thanks to YouTube analytics, you can track each video's performance, the number of engagements, watch time, revenue (in future stages), and more. Not closely monitoring this data puts you at a great disadvantage and puts your channel at risk of not gaining YouTube visibility.
How is this helpful to you?
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It allows you to look at the total number of engagements, ranging from likes, comments, views, and shares. In addition, it can show you which sections interested the viewers the most.
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It shows you which topics were greatly received by your audience members and which ones should be scrapped in the future. As such, in future videos, you would give greater importance to the former.
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It allows you to make more money by including paid promotions in your most popular videos. You can use that money to grow your channel further, improve your insurance policies, or for personal projects.
Grow your business thanks to YouTube!
Thinking of starting your own YouTube channel but are not exactly sure how to do? If you still have any second thoughts, take this as your sign to consider setting up your channel as soon as possible. If you follow these four tips, you are sure to have a successful and popular YouTube channel in no time.
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