How to create thought leader interview videos for YouTube marketing?
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If your business has numerous competitors, what do you do to make it stand out from the rest? How do you prove your expertise to your target audience so that they trust and choose you ahead of your competitors? The answer to both these questions is thought leadership, which is one of the most commonly used marketing strategies in today’s times.
Thought leadership can be executed in a variety of ways, and before the popularity of video content skyrocketed, it was done by businesses through blog posts, white papers, and executive newsletters. However, times have changed, and while there’s no reason you can’t establish your business as a thought leader through blogs and newsletters, what you should prioritize is video.
In recent years, several individuals and businesses have benefited from publishing thought leadership videos on YouTube – the world’s biggest video streaming platform. Thought leadership videos can be of quite a few types, with interview videos being one of the most preferred forms. In this post, we’ll take you through all the things you need to know to create compelling thought leader interviews on YouTube.
The benefits of thought leader interview videos
Before we get to the best practices involved in terms of creating thought leader interview videos, we believe it’s necessary for you to understand the benefits you stand to derive from them. Below, we’ve compiled a list of the biggest advantages that thought leader interview videos would add to your business.
Answer genuine questions that your target audience may have
YouTube offers businesses the chance to communicate with their target audiences in a way that simply couldn’t be explored before. It’s personal, it’s engaging, and audiences get to hear the answers straight from the horse’s mouth. What could be better?
From responding to the most frequently asked questions to clarify complex confusions that audiences may have about your business – you can do it all through YouTube. Some businesses are often criticized for not maintaining transparent communication with their audiences. However, through thought leader videos, you can maintain transparency with both existing and prospective customers – paving the way for relations that are built on trust.
Greater brand exposure
If you release high-quality thought leadership video content on YouTube consistently over a long period, your brand stands to gain exposure on an unprecedented scale. Simply put, informative videos that offer meaning to your target audience will be shared. As the shares keep stacking up on social media, more and more people will be encouraged to know about you and all that your brand stands for.
Sure, not every netizen will find your business relevant and helpful, but the ones that do are bound to remember you. The best thing about YouTube is that it still offers free channel subscriptions. If you take advantage of that, your business is destined to go the distance.
Collaborate and tap into new audiences
If you’re not new to the world of YouTube, you’ve surely seen some collaborations on the platform, irrespective of the niche. Successful collaborations on YouTube can significantly expand the reach of a channel and help businesses to tap into the possibilities of serving brand new audiences. From those good old shout-outs to doing cameos to hosting each other’s videos – there’s no scarcity of collab ideas to explore on YouTube.
While you can’t expect to collaborate with the top YouTubers in and/or around your business niche after just one or two videos, you can expect to be approached once your viewership is steady and steadily growing. Of course, feel free to approach other YouTube channels too. Who knows? You might just be granted a collab by a YouTuber with a significant following.
Share your innovations with the world
No YouTube channel racks up a millions of views and/or subscribers overnight. For most channels, the process of starting small and going through the gears to reach a respectable position is long and arduous. However, instead of letting that fact discourage you on your YouTube endeavors, let it give you the motivation to excel.
Because after all, YouTube’s user-count is nothing short of astounding. With over 2 billion monthly users, YouTube is second only to Facebook when it comes to total consumers, and we’re only talking logged-in users here. Remember, your videos can be viewed by users without logging in as well. So, don’t be shy of putting your innovations out there for the world to see. People who find value in them will definitely be drawn towards your brand, and in the long run, your YouTube marketing efforts will pay off.
Tips for creating compelling thought leader interviews
Before you reap the rewards of publishing regular thought leader interview videos, you’ve got to put in a lot of work. If you don’t really know where to start, read on, as we take you through some handy tips that can help you make the videos impactful and memorable.
Pick the right questions to answer
If you’ve just started your business, you may not know the questions that your niche’s audiences are frequently asking. For starters, take a look at the various online profiles of your competitors and find out the questions that their audiences are asking. If your customers have raised questions about your business in the past, include them as well. The point is of this exercise is to attempt to answer as many of your target audience’s questions as possible.
Prepare detailed answers without making them over-elaborate
Once you’ve decided on the questions you’re going to answer in your video, it’s time to prepare all the answers. Ideally, the answers should be detailed, but without going into the specifics of everything. Your answers should also feature a fair mix of layman and technical terms. Including technical sections in your answers will showcase your expertise and mixing them up with easy-to-understand sections will be appreciated by the masses.
Select a spot for the interview that reflects your brand identity
If you’ve readied all your questions and answers, it’s time to prepare for the shoot and the first thing you’d want to sort out is the place you’ll be recording the interview. You should ideally select a place that is aligned with your brand and its tone. For example, if your brand carries a formal and serious tone, conducting the interview in an office environment would be a good idea.
Get your recording gear in order
The recording gear you use to capture the audio and video of the interview will dictate their quality. If you don’t have much in terms of budget constraints, you should get in touch with a professional videographer. But if you’re operating on a tight budget, there’s no reason why you can’t go DIY. However, the problem with going DIY is that you’ll have to handle all the time-consuming aspects of the recording process, which involves setting up the gear for optimum audio and video capture.
No shortcuts on the day of the shoot
If you expect the video recording process to be a walk in the park, you’d be wrong. Your script may be concise and crisp, but that doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to do it all in one take. Be patient during the process and it’s best to go from one question to the next in terms of the takes. That way, you can check the quality of each take and do re-takes if required, which will ultimately save you a ton of trouble in the post-production phase.
Excellent editing is key to making your video complete
Once the shoot has been wrapped up, it’s time to put your video together. Editing can be a tedious task, especially if you aren’t really familiar with editing software. If you’ve got the money to spare for it, don’t hold back in terms of hiring professionals to do the editing for you. With outsourced editing, you can concentrate on creating future videos. If you do go down the DIY editing route, make sure that the cuts aren’t too abrupt and include elements of your brand identity within the video.
Be receptive to what your YouTube viewers have to say
It’s okay for your first YouTube thought leader interview to have its flaws. However, it’s not okay for your subsequent releases to have the same flaws. That’s why it’s important to ask your viewers to leave their opinions about a particular video in the comments section. More importantly, you should respond to those comments in an appreciative and respectful manner. And you should also try to incorporate your viewers’ suggestions across your future videos.
Conclusion
In conclusion to this post, we’d just like to say that thought leader interview videos are among the most innovative forms of video marketing strategies to have emerged in recent years. Its success for businesses both within and outside the YouTube landscape only proves its potency as a marketing strategy and if your business hasn’t tried it out so far, we definitely recommend experimenting. Sure, it’s a lot of work, but with the right attitude, it can also be a lot of fun and pay dividends in the long run!
