Today I’m brewing up a hot cup of my favorite coffee, a naturally processed Ethiopian! I’m looking forward to telling you a little bit about YouTube,and really looking forward to this brew.

We don’t usually think of YouTube as a search engine, but it is–and it’s a big one. People are often surprised to hear that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, following just behind Google.

Being a search engine, you have the opportunity to display great advertisements and get them out to a wide audience through YouTube. There are a couple of things you can do to be effective with your YouTube channel, here’s how:

1. Provide content that people actually want: Oftentimes the best content hits on things that people don’t want to talk about like how much things cost and what could go wrong. Taking on this type of content and making it clear, concise, and intriguing can actually be great for your business because it shows transparency and a passion for the people viewing it.
2. Get value out of your video description and your captions: I always recommend captions because a lot of people watching your videos will be watching on-the-go, so they either can’t or don’t want to hear the videos. Another reason to add captioning is that when you add the script or captions to your video you get SEO credit for all of that writing, making your video more likely to pop up when a word you said is searched. You can also add this writing to your website or blog for your organic SEO.

So, YouTube videos are great for communicating engaging and important content, gain followers, and give yourself more SEO power. A few simple videos can be extremely impactful for your audience and, in turn, for your business. Break out that selfie stick and get some videos up on your YouTube channel ASAP!