This should be a question that more businesses in Trinidad and Tobago should be asking, but unfortunately, I don’t hear it enough. It’s quite shocking actually because YouTube has so many direct and indirect benefits for businesses that will allow them to generate 3 key things they are always stressing over 1) Sales, 2) Lead Generation and 3) Brand Awareness.

Let me cut right to the chase and answer the question, Yes! You should start a YouTube channel for your business, but I want to explore the why & how it will help your business.

It’s no secret that 9/10 businesses here in T & T struggle when it comes to social media. They don’t understand it, most people internally don’t want to understand it and therefore they outsource the work to agencies or graphic designers and they believe that they can simply create graphics, hard-selling their products and all will be well in the world.

So you find that most businesses tend to stay away from platforms that require you to focus on video. The bad news is that since Instagram made its announcement some months that they are no longer a photo-sharing app but now a media platform, every social network is pushing you to create video content. Creating static images and hoping for anybody to see them is a thing of the past.

Now, when it comes to YouTube, here’s where businesses should be making a conscious effort to build on the platform.

YouTube isn’t like any other social network and that’s cause YouTube is a Search Engine that benefits greatly from being a part of Google.

The videos that do extremely well on YouTube fall into 1 of 3 categories typically, 1) Educational, 2) Entertaining and 3) Inspirational. If you can manage to achieve all 3 of these things in 1 video you got yourself a winner.

Learning how to do “Search Engine Listening” will allow you to tap into all of the insights that the Search Engines collect on everybody in every country in the world. When you gain access to this type of data, you can fully understand your customer, their pain points, desires, demographics, and the questions they are asking on the search engines.

That will allow you to craft your Marketing & Business Development plans. This will tell you exactly what types of video content you need to create to solve the problems your customers have.

Think about it! Whenever you have a question or a problem, where is the first place you go?

If you said Google, you are correct.

From Google, we look for either an article/blog or a video that directly answers our query.

If you the business are consistently showing up in all of the searches related to your niche and your YouTube video content is there answering the questions, you will build your brand awareness, get your ideal customers to subscribe to your channel and the next logical step will be for them to reach out to you for more information or to make a purchase.

That is the power of YouTube & creating video content right there.

It gets better, we can monetize our YouTube channels right here in T&T and Google will send you out a cheque in USD or they can do a direct deposit right into our local bank accounts.

The requirements to monetize are that you need to have 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours in the last 365 days. YouTube pays out promptly on the 22nd of every month.

Check out YouTubers like Devon X Scott (a Trini YouTuber) who have spoken about how to monetize YouTube and he also created an e-book on how to do it that is available to purchase on Amazon (Pursuing YouTube In The Caribbean).

As a business owner, this means that YouTube could create an additional revenue stream for your business through the monetization of your content.

In 2019, YouTube paid out over $16 BILLION in the US, which was the equivalent of supporting 345,000 Full-Time jobs in the US!

You can also add your Affiliate Links into the description to drive sales or add your booking links or website to help drive traffic to your platforms.

Remember…YouTube is a SEARCH ENGINE! You are in business to solve a problem. The 1st place we go to when we have a problem is Google, which will then direct us to a video answering our questions.

This is the #1 to get in front of your IDEAL CUSTOMERS!

Your subscribers are the people who are actively seeking out the answers to the problems your business solves and this is why every single business should have a YouTube channel.

I hope this helps your decision in adding YouTube as a platform to help grow your business.

If you have any questions, drop a message on my contact page and reach out to me.