Choosing the right social media marketing channel, and sticking to it, is one of the most important business decisions you need to make.

I recommend YouTube to most of my business coaching clients. Most of them are educators in one way or another, and YouTube is great for educational content. However, it takes time to master and you may not get immediate results.

That’s why you want to be sure you’ve chosen the right platform for your business, your audience, and your personality. This post will help you take some time and think it through. Is this the platform for me?

I love YouTube. It’s been the best investment of time for my marketing needs.

It’s fantastic for reaching new people and a powerful tool for helping current clients stay engaged outside of direct contact with me.

I’m a bit of a performer, since I spent the first half of my life on stage, but I won’t lie. Being in front of a camera is much more intimate, and even for me it’s been a challenge. You may not have the same skill set…so is it really going to be worth it to work through all the feelings and fears?

That’s your decision to make. I hope this post empowers you to decide.

My top 5 personal reasons to start a YouTube channel:

1. You already have clarity about your target audience and their core needs and interests.

YouTube wants it’s audience to be happy and find what they need. It will reward folks who are clear on their mission, core values, and audience. YouTube needs all of the tech details like titles, keywords and descriptions, tags, thumbnails and end screens to be utilized before they will elevate your content. All that stuff is so much easier if you have your basic biz messaging in place.

Full confession: when I started my own channel 7 years ago, I had still wasn’t clear on these things and I used my YouTube channel to find out for myself. I’m not saying don’t do that! But, it took a lot of work and I don’t want other folks to go through what I went through.

2. You value creative expression and are ready for visibility.

You want a platform that gives you the room to be creative and express yourself in your own, unique way. Your business has a unique selling proposition and you are ready to be more visible, reach a larger audience, and earn more money.

3. You want to engage potential customers.

You want to engage that audience and learn from them, not just preach to them. A small number of truly engaged people are much more important for a service based business than a large audience of disengaged watchers.

4. You want ways to gain trust and build authority in your field of expertise without burning out.

You want to gain the trust of potential customers by showing them who you are as a human being and an expert in your field – without having to talk to each one personally.

5. You have a desire to be of service but are clear on your boundaries.

You know what you offer can make the world a better place and you want to share it. Yes, you also want to be of service in a very unequal world, but you need a good ROI for time spent on marketing since most of it is done by you.

If you can’t afford to work for free (who can?) or give scholarships, you can still post meaningful content that may reach people all over the world. I’ve found clients in India, Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union through YouTube.

Here are my top 5 return-on-time-investment reasons to choose YouTube:

1. There are currently 2.49 billion users on the platform.

That’s about 25% of the global population, half a billion more than Instagram. Go here for more demographics on those users. The largest number of folks on YouTube are 25 – 34, whereas Instagram skews younger and is more product driven. YouTube still reaches significant sectors of the population ages 18 – 65 as well.

2. YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world (Google is the first).

People there are looking for help and looking for answers to their problems. On average, they engage for 2 -3 minutes on YouTube, as opposed to 30 seconds for Instagram. That’s enough time for you to make an impact and actually teach them something. On Instagram there is a lot of scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, and not a ton of learning.

3. Google and YouTube are synergistic.

That’s the two biggest search engines on the planet being best friends. Some people find that creepy, but if you use it to your advantage, it’s good for your business.

4. It’s got free market research built in.

Your best, evergreen content will naturally come to the foreground which is also free market research for you. You can easily get stats for which videos get more views, and which ones people watch all the way through to the end. You get feedback on your offerings as opposed to only listening to the critical, perfectionist voices in your head.

5. You can build a substantial video archive and continually improve it.

You can go back and touch up the most popular videos to increase your audience and sell workshops or other services as you continue to improve your YouTube skills.

Finally, go here for more Instagram stats and comparative stats for different social media platforms if you are still confused about what’s best for you.

If you decide to try YouTube, remember to keep asking:

Does it help you shape and focus material, serve your intended audience, and start engaging new people with your work?

Do you personally benefit from what you learn making the videos and posting them?

If the answer is yes, you are going to feel more energized and enlivened by communicating with a real audience. It’s going to take patience, time, and effort, but all of that effort will funnel back into your business in indirect ways.

Engagement fuels creativity, which is a huge asset for your business.

The quality and integrity of your work will be elevated by creating for real humans; and they will be better served.

Now…if you’ve already started a YouTube channel and you aren’t getting as much engagement as you would like, there are probably some simple things you can do about it. Reach out for a free, no sales pressure strategy session to find out what some of them are.

Celebrate that you got your channel up and running, and stay tuned for more tips on how to make the most out of the effort you have already put in. Don’t give up yet!

Stay tuned for an upcoming post on first steps to set up a YouTube channel and some tweaks you can use to improve the one you already have. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but if you are intentional about how you set it up, you’ll get a much better results.