Alex Koss, Digital Content
YouTube Strategy
How I Implemented First-Class Strategy Across Channels
As the digital content coordinator for the Grizzlies, I managed YouTube activations for each of their six brands: Memphis Grizzlies, Memphis Hustle, Grind City Media, Grizz Gaming, FedExForum and Grizzlies Youth Basketball. Below, I'll explore a few examples of how I implemented strategy on the Grizzlies and Grind City Media YouTube channels.
Channel Overviews
The Memphis Grizzlies YT channel provides an all-encompassing video experience for fans to get an inside look at the team while simultaneously promoting brand awareness on a global scale. Videos vary from interviews, in-game highlights and community videos to the Emmy-nominated, documentary-styled series Beyond Grit.
Alternatively, Grind City Media is the team's in-house media branch known for its daily coverage of Grizzlies/NBA news, analysis and pop culture in and around the sports world. The channel features a cast of 10+ personalities whom host numerous shows ranging from audio-only podcasts to video recordings and live broadcasts.
Grabbing Attention
Title and Thumbnail Strategy
The first thing you see when browsing on YouTube (or any platform) is a video's thumbnail followed by the title. My goal is to immediately capture your attention with a colorful or engaging thumbnail that generates interest with a thought-provoking title to lead to a click. Below is a sample of thumbnails I created in Photoshop CC from scratch or using fonts, logos, shapes, and occasional templates provided by the Grizzlies' graphics team.
Getting Discovered
Optimizing SEO To Your Advantage
However, even the most captivating titles and thumbnails won't perform well if people can't find your videos to begin with. This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in. YouTube uses a powerful algorithm that analyzes user behavior to match videos to users based on other top-performing videos utilizing similar keywords. These videos are then displayed on the homepage, recommended videos list, suggested videos list, and search results based on their relevance and individual performance. So targeting relevant keywords in the title, description, and tags in your videos along with viewer engagement (likes, comments, watch time, shares, subscriptions, etc) helps YouTube determine when, where, and how often to show your videos in search results and automated lists. I use a tool called Videolytics from TubeBuddy that lets me see how well my video ranks up against similar channels and videos on the site.
Cards & End Screens
Additional Marketing Elements Within a Video
YouTube provides several optional elements to help creators market themselves within their videos:
Cards are interactive elements that appear in the top right-hand corner of a video on both desktop and mobile used to promote videos, playlists, channels, and website link-outs. Creators can add up to five cards per video and manually place . (YouTube will occasionally place automated Sponsored Ads here as well)
End Screens are big 5-20 second long overlay elements that can display anywhere within the last 20 seconds of a video. Similar to cards, elements comprise of videos, playlists, channels/subscribe button, and website link-outs.
Take a look below to see how all of these elements (Title, Thumbnail, Cards, End Screens) come together to make a complete product.
Community Posts
Adding Personality to Your Brand
The YouTube Community Tab is an exclusive feature unlocked after 1,000 subscribers designed to help creators engage with their audience outside of the videos that they upload to their channel. Similar to Twitter, this feature gives your channel a 'voice' with the ability to interact directly with your subscribers using photos, polls, video shares or text that appear in a subscriber's video feed.
YouTube Stories
Content Beyond Traditional Video
YouTube Stories are short, mobile-only videos that allow creators with 10,000 subscribers or more to personally connect with their audiences. Unlike traditional videos, stories can only be up to 15-seconds long and then disappear after 7 days. I like to use them to promote new videos, funny player memes, team updates and more. But because it's still a relatively new feature, more opportunities are out there as trends unfold.
Engaging with the Community
Video Stats Aren't The Only Metrics That Matter
As important as it is to upload quality content on a regular basis, it's equally important to engage with your community via hearts, replies, and comments. In addition to free exposure for your channel, these small gestures can have a big, emotional impact on the end-users helping them feel valued and connected to the channel; fostering a unique one-to-one experience between users and creators. This is the underlying foundation to YouTube success and is what keeps bringing loyal viewers back for more.
Memphis Grizzlies Analytics
When I took over the Grizzlies account in 2018, the channel only had 1.6k subscribers, less than 5k total watch time hours and a mere 181k channel views as it had not been actively monitored since its inception in 2007. Fast forward two years later, I've grown the channel exponentially to +23.5k subscribers, +200k total watch time hours and 5.7M channel views overall. I also led our enrollment into the YouTube Partner Program in early 2019.
Grind City Media
Similarly, the Grind City Media YouTube channel had not uploaded in months and was effectively sitting dormant with only 17 subscribers. I immediately saw its evergreen potential given the channel's freedom to upload content not restricted to basketball, and decided to start posting miscellaneous clips from our daily app show to the channel. This evolved into me uploading the daily, full-length shows to the channel which then turned into us going Live by connecting it straight to our TriCaster. Today, we advertise YouTube as the primary location to watch all of our live shows and archived video content.
