1. Have you added tags to your videos?

So simple yet so vital, these metatags help people find your content and increase the likelihood of you turning up in the right hand column while someone is looking at a related video.

There are two main ways in which you can work out what tags to use.

You can check what your rivals have used as tags by:

• Right clicking next to their video
• Selecting 'Inspect source'
• Press Ctrl +F and type 'Keyword'. See what they've been up to. 
• If it's relevant to your video, why not copy them?

Use this with a grain of salt however, no point copying 'marketing Ohio' if your video has nothing to do with Ohio (but perhaps you might want to add a tag related to your city instead).

You can add the extension VidIQ:

This is a handy Chrome extension app which suggests tags for your video based on the ones you've already entered. You can download it here.

2. Have you added cards to your videos?

Cards encourage interactivity - they're little teasers that appear in the upper right-hand corner. You can use them to link to the rest of your channel, poll viewers, promote your website, or even ask for donations. You can add up to 5 cards to a video. Find out more here. 

3. Have you added default content?

Instead of repeating the same information about your business in each video, you can set up some default information. Think of it as the equivalent of your email signature. This is also where you can add default tags for your videos (i.e tags that apply to all your content).

4. Have you uploaded a watermark?

You can upload your logo (or any other image) to appear in all your videos, either at a particular moment, such as the end of the video, or for its entirety. It's an easy way to maintain brand consistency.

5. Have you uploaded a transcript or closed captions?

This not only makes your content more searchable, but it also increases your video's accessibility. You can find a guide here.

Bonus: don't limit yourself to YouTube

Search engines don't penalize duplicate video content, so why not upload your video natively to Facebook, or to other video platforms such as Vimeo? Even better, if you really value your content, make it available as gated content so you can collect leads. 

Would you limit yourself to sharing your content just on Twitter? Probably not, and this isn't so different.