While YouTube is not a new social media, video-based site, it certainly is gaining a new demographic: marijuana consumers, media, and businesses. With a monthly average of over 208,450,000 views of YouTube videos, it’s a place on the internet you should be growing an audience.

If you don’t have a budget or the time for video right now, we do recommend you grab your company’s user name and create a YouTube channel. That way, when you are ready to dive into video marketing, you don’t run the risk of having lost your company’s YouTube page to someone else who was quicker to register it. Also, by just having an account, you can watch cannabis influencer videos, and consumer-made content, then comment on the content like you would on say Facebook or other social media sites. This method will start slowly growing your community and give you a head start.

When you’re ready to start producing video content for the platform, you’ll have a good idea of what does and doesn’t work, plus you may already have a good amount of “subscribers” to launch your first video for.

Methods of Growing a YouTube Community for Your Marijuana Business

As mentioned above, the first step is snagging that YouTube channel. Look at what YouTube cannabis videos are trending. Take notes on what seems to work and why. Look through the comments. What are people saying? What questions are they asking? This is a valuable way to come up with video topics for your channel.

Subscribe & Engage

As you find channels that are either “influencers” or consumers that would be a good fit for your brand, subscribe to their channels. See a video you really like – leave a comment. Even though you’re a brand, you’re still human and humans are connected through conversation. This activity of subscribe and engage is ongoing. The best channels are the most engaged ones. Who knows, you may get a video shout-out someday. That influencer may do some community growing for you just because they value your conversation. This is the very basic start of organic influencer marketing.

Publish

After you have purchased the correct pro-consumer video equipment and have strategized video topics, time to create. Starting out, a good time limit for your video posts is four minutes and twenty seconds. See, even YouTube is prime real estate for the cannabis industry. We can all remember 420.

Guests

Once you have a few video posts up and you’ve made connections either with top customers to your dispensary or area cannabis influencers, time to invite a guest on a video. Why is this a good option? Guess who’s going to share your video everywhere-your guests. This is an excellent way to highlight others from talking someone’s favorite strains and marijuana infused products to asking influencers about their place in the cannabis industry. It’s organic community growing to let others shine.

Vblog Swap

Similar to the guest approach, a “vblog swap” is where another channel producer or host comes on your video to talk about what they are doing, and other topics, and then you become a guest on their upcoming video for their channel. This is a favorite method of many “YouTube stars.”

The Key to Cannabis YouTube Video Success

Now that you have tips on how to grow your community on YouTube, the number one key to success is consistency. Continual publishing of video content on your channel is important. Set a production schedule and stick to it as much as possible. Decide if you are going to publish daily, weekly, or monthly. Monthly is the standard starting out as a suggested publishing schedule. As you get more comfortable with producing YouTube content, the more often you’ll want to post. In between publishing, subscribe and engage! Remember “out of sight, out of mind,” you don’t want to become out of sight and out of mind to your online community.

YouTube channel upkeep also has a lot of backend work like web development and SEO. You can learn more from Marijuana Marketing Xperts by reaching out to us about maintaining your channels success.

 

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