2024 YouTube Video Trends to Leverage for Your Small Business

We all know that when it comes to search engines, Google is the go-to Father of them all just like YouTube is the go-to Father of them all when it comes to video. With an estimated 2.24 billion active users, small businesses must not ignore YouTube and all of the opportunities that come with producing content that has the potential to reach even a fraction of those 2.24B people. If you’re wondering how you can leverage YouTube for your small business, consider these 2024 YouTube video trends which simply cannot be overlooked.

1. Live Streaming to Create Personal Connections

As a small business owner, you should be well aware of the importance of personal connections and relationships. In small business marketing, and in marketing in general, relationships are what makes the world go around. They are pivotal to the success of any campaign, and YouTube happens to be particularly focused on relationship building this year as it continues to promote live streaming as a leading opportunity on the platform.

From small events to worldwide streams like YouTube’s live streaming of Coachella in 2019 which had more than 82.9 million live viewers engaging together at a single time, brands are realizing the absolutely vital importance of live streaming online. As a small business owner, you can leverage live streaming on YouTube, and other social platforms to engage with your audience and add a level of personalization to your brand. 

Consider the following live streaming opportunities to connect with your audience online:

• Run live Q&A sessions.
• Interview industry experts to build authority.
• Host live sales and shopping events.
• Reveal a new product or service and offer special promotions to live attendees.
• Share product knowledge or special service features via livestream.

During the livestream, make sure that you’re actively engaging with your audience through the live chat and comments section. Once the live stream has completed, follow up with viewers that log in after the event with additional questions or comments to keep the chat going.

2. Take The Opportunity to Create Special Content 

Like most businesses of its stature, YouTube is constantly evolving to provide new services and features for creators, including small business owners like yourself. Some of these features include providing creators with the ability to engage new opportunities to release content to audiences. For instance, one of the 2024 YouTube video trends we see becoming more popular and that we believe small business can leverage is the Chapters feature and the video Premieres feature. Both of these features are relatively new but are expected to grow exponentially in the coming months.

Small businesses can leverage chapters to segment longer videos into specific sections so that their users can skip to the most appropriate “chapter” or section of the video for their needs. Chapters will also add a layer of SEO value to videos as timestamps and a chapter list will be included with the video upload on the YouTube channel. We recommend that brands use best SEO practices in regards to keyword targeting with their chapter creation.

Premieres are also going to skyrocket in 2024. Small businesses can use premieres to engage with their audiences similar to the way they would in a live stream, except they are able to create the video in advance and pre-record. This way, when the video “Premieres” the business owner can focus their time on interacting with the chat box rather than attempting to deliver the video through live stream and chat at the same time.

We see premieres becoming incredibly popular in 2024 for a number of reasons. This feature will help business owners engage with viewers while also providing an added layer of opportunity to release videos that couldn’t have otherwise been filmed live and yet, you can interact with your audience as if it were live.

3. Use YouTube Shorts to Build Your Channel

If the insanely popular TikTok isn’t enough to prove to you that short videos are important to consumers, perhaps the fact that the app has more than 850 million downloads will? Apps like TikTok hold a key place for short video content, but YouTube Shorts hopes to create a similar level of engagement among audiences. As a small business owner, you need to know that short video content is important, users do love it, and it’s not likely to go anywhere anytime soon.

YouTube created YouTube Shorts as a way of competing with platforms like TikTok but also to provide its creators with an opportunity to utilize its platform for a similar experience. Small businesses can look to YouTube Shorts as an extension of their YouTube Channel, producing short 15 second video segments to a variety of music tracks. And, because YouTube shorts are featured on the mobile dashboard, you can bet you’ll get right in front of a wide audience if you release shorts as part of your regular YouTube video marketing strategy in 2024.

4. Reach 1000 Subscribers & Engage with Your Community

Although this might seem like a lofty idea for some small businesses, those that are able to build up their subscriber list on YouTube to 1000 or more will have the ability to engage in a new feature that the platform provides called “Community.” This feature allows you to interact with your audience through things like polls, text based chats, GIFs and both static images and videos. This is proof once again that much of the 2024 YouTube video trends that small businesses should be focusing on are based on interaction with their audiences to personalize their brand. 

While the “Community” tab is only available to creators that have at least 1000 subscribers to their channel, it’s certainly something for small businesses to reach for. In fact, we think it’s very important and to help you out, we’ve put together a list of some steps you can take to grow your subscriber list to 1000 so that you can engage with your audience on the Community tab, too. Consider the following steps to grow your audience subscribers:

• Create YouTube video content around longer tail keywords relative to your brand to maximize reach & increase subscribers.
• Use “subscriber magnets” by identifying the content that has generated the most subscribers for you in the past and then feature that video in your End Screen, as the kickoff video for a Playlist, and in a card. Promote, promote, promote to build up your subscribers.
• Go to other YouTube Channels and watch videos that are relative to your niche. Then provide useful, valuable comments on the videos so that you can be found on the pages of more popular YouTubers.
• Reply to any comments that you receive – EVERY SINGLE ONE! People are more likely to subscribe if they know you will interact with them.
• Embed YouTube videos in your blog posts, landing pages, or other places that you are already generating traffic.

As you can see, 2024 YouTube video trends that small businesses should be leveraging are largely focused on audience engagement, mostly because consumers are more focused than ever before on engaging and interacting with the brands they favor. If you’re not ready to build true relationships with your audience, you’re probably going to struggle – but brands that are ready and willing to actively engage and interact with their audiences are sure to see profits, revenues, and true value as a result.