YouTube will help consumers and businesses find you

May 4, 2026
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We humans are social animals, and we find faces and voices persuasive — most of the time

This article originally appeared 16 Oct. 2025

You’re reading the Your News Biz newsletter. My goal is to help digital media entrepreneurs and small businesses find viable business models.

The most frequent question I get from colleagues is, “How can I get more clients/customers with digital marketing and social media?” For me, it’s all about building authentic relationships, trustworthy relationships. Social media isn’t always the answer.

For people in business, I like to recommend YouTube. Make some short videos of your clients talking about you and your business. It’s free. And I believe your profile there generates trust.

You don’t need the polish of a Hollywood studio to produce effective videos that promote your business, a product, or an event. Be yourself. Your sincerity and enthusiasm will come across as authentic, genuine, trustworthy. (AI image produced with the help of Gemini.)

YouTube: People respond to other people’s faces and voices

  1. People watch videos. You can use that focused interest to help grow your business with YouTube. Several sources estimate that about 60% of online shoppers use video to make purchasing decisions.
  2. In these slides, you’ll see a step-by-step process for creating a YouTube account plus how to use the account to maximize your business impact.
  3. Store the videos that you post to YouTube on your hard drive and use them for other platforms.

My journey making videos

I’ve been making videos with my iPhone for as long as they were possible. And I made some instructional, how-to videos for my students seven years ago using a free screen recording tool. (There are newer and better ones today.)

This instructional one was “How to do more effective searching in Google.” It got 397 views and more than 20 hours of watch time, so it must have helped the students, despite the fact that the sound was not studio quality. There are better built-in microphones today.

Lately, as a mentor of small business people for SCORE.org, I’ve made some videos from Zoom to promote the organization. Here are playlists of some I created, this one to promote the value of our mentoring, and this one to recruit mentors. (The latter was done at an event, with a lot of background noise; see if you think that was an obstacle.)

A suggested method for beginners:

  1. Record the video on your phone or on Zoom or another platform. I’ve learned to use these tools over time.
  2. Edit the raw video to fit the goals you have: 30 seconds or less to get people’s attention, 6 minutes for a short vidcast, 60 minutes for an interview with one or more people. (I feel comfortable editing on iMovie, which is free on my Apple computer.)
  3. Add some visuals with supplemental information (graphics, photos, short videos) and break up the monotony of watching one person talk.
  4. Add subtitles (you can do this on YouTube automatically, but be sure to edit them; it can mess up proper names or your company name). I use a tool called Kapwing for subtitles and adding images, but I pay for it. There is a free version.

Above all, patience is required. Making a good finished video takes time. I figure at least one hour to produce a one-minute video. It takes me four to eight hours to finish producing a 45-minute interview. That includes all my stops and starts and do-overs. The do-overs happen less often as you get the hang of it.

More tools

Here’s a handout I use at public events while volunteering for SCORE.org, which gives free mentoring to small businesses and entrepreneurs: 5 Digital marketing tips to build your business.

This newsletter explains the power of trustworthy relationships in a crowded digital ecosystem: Trust people not bots: Your guide to thriving as Google search results plummet