Optimizing the Social Media Presence of an International Biotech Society

The Result IEEE’s Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBS) has a long-established YouTube channel filled with educational and thought-provoking videos for the biomedical engineering community. However, subscribers, views, and engagement were low, driving EMBS to revisit their social media marketing strategy.

EMBS collaborated with D2 Creative to produce many of their videos. Given our existing partnership, as well as our experience in social media marketing, EMBS turned to D2 Creative to help make sure that as many people were finding and engaging with their YouTube content as possible.

Over the course of our initial audit of the YouTube channel, a handful of issues became immediately apparent. Missing descriptions, randomly generated thumbnails, and underutilized tags were hurting the search engine optimization (SEO) of each video. Additionally, the channel itself lacked some key optimizations for encouraging engagement.

We got to work updating the library of nearly 200 videos with optimization best practices. This meant going through the content of the videos and determining the tags that best suit each one. Additionally, we incorporated these tags within updated titles and descriptions to further boost their effectiveness. Other video optimizations included adding end cards asking users to view additional curated videos and subscribe, and utilizing YouTube’s chapter system to break up longer videos.

During our audit, we determined a number of ways to improve the channel itself as well. This included updating the About section to feature more relevant and search-optimized copy, grouping related content into easier-to-access playlists, and setting up channel watermarks to promote brand awareness and encourage subscribing. We also designed a variety of custom thumbnails to create a cohesive brand identity across the channel. Finally, we created a short, 30-second channel trailer to introduce new visitors to EMBS. The video was designed to also be useable for promoting the channel on other social media platforms, in paid advertisements, or in email marketing campaigns.

Our efforts greatly boosted both the ranking of their channel’s videos and the overall channel performance. Our YouTube channel optimization enabled EMBS to be seen by a much wider audience than what was possible before.

The results speak for themselves. In a roughly two-month period (Jun 20 – Aug 15, 2021):

• Views increased by 38.74%
• Subscribers increased by 2.93%
• Watch time (hours) increased by 21.26%
• Impressions increased by 16.49%