If you’ve put off creating a YouTube account for your business because you’re not sure where to start — don’t worry, you’re not alone. But it’s all a lot easier than you think. Your first step is to set up a YouTube account so that it’s ready when you finally have videos to upload.

From there, you can upload your video, market your channel, and tweak all sorts of settings to make your channel appear in people’s searches. Keep reading, and we’ll show how to get started, how to configure your account, how to add your first videos, and how to stake a claim and promote your business on YouTube.

Get Started

To create your account, navigate to YouTube’s “Get started“page. Pay special attention to the “Username” field; it will become the name of your YouTube channel, and it will be viewable by everyone.

Think branding over search engine keywords when it comes to choosing an appropriate username. Verizon Wireless didn’t go with mobilephones or wireless but simply verizon. Why? People who want to know about Verizon search for “Verizon,” not generic keywords. Note that YouTube username must be one word, with no spaces or special characters. Upper and lower case letters are permitted, though.

After you’ve entered your desired username, email address, and other basic info, YouTube will ask you to sign in with a Google Account (Google owns YouTube). If you don’t have a Google Account, create one here. It’s a good idea to create a Google Account strictly for your business; other Google applications like Gmail and Google+ are linked to your account. You’ll want to keep your business and personal activities separate.

On the next screen, you may be asked to confirm your account via a text message or a voice call so that YouTube can confirm the account wasn’t created for spamming purposes. Finally, YouTube will send a verification email to the address you used to create the account. Click the link in that email to verify your account and then you can start with the fun stuff!

Edit Your YouTube Profile

Just like your Twitter account or Facebook Page, you’ll want to customize your YouTube profile to highlight the most important information. To get started, click on the “Edit” link next to the “Profile” section of your channel.

Fill out every field that’s applicable to your business; all of this information will help people find your account on YouTube. The mandatory fields to complete include your name, website, channel description (what people can expect from your YouTube account), and home town (location) if you are a local business.

Additional fields such as interests, about me, books, movies, and so forth can be unchecked and left blank or filled in where appropriate. Generally, the more information you include, the better.

Customize Your Channel

You’ll see several buttons above your channel. Click the “Settings” button to create an appropriate title for your channel, and add “Channel Tags” to help people find your channel in search. These fields are essential for on-site search optimization — they also form the “meta title” and “meta description” that search engines use to find and display your YouTube channel.

Next, click the “Themes and Colors” button to give your channel a customized look and feel. Under the “show advanced options” link, you can get even more detailed color settings and upload a background image for your channel.

“Modules” allows you to specify which items show up on your YouTube profile, such as Subscribers, Friends, Recent Activity, or other key aspects of your profile. You can choose to display or hide certain features until you have enough subscribers or activity to confirm your positive “social proof.”

Finally, you’ll see “Videos and Playlists” but you’ll need to revisit this option once you’ve actually put some videos on your channel.

Edit Your Account Settings

Access your account settings by clicking the arrows next to your channel name in the top-right of your screen then select “Settings.” Here, you can add a profile picture to your channel by clicking on the “Change” link under the grey blank portrait. A profile image could be a person who’s a representative of your business, a company logo, or any other image that effectively represents your business.

Aside from adding a profile photo, you might also want to go through the Email Options to ensure that you only receive the updates that you need. If you’re interested in checking out YouTube’s social features, click “Activity Sharing.” Here, you can connect and post updates to your Facebook and Twitter accounts whenever you perform one of the checked activities such as liking a video, commenting, subscribing, adding a favorite, uploading, or adding a video to a playlist.

Add Videos to Your Channel

Now here’s the fun part. If you have videos for your business, click on the “Upload” link to the right of the search box to start uploading. Be sure to add a good title and description, as these will form the meta title and meta description for the video page and are very important for search. Of course, there’s more to uploading videos to YouTube, but this is a good start.

If you don’t have videos for your business yet, one way to populate your YouTube channel is to find other videos relevant to your industry and “favorite” them. To do this, simply view any video and under the “+Add to+” dropdown, select “Favorites.”

Now, go back to the “Videos and Playlists” settings on your channel. You can set your channel to show the videos you favorited, and even select a “Featured Video” from the videos you saved. The final product will be an informative and useful YouTube channel, and you won’t have to create videos of your own.

When you finally do create videos for your business, edit your channel settings to show your uploaded videos. Also, change the featured video to one of your own. This way, your channel will be all about you.

Promote Your YouTube Channel

There are millions and millions of YouTube channels, so you’ll need to promote your channel to get people to subscribe to it. Start by adding a YouTube icon to your website (browse through icons via Google image search) and link it to your YouTube channel profile.

You can also comment on other videos related to your industry. People will see your username on the comments and click through to your channel to see what you are all about. Want more ideas on how to promote your YouTube channel? YouTube has three social features that help businesses and brands, so there’s more to learn!

Does your business have a YouTube channel? Have any promotional tips you’d like to share? Leave a comment below.

[Image Credits: Rego - d4u.hu, micmol , Nic's events, , PistoCasero cdw9, Marc Wathieu BlueRobot]