Posted on: 2014-09-10
Youtube: much more than just pets doing funny things. Harness its potential as a marketing tool with this advice from guest blogger Ivan Serrano.
We’ve all read articles about the pervasiveness of social media, but how often do they include Youtube? There’s no debate: Youtube is a form of social media.
Communicating on Youtube is clearly two-way: users are free to express their opinions on the content they see. They can choose the content they want to watch and follow (subscribe) to their favourites to see more.
The marketing campaigns, privately shared content, and other elements so common to Facebook and Twitter are there in Youtube, albeit in a different format. And although it fits into a conversation on social media, Youtube certainly hasn't lost its value as a learning tool outside the context of “likes” and retweets.
To give you an idea of Youtube’s strengths, let’s start with some useful statistics.
And Youtube has kept growing over the last few years, with huge increases in the amount of video uploaded every minute (Year:hours of video per minute):
Year |
Uploaded video hours per minute |
2007 |
6 |
2009 |
15 |
2012 |
72 |
2013 |
100 |
Much of the content uploaded to Youtube comes from marketers who appreciate the reach it has among internet users. For our purposes, Youtube can be broken down into video production and promotion. The key elements of video production and promotion can be divided into four topics:
1. Production elements: There are many video production tools offered by Youtube to enhance your video presentation. Here are four which you should consider to add significant value:
2. Channels and channel enhancements: channels are a collection of videos intended to build a community of subscribers. Channel enhancements include:
3. Strategic marketing enhancements: Tools for search optimisation and analysis play an important role in improving and understanding the performance of your content. Although metadata is closely associated with SEO, many of the tools below play a role in directing users to your videos and channel(s).
4. Engagement: After discovering your videos (or video channels), users will send feedback and share with others. The simplest way to share videos is to simply share the URL via email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. As mentioned earlier, Facebook will automatically embed the video using the URL that you’re sharing. Plus, if you want to share the video on your website, Youtube provides a snippet of code for embedding it.
5. Cross promotion: the indirect impact of Youtube on other forms of social media is quite significant.
A day rarely goes by when a Facebook user doesn’t see a link to a Youtube video. And with 74% of internet users on social media, you can’t ignore the power of social sharing. Embedded videos in particular are quite pervasive in website development and will contribute to your overall exposure.
6. Creators and curators: these terms allude to both users and Youtube’s business model, since both are exploiting the advantages of curator features in channel development.
Having the freedom to create videos and include reference videos in a single channel gives you as a marketer a lot of choices.
When you next visit Youtube, look at the “recommended videos” on the right-hand sidebar as you’re watching videos. Those are the videos that have the highest retention rates and are examples of successfully marketed content. Putting in the appropriate time and effort can earn you rewards. These guidelines will help you get started.
The B2B PR Blog is a resource for both PR professionals and people working in B2B industries on how to devise and implement successful B2B PR campaigns. The blog was founded by B2B PR specialist Heather Baker, who runs video production and corporate animation agency TopLine Film and digital PR and SEO agency TopLine Comms. The B2B PR Blog takes contributions from sensible industry folk with something interesting to say.
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