People often talk about social media and instantly we think of Facebook or Twitter but often overlook the video option of YouTube.
To help you understand the value of YouTube consider the following statistics:
As of February 2011, YouTube has 490 million unique users worldwide per month, who rack up an estimated 92 billion page views each month.
Users spend around 2.9 billion hours on YouTube in a month — over 325,000 years. This means that the average YouTube user visits the site 14 times per month, spending an average of 25 minutes on the site each time.
YouTube has over 258 million registered users, 50% of them visit weekly if not more. In January 2012, YouTube stated that the figure had increased to four billion videos streamed per day. And these stats are just for the main YouTube website — they don’t include embedded videos or video watched on mobile devices.
All marketing experts know that we must be creative with our marketing initiatives and techniques, so surely YouTube is a great place to prove just how innovative you can be.
YouTube has many different categories that you can upload videos to. These include:
Autos and Vehicles
Comedy
Education
Entertainment
Film and Animation
Gaming
How-to and Style
Nonprofit and Activism
People and Blogs
Pets and Animals
Science and Technology
Sports
Travel and Events
You need to determine what category your products or services fit into. Remember that when using social media for marketing purposes it is not merely about uploading an advert for your product but also interacting and connecting with potential customers.
What type of video could you post that consumers would find valuable and informative?
How about a how-to video? Or an entertaining video showcasing your products? What about sharing a podcast that is entertaining and informative? Bear in mind interaction and value are essential if you want to use social media to market effectively.
YouTube has introduced brand channels for businesses to set up their own page that is branded by them and houses their videos. The fact is that YouTube can be a largely effective way to utilize social media marketing and the costs are minimal if any at all. If you have the time and resources to create videos that share value and interaction with consumers you can post those videos to an audience of 78.3 million users.
These do not need to be or even appear to be professionally made million pound movie style videos, sometimes it is better to remember the old K.I.S.S. rule (Keep It Simple, Stupid). What you have to keep in mind is that your video will be one of around 150,000 that are uploaded daily, so you will have to give users a reason to view it. You also want to remember that many users between 18 and 34 years old often share videos with their friends and family, so there can be a viral effect here as well.
As with all social media marketing strategies be creative and original, have fun but most of all do it – because any of your serious competitors probably are.
Checkout Youtube’s own video about building an audience:
People often talk about social media and instantly we think of Facebook or Twitter but often overlook the video option of YouTube.
