TOP THREE YOUTUBE
STRATAGIES FOR BUSINESS
YouTube ’ s own massive viewership is a compelling reason to be part of
that online community some 70 million people visit the site every
month, viewing 2 billion videos every single day. In fact, every minute,
24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. But although the site is the
800-pound gorilla of social media (i.e., online media that users share,
rate, and comment upon), YouTube is not an especially robust social net-
work . That is, YouTube offers relatively few opportunities for interaction
between users other than subscribing to channels and commenting upon,
rating, and favoriting videos. YouTube is about as useful for nonmembers
as it is for registered users in helping them spend countless hours watch-
ing two-minute clips of dancing babies, sports highlights, breaking news,
and amateur stunts. 8
There are three main angles that make YouTube particularly appealing
to businesses and organizations:
1. Virality: Video is by far the most talked about and passed-around ele-
ment of our modern digital life. When one catches on, whether it is as
commonplace as a music video or as pivotal as an Iranian protester
dying in the street, it can be seen by millions of people.
2. Search visibility: “Universal search” is the now well-established trend
at Google, Yahoo, and Bing to intersperse traditional Web pages with
many other content types within search results. These new content
types are blog posts and news items, images, local results (with maps),
products aka “shopping results,” and videos. Search for just about any-
thing, and you will see videos prominently displayed in the results set.
If you ’ re not uploading videos (and titling them with phrases com-
monly used by searchers), you ’ re missing out on a source of traffi c.
3. Inbound links: The best practice is to upload your video to YouTube, to
take advantage of the thriving traffi c and high page rank of the site—as
well as its hosting and bandwidth—and then to embed a copy of it on
your own Web site. Assuming it ’ s any good, your video will serve as
“link bait” among your target audience: Your customers and fans will
link from their own blogs and other Web sites to your video page. Those
external links will benefi t your site ’ s authority in the eyes of the major
search engines, thus improving your search rankings.
What sorts of business should be posting videos on YouTube? Not nec-
essarily only the big brands rehashing their Madison Avenue-produced TV.
ads. Sure, those ads that enjoy cult followings on TV get millions of views
on YouTube, which is doubtlessly great for the brand. But for every big-
budget ad, there are dozens of small-budget videos whose only distribution
is online. That ’ s where the democratic nature of the Web is helpful: A
shaky hand-held video of a baby laughing his head off in his highchair has
just as much chance for fame as a pricey broadcast ad. And probably more
of a chance to make an impression.
Especially on YouTube, users seem genuinely in “discovery” mode,
moving from one random but popular video to another. Unlike so much of
the rest of the Web, which has become a Web of the familiar, YouTube
seems unique in serving up fresh new content—the old notion of “surfi ng”
the Web seems dead from the perspective of jumping from link to link, but
it seems alive and well as far as surfi ng from one YouTube video to another
is concerned. Ironically, this is quite similar to that other realm where we
co-opted the term surfi ng: channel surfi ng the TV.
What kind of companies should be actively uploading videos to You-
Tube? What content should you consider uploading?
1. Musicians, entertainers, comedians, TV shows, plays, movies, ani-
mation studios, and sports teams and leagues . Anyone whose product
is essentially video should be uploading trailers, highlights, and live con-
cert footage. The entertainment industry still struggles with questions of
intellectual property and how to be compensated for it, but it seems
clearer and clearer that YouTube ’ s potential to popularize media and per-
formers is worth the risk of hurting the market by giving away free mate-
rial. After all, the average YouTube video is just two minutes long—and
amazingly, the typical user doesn ’ t even sit through the whole thing, fl it-
ting from video to video every 3 minutes on average. If such a short fi x
satisfi es the user ’ s need without stimulating her to go see the movie or
buy the song from iTunes, how much have you really given up? 9
2. Television commercials . You ’ ve paid scads of money producing
them—at least you can give them eternal life on the Internet. Your ad
agency will have moved on to their next great idea, but consumers will
still be out there in the thousands nostalgically clicking on ads of yore,
rapping with Filet-O-Fish, watching the GoDaddy Girl suffer a wardrobe
malfunction, or seeing VW ’ s German engineers “UnPimp your Auto.”
3. How-to videos . These needn ’ t have big budgets or fancy production
values to be popular and effective. If you are in the outdoor gear market.
business, technology, and software markets—you can probably envi-
sion several how-to topics that your audience would clamor for. Associ-
ating your company and products or services with these how-to videos,
even if they are not actively being used or demonstrated on air, is a very
positive move. Produce and upload a video assembly manual, instruc-
tion manual, or troubleshooting guide; the benefi t for having such a
resource available 24/7 on the public Web and easily found via search
engines is a godsend. You generate good will and authoritative reputa-
tion in the eyes of your customers. You may also help them better use
your products, turning potential customer-service headaches into happy
customers and online praise. Sure, these workmanlike videos won ’ t
have the glitz and glamour of multimillion-dollar YouTube sensations,
but they will be found by the niche audience that matters most to you.
4. Product demos . If you typically pitch your product or service by per-
forming a demo, you probably have a worthwhile video in the making.
Think about how you present your wares at a trade show or if your
items sell in home-party settings. Real estate agents were quick to seize
on the value of video walk-throughs to try to capture some of the appeal
of a property that can otherwise only be seen in an in-person showing.
The classic infomercial demonstrations of knives cutting through tin
cans or vacuum cleaners tackling fi lthy carpets are not Oscar material,
but they ’ re visually memorable, and there ’ s no other way to get the
same message across as with video. One morning when my local Sub-
aru dealer was digging out from a record-breaking blizzard, they made
a point to videotape one of their all-wheel-drive Outbacks bursting free
of more than a foot of fresh snow. No wonder the Subaru is the top sell-
ing car in snowy Vermont! While the Blendtec videos play more as
entertainment than product demo, their subconscious demonstration
value is strong: Man it ’ s fun to watch a blender shred a hockey puck
(and that blender sure must be tough).
5. Highly visual markets . Patagonia will be the fi rst to tell you they are
not about clothes—they ’ re about the active outdoor sports you pursue
in their clothes. So their Web site and their social-media program have
leaned heavily on the power of video: about 200 YouTube uploads of
breathtakingly shot and professionally produced adventure videos fea-
turing surfi ng, ice climbing, bouldering, paddling, and more, from
Chile to Siberia, from the Indian Ocean to, well, Patagonia. Their You-
Tube channel has more than 3,000 subscribers and has enjoyed more
than a million views. Before the Internet, their print catalogs invested.
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