Aqua Pebble

YouTube for Business

December 2, 2009 | 3 Comments

youtubeWith the end of my social media journey I have been wondering whether YouTube can be classified under the social media banner or not. YouTube equals Video. Not any video, but generally self produced, short video (10 minutes or less). There is a section for shows, which are longer in length, but are mostly episodes of television shows.

For me social media is interactive and usually involves conversations, however, there is a lot of push going on where the conversation is started and then comprises mostly of replies. This is not always a bad thing: just an observation. Videos on YouTube are similar in the way that a video is posted and people can leave comments. Therefore, I am going to classify it for my journey, as social media. Though I am sill not 100% convinced it should be.

There are millions of videos on YouTube aimed at all sorts of audiences. YouTube offers a partnership program where you can join their advertising program (A bit like Google Adsense) and if you produce/upload enough videos, which you have rights to, you can create your own channel. I think this is a great opportunity for any business and can be used in a number of ways, for example:

  • Showcase T.V. Adverts
  • Viral Marketing
  • Branding
  • Customer informational videos
  • Competitions
  • "How To" videos
  • Slideshows
  • Recordings of public speaking or presentations
  • Interviews
  • You can still upload these to YouTube without a channel. The important aspect of this is integrating these with your business. For example, you have a customer service section on your website where you have links to embedded informational videos. Your customer service or sales reps can point customers to these helpful videos.

    YouTube offers a way to drive traffic/sales through call-to-actions from your video. If you manage to target the right audience this could give you a real boost.

    Then you can earn money through the partner advertising model in the same way you do from Google Adsense.

    I came across this YouTube success story page. This is more about successful partners. YouTube also offers partners analytical tools to measure their success.

    I think it is important to always have a strategy, an identified target audience and objectives you want to achieve and to measure these. Another really important aspect is quality. If you are promoting a professional service or quality product your video should not be poor quality. However, if the intention is to make a homemade, on-the-run, type of video, then you may get away with it, though you can still ensure a certain level of quality. One of my clients has an excellent page explaining the video production process.

    Considering the number of people watching videos everyday I think incorporating YouTube into your Social Media or Internet Marketing Strategy is well worth it

    Subscribe to Lee-Ann's newsletter

    For more information to hire Lee-Ann as a marketing coach, for workshops, talks, writing or any of her other services visit the services page.

    • Share/Bookmark

    Related posts:

    1. Social media lis­ten­ing – Are you a fly on the wall?
    2. Face­book for busi­ness has me scratch­ing my head!
    3. To be, or not to be (part of social media), that is the (big) question:



    3 Comments so far

    1.    Lee on December 7, 2009 10:30 am      Reply

      Sean and Steve, I think you are both right.

      The def­i­n­i­tion of media is ‘a form of com­mini­ca­tion that reaches or influ­ences peo­ple widely’ and of net­work­ing is ‘the devel­op­ing of con­tacts or exchang­ing of infor­ma­tion with oth­ers’. and lastly social can be defines as ‘tend­ing to form coop­er­a­tive and inter­de­pen­dent rela­tion­ships with others’.

      Based on that I believe a num­ber of these fit into both catagories.

      Any of you know where the video author can com­ment back to peo­ple who leave com­ments to their videos? If they can then YouTube can be clas­si­fied as both. I know peo­ple are using YouTube to drive traf­fic, sales and get sub­scribers to their newslet­ters which would lead to interaction.

    2.    Steve Dafnis on December 3, 2009 1:14 am      Reply

      Social media is one of those terms with a con­stantly evolv­ing def­i­n­i­tion that prob­a­bly started with the cave men leav­ing mes­sages on rocks. Youtube may not pro­vide the two-way com­mu­ni­ca­tion of other “social media” but it still cre­ates a mes­sage for us to see and hear.

      Steve Daf­nis
      http://www.vzual.com

    3.    Sean Nelson on December 2, 2009 10:13 pm      Reply

      I think the prob­lem is with defin­ing what Social Media is. The term Social Media is used to rep­re­sent net­work­ing sites like LinkedIn and con­tent sites such as You Tube.

      Rather than call it Social Media, the broader term should be the Social Web (not as cool sound­ing). Then under­neath this you have:

      Social Net­work­ing (shar­ing con­ver­sa­tions): LinkedIn, Face­book, MySpace, etc.

      Social Media (shar­ing con­tent): You Tube, Flickr, Blogs, etc.

      Twit­ter falls into both.

      So back to your ques­tion I believe YouTube is social media. The nature of You Tube is for peo­ple to watch videos and share the con­tent with oth­ers, thus its social media.

      Just my two cents.

      Sean Nel­son
      http://www.socialmediasonar.com | the Blog

    Name (required)

    Email (required)

    Website

    Speak your mind

    Subscribe without commenting

    Get Adobe Flash playerPlugin by wpburn.com wordpress themes