Inside the Suitcase

What is Social Media? An Intro to YouTube. (6 of 6) / February 22, 2010

YouTube is a video sharing website. Users can upload a wide variety of user-generated video content such as movie clips, TV clips, music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging and short original videos. Anyone can create an account. Your account is your individual channel on YouTube. Other members may choose to subscribe to your channel if they like the video content you upload. A subscription is similar to an RSS feed or status updates on Facebook. When you upload a new video, people who subscribe to you will be able to see it on their own channel. The use of subscriptions changes YouTube from just a video library to a social media tool where users can connect and share videos based on similar interests.

The benefits of YouTube:

• Has viral effect potential
• Helps you to climb up Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages)
• Empowers your blog/website
• Increases your web traffic
• Enriches your blog content when embedding a YouTube video
• Connects you to the global audience
• Allows you to collects ratings and comments/feedback on videos

YouTube best practices:

• Establish a YouTube account under your company name
• Complete account details utilizing Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Title video cleverly and describe videos utilizing SEO best practices
• When embedding videos, turn off the display of related videos at the end of the video play
• Add annotations to provide commentary utilizing SEO best practices
• Make the videos highly interesting, unique and engaging to your target audiences
• Keep videos short (under 45 seconds) unless longer content is clearly expected by the subject matter
• Have the last frame of the video contain the organization brand, message and URL
• Have the first frame contain a title, brand and URL
• Select a very good image as the still frame image to attractive viewers
• Promote video replies and comments
• Embed the videos in MySpace, Facebook and as many other social networks as possible to provide access to as wide an audience as possible

Blendtec on YouTube A Case Study:

With just $50, Blendtec created a viral sensation with their video series Will it Blend? where they showed off the blender’s capabilities by pulverizing the most uncommon objects: an iPhone, marbles, Wii remotes, etc. What started off as an unknown maker of blenders turned into the most talked about brand online. In just a few days they had over 1 million hits on YouTube and over 23,000 visits to their company website. From the big boost in brand awareness, Blendtec saw an overall 500% increase in their online sales.

Have questions about how to get started with social media in general or YouTube in particular? to see how we can help you.

Check out previous articles in this series:

• Intro to Social Media
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Blogs

Posted by Rachel

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