With today's technology, we have the ability to share videos over the Internet. The most common place to do this is Youtube. YouTube is a video sharing website where users can view and post videos, comment on videos, join groups, etc. Essentially, YouTube is a social network with the ability to view and post videos. YouTube allows paid advertising for businesses, as well as allows businesses to get their names out there for free. There are millions of potential viewers worldwide (over 200 million videos viewed daily) that are able to view your videos. Later, we will discuss what the benefits of being involved with YouTube are for your business and how a certain company's profit grew over 700% with the help of Youtube promotion, but for now let's start with the basics.
Think About Your Video
Let's say the overall goal is to post a video that is going to help promote your business in some way - whether that be by posting a tutorial, a commercial, some tips for your specific business, etc. It is important to remember your main goal and your target audience because you'll need to keep them interested in your video. Remember, this is your chance to get your video and business name out world wide, so it is important to keep the viewer's attention.
How To Set Up Your YouTube Videos
So you are ready to use YouTube. You have all these fantastic videos that you are ready to share with the cyber world, but what is the next step? First and foremost, you want to visit http://www.YouTube.com. This is Youtube's website. On the top right corner there is a link titled "Create Account". Follow the steps to create your account and then you will be ready to share away with your videos.
Before attempting to post your videos, remember that there are some requirements each video has to follow in order to be posted on Youtube. The majority of the time, this will not be a problem, with the most important guideline being that the video has to remain under 10 minutes. There are also file size requirements (100MB or less). The following is a beginners guide to uploading a video onto YouTube:
Very first thing you have to do to upload a video is click the "Upload Videos" link. These are located on the top right of the page and are on almost every page on Youtube.
Next you are going to be asked to briefly describe your video. You will first need to enter a title and a description for your video. Keep these simple as people are not going to want to read a long description (they are on a video watching site, not an E-Book site). After the description section there is an area to enter tags for your video. Tags are keywords that will help your video be found based off what the user is searching for. You are going to want to use important words for this section.
Following the tags section you will have to select a category and language to place your video in. It is important to select the correct category and language, as this will also help your video be found to users who are looking for that specific type of content. Finally, click "Go Upload A File". The next page asks if you would like your video to be available to the public, or private. If you are wanting to get your business name out there, you will want to keep this public as this allows the millions of visitors the opportunity to view your video. Next click, "Upload Video". This will bring you to a page to browse your computer for the video you wish to upload. After finding the video, select it and your video will be live within minutes.
Get People To See The Video
The video you just uploaded is a hidden gem among the sea of the internet. Next, we need to get people to find this gem. One very basic way to get people to view your video is to create a link on your business website to your YouTube video, or have your YouTube video embedded on your site itself. With that said, you can also link to any sites (business or social networks) that your business is linked with. Just remember, the more exposure to the video, the better. One great tactic that many businesses use is promoting some sort of contest through their YouTube account. The draw of winning something will bring in more viewers.
YouTube also allows users many great ways to get people to your video. When you initially signed up for YouTube, you created a channel. In other words, if you signed up as "Business 1", there is now a "Business 1 Channel" on Youtube. Having your own channel allows you to create your own playlists. This playlist can consist of videos you upload or videos others have uploaded that you have viewed and want to share with others. Sharing someone else's video may in turn entice them to share your video.
On the same note, underneath all videos (unless this option is turned off) there is a section for commenting. Commenting on other videos is a great tool to promote your business. Keep in mind, this DOES NOT mean to comment on someone's video "Check out my video...". This is spam, and will most likely be deleted. What you want to do is comment on a users video that is related to the topic of your video. Also, you want to keep the comments relevant and not so generic. A comment like "cool video", '"nice job", etc. will not gain you any attention. A comment that is more conversational shows the author that you are paying attention throughout their video as well as reading the comments. This will possibly strike their interest in clicking your username, and therefore being brought to your channel to view your videos. The more you do this, the better the opportunity of getting numerous views is.
There are also the following options on Youtube to help get your video out there: emails/messages, bulletins, chat, and rating. These will help because you will be emailing, posting, and chatting on related topics will prove to be useful because you can get someone's attention who is already interested in the topic your discussing (what your video is about). This will in all likelihood nudge the other users to view your profile/videos. Just as any other social network, the more connections you have, the more the word about your videos and business will get out there.
A YouTube Success Story
As discussed earlier, the main benefit of getting your videos out on Youtube is that it give you the opportunity to "advertise" your business to millions of users, and at the rate of $0. Yes, Free 99. This gives the potential growth of your business an infinite amount. A great example of this is a blender company called Blendtec. Blendtec became an internet sensation, mostly in thanks to YouTube. Blendtec is a company that sells heavy duty blenders. They created a simple, cheap video series (first video cost them $50 total) on YouTube displaying how well their blenders work. The names the series "Will It Blend?" They used their Blendtec blenders to blend random objects such as baseballs, golf balls, glow sticks, cell phones, magnets, etc. Now, this may sound like just a simple idea it was extremely effective. The following are the amount of views a couple of these videos have received: Glow sticks: 6.9 million views, iPhone: 9 million views, golf balls: 5.9 million views, magnets: 2.7 million views, baseball: 1.4 million views. Just these five examples produced 25.9 million views for this blender company. They have many more videos out there (producing over 100 million views), but I think you get the idea. According to CEO Tom Dickinson in his interview with inc.com, the company skyrocketed over 700% in value because of these videos. The interview can be read at: here
As the above example demonstrates, the potential growth for your business due to YouTube video promotion is limitless. It is important to remember that YouTube allows you to promote video for FREE. Target the right audience, come up with interesting, creative videos and stick with it. Use all the tools Youtube provides for you to get that video out. Promote/Embed/Link your video with all that you can. Getting your name out there is the name of the game. Dont believe me? Just ask Tom Dickinson.
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