Smart ways to broadcast your business on youtube
In 2005, three early employees of Paypal named Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, came up with the idea of sharing videos among themselves and their friends on the web after they argued about a party which took place in Chen’s apartment without video evidence.
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As a result, YouTube was born to revolutionise online content-sharing with video as its primary content format. The first video uploaded on April 23, 2005 to YouTube was “Me at the Zoo.” It showed co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo.
Google saw the huge potential of YouTube and acquired it in less than two years after its launch for a whopping $1.65billion.
Currently, YouTube can boast of over one billion unique users visit each month, 100hours of videos uploaded every minute, over six billion hours of video are watched each month and localised in 61 countries in 61 languages.
It now has content created by individuals, businesses, corporations and production houses. It is also the second largest search engine on the web after Google search. Contents vary from cartoons, news videos, music videos, TV productions and commercials to educational materials. These contents can viewed on many devices – mobile phones, tablets, laptops, personal computers, Smart TVs, and other online-video-enabled devices.
Some Features of YouTube
YouTube has some unique features as a great platform for broadcasting your business. These include:
Upload: It is very simple to upload your business video content to YouTube by using a Gmail account to sign in. With the right video formats, you can upload your video the same easy way you attach a file when sending an email. The video must be given a title, simple description, category and some tags to enable easy search.
Views: Every video posted on YouTube has this feature which records and shows the number of times it has been viewed since its upload. Great contents attract more viewing. The most watched video ever on YouTube is Gangnam Style by the South Korean singer, songwriter, rapper, dancer, record producer and television personality, Park Jae-sang (Psy), with over 1.99billion views since its upload on July 15, 2012.
Subscribe: You can subscribe to any channel on YouTube so you can have their video contents displayed on your page whenever you sign in. Your customers or viewers can subscribe to get any video you post on YouTube or your channel.
Channels: After creating your business channel, you will have a public profile and will be able to comment on the videos you post. Without a channel you will be able to subscribe to videos and like or dislike them.
Playlist: With a channel, you can create your own playlist of favorite videos to categorise the videos so you can watch them later.
Tags: Each video must have tags of the content and context so viewers can easily find your video on YouTube. If you have a video of your services or products, you must tag the video with the name of your product.
Comments: This helps web visitors to converse around any video posted on YouTube. It helps you to get feedback from those who view the videos.
Content Sharing: One of the unique features of YouTube is the ability to share the content across various major social media platforms, embedding the video on your website, or emailing it to anyone who may be interested in the content. Some research shows that over 500 years worth of YouTube videos are watched daily on Facebook and about 700 videos from YouTube are shared on Twitter every minute.
Smart Ways to Broadcast Your Business
With the power of engagement and traction on YouTube, your business must create video content to have a share of this engagement cake. Some of the smart ways to broadcast your business include:
Informational: An informational is a content which serves as a source of information with a commercial benefit. Create a short video about your business and the services you offer. It should contain your business objectives, products and services; the quality of your team and the vision of business. Your content must be creatively produced and very clear on the message you want to communicate.
Marketing and Advertising: Put some of your TV commercials, documentaries and other videos on YouTube to market your business. These contents will be found when web users search for contents on your business or products. You can customise some of the advertising and marketing videos for your online visitors only.
Product Demonstration: Do a video of how some of your products can be unpacked from the box, assembled and used and post it on your YouTube channel. You can embed the video back on your website on the respective product pages. The videos can be found by anyone who wants to know how the products work when they search for them. This helps you to acquire more customers because they may contact you for further clarification or for after sales services.
Education: One of the most consumed contents on YouTube is education from any field or subject area. Educate your customers on your products and services. If you sell paints, create videos on how your customers must treat their walls before they do the painting; select the right colours for the interior and exterior of their houses, and how to take care of the painted walls. An informed customer usually becomes a brand advocate. Some customers hate your products because they did not follow the right instructions on how to use them.
Campaigns and Promotions: YouTube has been a great channel for great brands and blue chip organisations to run creative and engaging campaigns to reach their online customers. Campaigns can involve the videos you want the viewers to respond to by taking some prescribed actions to win a discount or qualify for a deal. It can also include your target by creating videos and uploading them to YouTube and tagging your campaign in the videos; or sharing the YouTube link on your campaign website page so you or other participants can find easily.
Activism: If your business is social enterprise-biased, you can create some buzz on YouTube by posting videos of the theme you want to solicit social action (either to spread a view, change behavior or engineer social mindset change). You can also broadcast your corporate social responsibility events or projects on YouTube. Many governments and policies have been changed through the social power or collective protests garnered through the use of YouTube the world over.
Conclusion
Whatever happens in the world, as is believed, now stays on the web. Most of them are shared on YouTube. Your business cannot be left out of the stream of benefits YouTube offers in delivering quality engagement and business value. Be where the action is live and active. Broadcast your business on YouTube.
The writer is a Technology Consultant, Social Media Strategist, Advertiser & Speaker.