Because YouTube is all about video broadcasting. And videos are perfect for showing technical equipment, demonstrating a procedure or giving prospective buyers a virtual tour of a home for sale.
Videos can even show a “talking head” touting the benefits of any product or service. Just like a TV commercial. But you have up to 10 minutes to make your case, not 30 seconds. And it won’t cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars.
This is not your father’s TV. It’s not 97 million Americans watching the Super Bowl on one channel on one day and seeing whatever ads the station selects, whether they want to see them or not.
This is 400 million people worldwide actively seeking information on an estimated 6 million to 9 million YouTube channels every month. Yes, I said millions of channels. And watching what THEY want to see.
As of 2009, approximately 100 million Americans watched about 6 billion videos on YouTube each month. Americans performed more than 2.9 billion searches on YouTube every month.
In fact, YouTube accounted for 79% of all US visits to 60 online video sites in 2009. Google Video was #2, with a 4.6% market share.
Remember, social media is about monitoring and participating in the conversations about companies, products and services. And finding evangelists and influencers who can help you build your business.
Your customers are already having these conversations on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — wouldn’t you like to know what they’re saying? Wouldn’t you like to find those evangelists?
Here are some things businesses can do in a YouTube video:
• Publicize a news event about your company.
• Introduce a new product or service.
• Demonstrate a new product or service.
• Distribute a speech given by the company president, CEO or VP.
• Record celebrity endorsements of your product or service.
• Show conference presentations, exhibits and speeches.
You can even advertise on YouTube. You can place your own ads on videos that match your criteria. It can be a traditional Google text ad or a video ad to the right of the video player. Or you can place the ad in the lower part of the video itself as a semi-transparent overlay while the video plays.
You can also create a Brand Channel complete with your logo that gives you many more options than a regular channel. More than 147 million US Internet users watched an average of 100 videos per viewer in January 2009. That’s a bigger audience than the 97.5 million people who watched the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots in the 2008 Super Bowl!
And it’s not just 10-year-old girls. Sixty-two percent of YouTube viewers are 35 and older. Almost half have a college degree and a similar percentage have incomes of $75,000 or more.
A YouTube channel is the equivalent of a Facebook profile. You create the page and put whatever you want on it. But instead of lots of text, you put lots of videos. Videos of all those things that businesses can do on YouTube.
And YouTube allows viewers to rate your videos, favorite them and share them with friends. They can also upload a video response to your videos, add comments and subscribe to your channel.
What do you think about YouTube? If you are using YouTube, please share your experience!
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