Although YouTube is one of the most visited sites on the web and is the clear leader in web-based video sharing, it still has a bit of an image problem with business professionals.  When most people think of YouTube, they think of funny homemade videos or video clips from favorite bands or TV shows.  They don’t always think of YouTube as a solid marketing platform suitable for a variety of businesses.  Some even argue that YouTube isn’t a true social networking site, depending on how strict their definition of the term is.

Properly used, YouTube can be a wildly successful promotional vehicle for savvy marketers who know how to use the web to build their brand and connect with their audience.

YouTube’s popularity is a clear sign that users love the visual impact that today’s broadband access and advancing technology provide.

Founded in February 2005 and purchased by Google in November 2006, YouTube has become a web phenomenon and a household name in only a few years’ time.  in 2008 more than 90 million viewers watched 3.5 billion videos on YouTube, averaging 41.6 videos per viewer.  In just the last 12 months YouTube has experienced tremendous growth that demonstrates the numerous marketing opportunities that this communiation medium can provide.  It has announced partnerships with the BBC, CBS Sports, and Apple; released localized sites in Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK; and premeired its first international film competition, Project Direct, with works from filmmakers around the world.

YouTube was also a major player in influencing the 2008 presidential election with the YouTube You Choose ‘08 channel that enabled candidates to communicate directly with the voters.

YouTube clearly has a lot to offer savvy marketers, even those who don’t work for major corporations.  Steve, for example, is an up-and-coming musician trying to gain some exposure for his new band.  He’s heard that some youTube videos for popular artists and movies have received hundreds of thousands of views in a matter of days.  Steve would be happy with a fraction of this type of exposure.  He signs up for a YouTube account, gets his own channel and posts some of the band’s video clips and tour information.  To generate further buzz, he uses YouTube email and bulletins to spread the word, posts video responses to the videos of related artists and joins relevant YouTube groups.

Jennifer, the author of a new book, would like to use YouTube to promote the book with a book trailer.  With the help of her husband she creates a slick 3 minute video that’s designed to captivate the attention of viewers and encourage them to buy her book.  She posts her video to YouTube, tags it with the most appropriate keywords, and embeds the video on her blog and website.  In an effort to get even broader overage for her book, Jennifer also posts her video on teh other Video-sharing sites such as MSN Video, Google Video, Revver and Daily Motion.

In addition to the exposure it provides, one of the biggest advantages of YouTube marketing is that it’s free.  At no cost, YouTube enables you to:

• Host your videos, including movie trailers, book trailers, TV video clips, music video clips, software demos, presentation clips, political statements, instructional videos, and more.
• Promote your videos to a worldwide audience of millions of potential viewers.
• Create your own branded link. For example, check out Adam Ginsberg You Tube Videos
• Tap the power of social networking by allowing users to comment on and share your videos

Tag your videos with keywords that help your target audience

Even if you don’t have video content to post on YouTube, you can still benefit from its vast audience.  youTube also offers advertising opportunities for companies with an initial budget of at least $25,000 who want to target its demographics.  YouTube advertising options include:

• Display advertising, including skyscraper, leaderboard, large rectangle, and small rectangle banners.
• Custom brand channels
• Contests that encourage involvement and interactivity.

As of May, 2009, YouTube users were 54 percent male and 46 percent female.  Age ranges were spread rather evenly across all ages.  Note: twenty-one percent of YouTube visitors are over the age of 55.

YouTube can be serious business, and when you add to it the SEO benefits of posting videos online, you understand why the savvy marketer is using online video on YouTube in 2009 and beyond!

UPDATE: At a recent Search Engine Strategies conference an SEO guru talked of the value of video for improving one’s natural search ranking, and how engaging customers will be crucial in causing users to interact with your website.  Here’s what he said:

“…In the case of video, we believe that as one of the more important engagement objects, google has actually started to build it into the algorithm.  To us, that means if your website has engagement objects on it, video or mp3… it is going to be received y the algorithm better and your site will actually have an opportunity to rank better.

Now today, we haven’t seen it much as an incidence of ranking, mostly because not everyone is doing it… I don’t think we’ve yet seen even the tip of the iceberg.

In a year, if you don’t have video, if you don’t have engagement objects on your website, you are just not going to rank.  It will make you last among equals if you don’t have it.”

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