YouTube.com is the largest source for online videos today, and one of the largest websites in general. Anyone can make a video and upload it for anyone else to see, and the process is completely free.
The quality of the videos on YouTube range from professionally-produced commercials, television clips, and movie trailers, to very low quality "diary entries" recorded with a computer's webcam.
When your company spends the money to produce a commercial, or a video that educates your potential customers, YouTube may be used to expand the audience for that video. Since the service is free and the videos are available indefinitely, this approach has the potential to add tens of thousands of viewers to the total audience of your production. What you must know about using YouTube to maximize the impact of your videos:
- YouTube is a website that allows users to upload videos so that anyone can watch them.
- You must be a registered user to upload videos, but not to watch them. Anyone can watch a YouTube video.
- YouTube videos can be displayed on your own website by using a short snippet of code provided by YouTube. This is also free of charge.
Get it done. Follow these steps to marketing your business with YouTube:
Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done
Create an account with YouTube
Only registered users may upload videos to YouTube. Registration is free and takes only a couple of minutes.
I recommend: Visit the YouTube signup page and register.
Start with a free "Standard" account that allows you to upload any video that is under 100 MB in size and less than ten minutes long.
Upload a video to YouTube
YouTube accepts many different video formats and converts them all into the same format for YouTube automatically. Your company may have videos from commercials, from training DVDs, from screen-capture programs, or from informal videos shot with a digital camera.
I recommend: Follow YouTube's instructions for uploading a video. If your video is not less than 10 minutes in length, or is greater than 100 MB, you can use a free program like Microsoft Movie Maker to split the video up and compress the file size. Try free screen capture program,
Cam Studio. Add transitions and splice together clips with
YouTube Remixer.
The type of video you upload might be a commercial (like this one for
Dove or
Flea Market Montgomery, each with millions of views), or it might be a message from your CEO (like
this one from Salesforce.com), or it might be a "how-to" video (like
this one from Backpacker Magazine).
Promote your video
Once your video is uploaded to YouTube, promote the video by placing the video on your own website, or using YouTube's promotional tools.
I recommend: Every YouTube video has an embed code. If you place the embed code on your own website, visitors can watch the video right on your site. Also, YouTube supports promotional strategies such as using tags and forming groups. If you "tag" your video with keywords that describe the video, it is more likely to appear in search engines when people look up those words. Groups allow people to place similar videos together in one place, so if someone sees a video similar to yours, they are likely to see yours as well. Find out how to
embed the video in a blog, or learn more about
using tags.
Tips & Tactics
Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide
- Audio quality and good lighting count. This doesn't mean you have to buy professional microphones and production lighting, it just means you shouldn't upload anything onto YouTube that sounds terrible or is too dark to see.
- You can not edit a video once it has been uploaded to YouTube. This means that if you have to make changes in the future, upload it as an entirely new video. Leave the old one in place because there will be other websites that link to the old video. If you remove the old video, their links won't work anymore.
- When you upload a video, type a good description of the video in the description box. Highlight your company and provide a link to your main website on its own line including 'http://'. This way the link will automatically work so visitors can just click on it.
- Use a descriptive title. Don't be cute when writing the title, because this is what the YouTube search engine is going to look at most to determine if your video should appear. Be concise and descriptive. If the video is about your company, include your company's name.
Subscribe to
Try our free weekly WhatWorks newsletter, with business how-to advice
& resources from Work.com.
Related Resources from Business.com
Recommended Solution Providers 
Best Sites to Learn More
Best Blogs and Forums 
Comments
Is any content on this page inappropriate? To let us know, please 
