Going Viral: Why and How to Use YouTube as Part of Your Social Media Campaign/Strategy

When you hear someone talking about social media, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Most likely, it’s FaceBook or Twitter. But, what comes to mind when someone mentions YouTube? If you’re thinking home videos of kittens and toddlers, think again. YouTube is a social media force to be reckoned with and here’s why.

According to YouTube’s own statistics, almost 17 million people have connected their YouTube account to at least one social service, such as Twitter or FaceBook. Additionally, 100 million people take a social action – such as likes, shares, or comments – on YouTube every week. To illustrate the opportunity that awaits you, YouTube also has more than 2 billion views per day.

So, what’s the best way for your business to incorporate YouTube into your social media strategy and take advantage of those statistics?

Get Started Now

Because of YouTube’s social features and social activity update feeds, you can begin to build a YouTube presence even before you produce any video content of your own. There is also the ability to comment on and rate videos, add videos to your YouTube Profile as favorites (also known as “favoriting”), share videos on FaceBook and Twitter – or almost anywhere online, and generate playlists of relevant videos.

Track Your Progress

Once you have your own videos, not only can you get feedback through user comments and ratings, but you can also get invaluable marketing data about your videos – for free. YouTube offers information on viewer demographics, popularity, and a digest of user interaction, consisting of statistics on comments, ratings, and “favoriting.” This type of information is an extremely useful tool for developing relevant, more effective content.

Create Traffic

Views of your videos on your business’s YouTube profile or, channel, can easily send traffic to your main website. This is a great way for potential customers to opt-in from YouTube to your business’s website. Twitter and FaceBook also work well in conjunction with YouTube to help drive traffic to your website. Consider that an auto-shared tweet on the average results in six new YouTube.com sessions and that YouTube sees more than 500 tweets per minute containing a YouTube link.

Create Relevant Content

If you have a budget that allows for professionally produced videos, great! If not, you can still produce content with minimal cost and relatively little effort. Videos can be uploaded from your webcam or mobile phone, and they can be enhanced with features on YouTube, such as adding captions and subtitles, annotations (text, links, and hotspots), or replacement audio.

Your YouTube

 Have you used YouTube as a part of your social media campaign? What were the results? If you have any experiences you’d like to share, please comment below. Please send you comments to (info@flylinesearchmarketing.com). We also invite you to visit our website at (http://www.flylinesearchmarketing.com/) or call us at 1-866-258-5511.

                      

Google+ Not Quite Ready for Small Businesses…Here’s What You Can Do While Waiting

As many anxiously anticipate what Google+ can do for social networking and what it will mean for the rest of the social networking crowd (Facebook and Twitter, are you watching?), numerous individuals are already signing up with businesses close on their heels. However, a recent article in the Los Angeles Times suggests that Google is not quite ready for businesses to sign on to this service.

In fact, by all accounts, it sounds as though businesses will get their own special service later this year as the brains behind Google are working fast and furiously to build out something unique and separate from the personal social networking. Not a bad idea as the current social networking channels often make it a challenge to figure out how to keep the personal from the professional on social networking pages. While Facebook allows users to set up business fan pages, these are still linked to personal profiles, making it difficult to present a separation for the small business owner who likes to create a social networking presence. Here’s hoping Google+ is Google’s real success story unlike its past attempts at social networking.

Other Professional Social Media Channels

In the meantime, small businesses still have a lot of ground to cover in the social networking arena from which to share their messages and interact with their target audiences and customer bases. In fact, there are dozens and dozens of sites to consider. Here are some of the big names and what you can do with them:

• LinkedIn: Known as a great professional networking site, more businesses now understand the need to create business profiles for their executives and staff to build business-to-business relationships, attract great talent, and generate new growth opportunities.
• YouTube: While this site is known for some hilarious and often controversial postings, more businesses are recognizing it as a way to put a multimedia spin on their business offering as they reach out to their audience. For example, a client now uses it to help their small business clients interact with other business experts for such services as CEO coaching, business coaching, one-to-one coaching, and advisory boards.
• 43 Things: This site offers businesses a way to share goals, objectives, and plans for your business with colleagues, peers, customers, and even investors. It is helping businesses network for a wider audience, fund new ideas, and generate publicity.

Your Social Networking Roadmap

How are you currently using social media and social networking? Do you need help in generating a plan? Leave your questions below and we would be happy to suggest ways in which you can take advantage of these and future social networking channels for greater business and brand exposure for your intended audience.