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Use Videos and YouTube to Promote Your Business February 6, 2010

YouTube is currently the third most popular social media site on the net, behind Facebook and MySpace, and with millions of videos and even more viewers it’s no surprise that YouTube is becoming more and more popular, especially in the world of business.

Some big businesses have even started focusing on YouTube in their advertising campaigns. Home Depot, posts how-to home improvement videos, and Nike is known for having videos with celebrities endorsing their products. Ikea has also gotten in on the trend by releasing a video series to advertise their products.

Videos are visual and very informative. You can fit much more in a video than you can in a Tweet, and you can explain information that is found on your businesses’ website and/or Facebook page. The idea of creating a video series can seem daunting, but you don’t have to spend millions on producing a web series like Ikea or get celebrities to star in your videos in order to have a viewing audience.

As a good example, check out the first of our new video series, the Golden Profile Series, on YouTube:

Here are a few tips for getting an audience with your videos:

-  A great place to publish your videos is YouTube. YouTube gets millions of visitors each day and is the most recognized site for video content. YouTube videos are also searchable on Google (which is the top used search engine), which increases the chance of people coming across your video. Other Video Sites will pick up your video once it’s found in the Search engines.  In order to put a video on YouTube you must set up a YouTube account, which is free, and once you post a video you will have a YouTube Channel. You can even add information to this channel about your business (rather like the info on the side of a Twitter page) and personalize the background image and colors of the page to suit your needs.

-  Make the videos relevant to your business, as well as interesting and educational. If the video is an advertisement (or includes advertising), make it short (30 seconds to a minute is the usual length for adverts) and entertaining. If the video is educational and the angle is about a certain aspect of your business, make sure that the information is useful and relevant.

-Consider making a video series. People will see that you are planning on posting something worth following and will subscribe to your page, after which they will be sent updates on when you post a video. If you make a video series, be creative. Choose a theme for the series and in addition to pointing out your companies’ products and services, include interviews with people of interest about topics that your customers’ will find useful.

-Utilize the tagging feature on YouTube. When you upload a video, there is a section to put ‘tags’, which are words or phrases that, when searched, will pull up your video.  Make sure to include words or phrases that are relevant to your video. For example, if your video is about how to use social media for business, you might want to type in the words “social media, business, Twitter, Facebook” in your tag section.

The use of videos in business is a fast growing trend (Google the Viral Video “Make it Blend by Blendtec – Awesome example of a Viral Video that became “explosively” successful and profitable on the Internet).  Many companies are seeing the benefits of using videos to educate and inform their customers about their products and services.

You can check out Light of Gold’s YouTube profile at http://www.youtube.com/user/lightofgoldpr

Use Videos to spread the word about what you do!  Good luck, and happy filming!