5 Ways To Use YouTube For Social Media Marketing
Posted by Jason Franks on Tue, Aug 16, 2011
Everyone knows that YouTube is the premiere place to find funny and/or 
outrageous videos. But, what about the things that YouTube can do for your own personal social media marketing efforts? Can this website really help meet your social media marketing needs?
It sure can, and here's how:
1. One way to use YouTube to efficiently market your online business is to create videos that provide a unique service to your customers. For example, if you own a men's clothing website, you may want to create and upload a video that shows customers how to accomplish the tying of a full Windsor tie knot. You may even want to add some funny bloopers (to the end of the video) of the model tying the knot incorrectly at first, only to eventually get it done right. This type of video will engage your viewers and they will definitely remember your business.
2. Another great tip is to make sure that your YouTube uploads are easily accessed. In other words, you want people to key in some of your big search terms on Google (if we are using the men's clothing store example, these terms may include "men's ties", or "dress shirts"), and find your video atop the list of search results. You can do this by properly titling your videos.
You need to be sure that these key words are in the beginning of your video titles (this is crucial). In the video description section, you should include a full URL to your site. The more words in your description, the better. And keep in mind this important change to YouTube video descriptions.
3. Your website can really benefit from the creation of your own YouTube channel. Unlike the standard "YouTube look", your individual channel can be personalized in color scheme and design. This is important because you want people to know that they are, in fact, on your channel, not some other unrelated channel. You can even use this medium to create playlists of your best uploaded videos.
Here, customers will be able to see only your videos. They will not be mixed in with similar videos from other users. This can obviously benefit your business. Here is an article that goes into detail regarding the creation of a branded YouTube channel.
4. This next social media marketing tip is really cool because it's so simple, yet effective. The annotations feature will allow you to add relevant links into your actual videos. Annotations can point viewers in the direction of other videos, or even a link to subscribe to your YouTube channel. This is critical in social media marketing.
The reason for this is that a user may randomly find your video and enjoy it thoroughly. What if they want to see more of your videos but they aren't all that familiar with YouTube? Well, now there's a way to hook them. They see a link to subscribe to your feed, and the next thing you know, you have a new fan and potentially...yes...a new customer too.
5. Another reason why YouTube is a really effective social media marketing tool is that, because like Google (who coincidentally owns it...or not so coincidentally), it gives you an opportunity to view some powerful statistics. You have the ability to see not only who has viewed your videos, but how they found them! This is great because you can now see what types of videos are getting the most views and best feedback. You should then use this information when creating future videos.
So, my final tip would be to take advantage of YouTube and the services that it offers that enhance your social media marketing efforts. In fact, this may be the most important of all YouTube-related lessons because you can do anything you want, but if you don't know what works, then you're just shooting craps all day long. Most people would prefer calculated decisions over a roll of the dice.
To conclude, You Tube social media marketing is simple and easy to do. It is also important to your online business. The bottom line is: it is a powerful tool in helping you gain not only more customers, but the right customers.
Remember, using YouTube correctly will enable you to pop up when search terms are relevant, so it's up to you to use it to your advantage.
And yeah, it's fun too!