My teenage daughter is a big fan of a number of YouTubers who have massive follower counts and whose viral videos seem as common an occurrence as popular advertising jingles used to be on TV back in the 1970s. YouTube is a powerful entertainment vehicle that generates huge views. But is it a great method for supporting your business online? Here are some of my thoughts on the matter:

Why Use YouTube:

• Many B2B marketers rank YouTube as the second most effective social network (after LinkedIn)
• Because analytics let you see which videos each lead watched, and for how long, you can segment, score and nurture leads based on the data gathered
• People spend 80% more time on video blogs than regular blogs, and they remember a video more than a month after having watched it
• If your customers, or their influencers, are likely watching videos on YouTube that are related to your industry, then you should have a YouTube channel
• YouTube gets more than 1 billion unique visits every month
• Other social media platforms, such as Google+, Facebook, and Twitter, are integrated with YouTube: users can watch videos directly from their feed
• Good content on YouTube allows viewers to get to know your brand better and see your business in a positive light.
• YouTube’s visitors watch around six billion hours of video every month

What It Is:

YouTube is a free video sharing platform that acts as a distribution platform for people and businesses. The latest statistics assert that more than one billion people from around the world use the platform, and hundreds of hours of video are uploaded every minute.

The potential audience on YouTube, therefore, is massive – far larger than what you can expect to see on your own website —and YouTube video content ranks higher than other content in search engine results.

Having a presence on YouTube also allows you to expand your appeal to people who, simply put, don’t like to read. You can embed your videos onto your website and stream them from YouTube (which saves hosting space on your site).

I’ll include some thoughts about how a business owner can use YouTube to generate support for your business in my next blog. But in the meantime, if you would like to speak with me about how my team and I can support you to a more powerful social media presence, then please contact me directly at susan@crossmancommunications.com. We can book a no-obligation chat about how we might be able to help you use YouTube to support your business goals.

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