Why Youtube Should Be A Part Of Your Small Business Marketing Strategy

if you mention YouTube to many small business marketers the first thing that usually comes to mind are viral videos that have to do with teenage rock stars or corporate viral videos such as KiA Motors popular hamster rap video. But there is a growing awareness that Youtube, and other video sharing websites similar to it , is becoming a viable way to advertise your small business for many marketers.

When huge corporations like Disney, Kia Motors and Dreamworks have their own channels on Youtube, it’s obvious that as a small business marketer you should be seriously considering how you can take advantage of this popular video sharing website as well.

When YouTube launched in December 2005, the company quickly gained market share, gaining so much traffic in so short a time that it racked in 38 million visitors by the end of the site's first year in business. In that short time , YouTube ranked as one of the Top 10 sites on the Web, and it's popularity did not go unnoticed when Google purchased the company in October 2006 for $1.65 billion! But its growth has not stopped there, as it consistently rates in the top five websites on the internet ranking right next to Facebook and it's parent company, Google. In May of 2010, YouTube achieved record levels of viewing activity with an all-time high of 14.6 billion videos viewed and surpassed the threshold of 100 videos per viewer for the first time. And in 2012, Youtube racked 4 billion video view per day!

And as more potential customers go online as well as broadband video expands, the potential growth for Youtube, and other video sharing websites, such as Revver, Vimeo, Yahoo Video, Daily Motion, Metacafe and the benefits for your small business will only grow. What is so vital, is that Youtube is relatively easy to sign up and setup and yet it provides a powerful tool to enhance your small business marketing mix.

Many small business marketers often do not initially recognize the web tools that a free video sharing website such as YouTube has to offer. When you sign up with their service, you are given a profile or channel which is essentially like a mini-website that enables you to easily post your videos, share your videos via links and embed codes and track the success of your videos via their free internal data analytics and metrics program.

This powerful metrics program allows you to examine your user traffic, the source of your video traffic, statistics for each individual video and comments, if any as well as your ad revenue if you should be lucky enough to qualify as a Youtube partner. Keep in mind there are no out of pocket web development costs or video distribution costs required from you, the profile creator's part. Also another important tip to keep in mind when signing up is that you make sure the username you choose has something directly to do with your name, business name or keyword related to your product or service. These tips apply to most video sharing websites where you will be posting your videos.

In addition, what many small business entrepreneurs don’t realize is that YouTube, and other similar video sharing websites, allow a small business to save money on web hosting and bandwidth costs since they do all the hosting for your small business' videos,. These costs can be significant, and would add up quickly, if you were responsible for them, especially if your videos become extremely popular. Popular blogging platforms such as Wordpress or Typepad allow you to link your Youtube videos to your blog with out requiring an embedded video player, an additional but costlier solution that you will want to upgrade to at a later time.

In addition, with social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Linked In and Flickr, there are more tools available that enable your customers to link and share your content online. And with Google, including "social mentions" in search results, you will want to encourage this type of sharing of your content. Furthermore, more and more consumers are accessing images, videos and other types of content from their mobile phones and this is bound to increase in the future.

Unfortunately, there are some small business traditional marketers who are not familiar with the interface and dislike the lack of a straightforward traditional, promotional video format on this popular video sharing website, i.e. broadcast commercials. However, many creative small business marketers are finding ways to create video content, subtly promote their small business, expand their customer base and make YouTube work for them.

While the company continues to add additional features and improve its metrics program,it stands to reason that video marketing will continue to grow. In the very near future, there will be many more reasons that should encourage any small business marketer to actively find a way to produce video content to integrate with their own website and small business.

1) Best Customer Testimonials - With your customer's permission of course, set up 2 or 3 interviews with your best customers in order to videotape their satisfaction with your product or service. These videos lend a huge amount of credibility, especially if your customers are enthusiastic about your product or service and convey the benefits that you or your business provides and their satisfaction with it.

2) Live Video Stream broadcast - Vpype and Ustream are software companies that are offering their preliminary software for free so that you can utilize live video streaming for your business. These services allow you to provide your customers with real time video experiences that they may otherwise be unable to take advantage of due to time or travel constraints. Live videostreaming is especially popular, when you videostream from industry conferences and other events many people do not have access to.

3) Slideshow - There are services such as Animoto, and many other competing companies that are offering similar services, where they take a customer's photos, video clips and images and create a slideshow set to music. This type of service is great for a realtor who wants to market a particular property with the best pictures of the interior and exterior of the property with descriptions of the property's best features for prospective customers to share.

4) Seminar Preview/Speaking Engagement - If you are a speaker or consultant, this is a great format to produce in order to whet your customer's appetite and give them a virtual experience of your speaking ability or expertise.

5) Interview - Customers love interviews with subject matter experts that enhance or add to what they are already purchasing from your business. For example, if you are a web programmer, and you set up an interview with a good copywriter to discuss developing website content, and then post it on your blog or website, you are providing added value for your customers that your competition isn't doing.

The following video is a worthwhile overview of the use of video and the growth of video marketing. Once you get beyond the introductory comments at 00:36 minutes, Louis gets down to the nitty gritty of video and its use in small business marketing.

This interview addresses some of the following questions:

• Why do you think video marketing is the future of traffic generation?
• What can a business do to cash in on this growing phenomenon?
• How do you manage to build a large and loyal subscriber base of fans?

The following are books available on Amazon regarding video marketing. They vary as resources for the type of videos being created on Youtube and need to be updated to include new video formats and video sharing platforms. The video marketing field is on a fast track of growth you might prefer ReelSeo, a video website with in-depth information about video formats and marketing.