YouTube is a powerhouse when it comes to video. Everyone who’s spending more than five minutes per day surfing the internet, is going to visit YouTube. Why? It’s simple! Thousands of people upload videos to YouTube every day! And supply eventually creates demand.
Looking at the infographic below (found on Techcrunch) you will be amazed with the the 48 Hours of Video uploaded / Minute figure but what’s more important is that there are 3 Billion views per day!
If we assume that the average video is 4 minutes long, everyday there are One Million new videos on YouTube!
So why it is that YouTube is not used excessively by and for marketers?
People until now used to think that YouTube was just a playground for kids to play and a platform for musicians to distribute their music videos. And that’s why there wasn’t enough of a business audience on YouTube. Well, not anymore! People are beginning to understand that with such a huge audience, it’s not what brought them to YouTube in the first place that counts, but who will keep them engaged in the end. Meaning that, for sure someone wants to go and look at some RWJ videos (who wouldn’t???) but in the end they will soon stay to watch motivational videos, instructional how-to videos and anything that they really care about.
It’s like having a personalized television created just for you. No matter what your passions are and what you really love spending time doing, you will find someone uploading videos for exactly that.
And that’s what will revolutionize the way we interact with video in general. For so many years we were used to just tuning in to a Television channel and just let it broadcast its program to us. If we liked what we saw, we just stayed tuned in, passively enjoying what the television companies had to send our way. Well not anymore.
Now we are able to subscribe to a channel we like in YouTube and be able to enjoy new episodes whenever we feel like, wherever we feel like. Google is getting that and apart from its own efforts to create a Google TV, there are many others who have included YouTube video streaming on their device (aka. Apple TV). Most flat TV sets nowadays, come up with YouTube as an app pre-installed. In a few years that’s what will make news; YouTube and not any other colossal news corporation.
Google just changed the default channel profile view and made it much more social, so that when you subscribe to someone, you will also be able to see what person also likes watching on YouTube. Google now pays huge attention to people subscribing to a channel and gives a lot of rank value to channels with a lot of subscribers. It makes sense that what now is a simple channel, soon will become the evolution of a television channel. You will be able to see all your unwatched episodes and when you click resume, you will be able to see everything you haven’t up to now.
To make a long story short, now is the time for you to invest in YouTube, especially if you are a blogger, marketer or entrepreneur. You will be one of the first ones to make a huge impact and help YouTube shift and become a much much better marketing medium than it currently is.
Don’t wait for the right opportunity, a new camera, new lights. Just start shooting and help people understand better what you do and why you rock at it.
To your Success,
Angel
The biggest problem (besides creating professional looking videos) is that it is easy to get lost in that 1 million new videos uploaded every day. How can people find your content? How do you distinguish yourself from the deluge of competing content? For some, the amount of effort one puts into creating compelling videos is more than the small amount of views that their videos get.
Can you think of solutions to this problem?
Liz thank you for commenting!
Actually I’m writing a post exactly for this! It’s quite lengthy so I hope I’ll have it ready soon!
Hi Liz,
I haven’t read Angel’s article that he referenced for you to take a look at, but I can comment from our experience using YouTube.
You concern is a valid one and frankly is somewhat dependent on your business. Our business is centered around a product. So our core belief is to focus on the PRODUCT in everything that we do.
We own a bakery and we primarily specialize in specialty cakes & cupcakes. Every week we’ll do a quick video on one or two of our unique cakes. We’ll package the video up and post it on you tube and our blog.
Honestly we don’t really spend much time on the production of the video and frankly the production is not very good. The video is shaky, we have all sorts of background noise, and the lightening isn’t very good. However, our focus is on creating a compelling PRODUCT. We spend weeks on creating some of our most unique cakes and we are fortunate that our products are noteworthy enough that the video and setting do not matter as much. Despite our poor video skills we’ve had great success with our video channel and its translated into new business. (4 million + views and 8000 subscribers)
So my advice, (and I must caveat this by saying I have not idea what you do or sell) is to focus on the product and get started. In the beginning I wouldn’t worry as much about all the ins and outs of optimization, video production, etc. In my opinion the core of success in any marketing channel is having a good product. And this is especially more so on the Internet where marketing is much more democratized.
Thanks for sharing. Great infographics post.
There is a huge potential there and I think you hit the nail on the head in that the time is now to get in and utilize what will be a very strong social push to video.
I really do hope that many people will start a YouTube channel after reading this. Thank you for your comment!
You Tube is an awesome channel for promotions. There are certainly some risks with the change, but I love it.
Let’s hope everything will work out for the best, at least Google does so they most probably will ;)
Thanks for sharing, I know I should use youtube more
Please do, I know I have to create my own channel, been doing it for others, should do it for my self too! If my peers don’t “push” each other to do things, who will? ;))))
Thank you for the comment!
enjoyed reading this Angel thankyou and I fully agree with your analysis. I advise my clients to use you tube but with caveats. Firstly, its a video sharing site – so you are sharing your content with the world and his wife- and your competitors. Brands want the security and control of a self hosted channel -especially if sharing confidential content with employees and sensitive commercial content. Secondly, the analytics- whilst recently have improved – are still very basic and it is not possible to track engagement and response. Thirdly, the brand- do you really want your brand associated with what is still a consumer brand that screams cute babies and clever pets. Fourth, Liz’s point above is very valid. Marketing is all about taking your message to your audience as well as hoping your audience will come to your message. With your channel up against x trillion other channels are you sure you are getting your message across to the right audiences? I can go on- but the point I am really making is that it is not the only show in town …. hope that makes sense ..cheers for now Sean
Thank you for the amazing comment Sean!
Yes, YouTube is not the perfect marketing channel but it will (might) eventually become. It has all the potential.
As far as stats are concerned, it currently is one of the worst (compared to paid platforms) but when the time is right… (hint: analytics)
Ofc brands may and sometimes should choose other types of video platforms. Depending on the message and whom it should reach, someone should look at different venues to distribute content.
Last but not least, let’s not forget that YouTube might have a trillion channels (figure of speech) but so does the Internet has sites! This doesn’t mean someone shouldn’t make a new site. You can outrank, outperform and outsmart your competition, why? Because you can! ;)
All the best and thank you very much for the comment!
Videos are very effective in marketing a product. But I guess with the millions of viewers in a day, optimizing a video should be implemented to reap the good advantages of this activity. I have read somewhere too that business executives are now viewing videos on YouTube at least once weekly. That made me think how it could affect my business. And I started sharing on some videos from YouTube with my weekly posts and I saw an increase in my web site traffic.
Awesome, thank you for sharing with us! You don’t have to do a lot of things to gain a solid viewership to your videos but every small modification counts! Hope you will read the next post about video optimization so that you can see much much better results!
Thank you for commenting,
Angel
This is a great article, I advise everyone to read it. Indeed YouTube video can greatly help your business. Thanks to the author.
And thank YOU for the comment ;)
I’ll surely read it Angel. I’ll be waiting for your next post.