How to Market Using YouTube

If 2005 was the year of the blog, 2006 was the year of YouTube. It is one of the most popular destinations online. Marketers have taken notice, and are now using the popular site to put forward various marketing strategies. There are several ways to turn YouTube into a marketing tool.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

1. Take some time and care when creating the YouTube video. Hire a professional crew, budget permitting. At the same time, you don’t want it to be too slick, like a TV production. YouTube videos should have something of a homemade quality.
2. Email the YouTube video to your company’s demographic. This means hunting down like-minded bloggers and emailing them the link to the YouTube video. This process may be painstaking but will be worth it.
3. Create your own blog and post the Youtube video.
4. Email the Youtube video to the email list.
5. Post the video on social networking sites like Myspace. Keep in mind that not all Myspace pages allow for HTML comments.
6. Post the video to relevant message boards. You can either post a link to the video or the video itself (recommended). However, spamming message boards could end up in it being banned. Instead, put the Youtube homepage in your signature.

Tips & Warnings

• There are PR firms that handle YouTube marketing. It’s a new field, but it is growing.
• Gauge your views/favorites/and comments on the YouTube site. If it’s not taking off, repeat the above steps. Viral marketing can take some time.
• Post the video to other sites besides YouTube, like Google Video.