Using YouTube to Promote Your Business
Michael Miller discusses some of the key factors for promoting your business on YouTube, including bandwidth, content, production values, and uploading the finished product.
Whether you run a small business from your home or work for a large corporation, you can use YouTube to promote your company. As you probably know, YouTube is a video-sharing site where anyone—including you and your business—can upload videos for others to view. The trick is determining the right kind of video to upload, and then finding a way to profit from YouTube viewership.
Using YouTube as a Video Host
Do you already have videos in your business? If so, you can easily upload those videos to YouTube, for anyone to view. (Whether anyone wants to view your videos is another story, however, which we’ll cover shortly.) Aside from making your videos public, there’s another good reason to upload your videos to YouTube. When YouTube hosts your video, you don’t have to.
That’s right; YouTube is, at its most basic, a giant video hosting site. Instead of taking up valuable storage space on your own web server, you can let YouTube host your video instead. You’ll display the video on your own website, of course, but you do it by embedding code for the video in your site’s underlying HTML. The code points to the video on the YouTube site; YouTube then serves the video from its site to appear on your web page.
Not only do you save on storage costs, you also don’t have to pay for all the bandwidth used when visitors watch your videos. Yes, you still have a slight bandwidth usage when someone views the text of your web page, but the bandwidth used to deliver the video comes directly from YouTube.
If you run a small business with limitations on storage and bandwidth, having YouTube host your videos can be a real cost saver. And if your video happens to become popular or even viral, you don’t risk having your servers overload and shut down; YouTube’s servers will handle the load.
Creating an Online Video Presence
Just what types of videos can your business produce for YouTube? It all depends on the type of business you have and on the way you want to use the Web.
First, look at any existing videos you might have produced for use in your business. Perhaps you’ve taped a company meeting or seminar, or you have a PowerPoint presentation that’s been converted to video. Or maybe you’re a realtor who has recorded video house tours, or a motivational speaker who has a speech or two on tape. Any of those videos could make a good starting point for moving your business to YouTube.
Take the realtor example. Today, most realtors take digital photographs of the houses they list, and then potential buyers view those photos on the realtor’s website. But there’s nothing stopping you from using a camcorder to produce a video tour of the house, editing that tour into a short video, and then posting that video on YouTube. You can then embed the YouTube video on your website, so that potential buyers can view the video. It’s a great enhancement to a realtor’s selling services, and it doesn’t cost you a dime (beyond the cost of shooting the video, of course).
Here’s another example for you. If your business is a leader in its category, or if you yourself are an industry expert, you can establish and exploit that expertise via a series of YouTube videos. All it takes is a video camera or webcam pointed at you behind a desk; you then spend three or four minutes talking about a particular topic or issue of interest. Think of it as a professional video blog; if you truly know what you’re talking about, it will help to establish your professional credentials and burnish your company’s image.
For that matter, there are lots of different types of videos that can help enhance your company’s image. There may be value, for example, in putting a video online of your company’s most recent sales conference—or at least the part that introduces upcoming new products. Or maybe your company has hosted a seminar or conference that is of interest to others outside your company. These videos can be edited for length and uploaded to YouTube, where any interested party can view them.
That said, there’s one type of video that you don’t want to upload to video. YouTube is not the place to recycle your company’s commercials. Users will not go out of their way to view something online that they try to avoid in the real world. Unless you have a really clever, Superbowl-worthy commercial that people want to view again and again, keep your ads to yourself—and don’t upload them to YouTube.
Promoting Products and Services via YouTube
So far, I’ve talked about videos that only broadly promote your company, in terms of enhancing your company’s image. You can also use YouTube more directly to promote your company’s products and services—that is, to drive potential customers to your website where they can purchase what you sell. To do this, you need to produce and upload videos that function as online infomercials, subtly promoting your company’s products and services.
Let’s say that you offer gift baskets for sale. You create a short video for YouTube about how to make gift baskets—something that would be of interest to anyone in the market for them. You prominently display your web page address and phone number within the video, and in the descriptive text that accompanies the video on the YouTube site. Because the video has some informational content (the how-to information), it attracts viewers, and a certain percentage of these will follow through to purchase the gift baskets you have for sale.
Or maybe you’re a business consultant and you want to promote your consulting services. To demonstrate what you have to offer potential clients, you create and upload some sort of short video—a motivational lecture, perhaps, or a slideshow about specific business practices, or something similar. You use the video to establish your expert status and then display your email address or web page URL to solicit business for your consulting services.
Or maybe you have a full-length DVD for sale. You excerpt a portion of DVD and upload it to YouTube, with graphics before and after (and maybe even during) the video detailing how the full-length DVD can be ordered.
Likewise if you’re a musician with CDs to sell, an author with books to sell, an artist with paintings or other artwork to sell, or a crafts maker with various crafts and such to sell. The musician might create a music video to promote his CDs; the author might read an excerpt from her book; the artist might produce a photo slideshow of his work; and the crafts maker might upload a short video walk-through of pieces she has for sale. Make sure you include details for how the additional product can be ordered, and let your placement on YouTube do the promotion for you.
As an example, Charles Smith Pottery offers a series of instructional videos on YouTube that demonstrate how to use a pottery wheel. Interested viewers can then access the accompanying website (detailed both in the video and in the video’s description) to learn more and to see what products the company has for sale.
Another example is t he San Francisco Electric Tour Company, which offers Segway tours of the San Francisco Bay Area. The company created an entertaining demo video about the Segway and their tours and then uploaded the video to YouTube. Interested people can view the video and then contact the firm to schedule a tour. It’s quite synergistic.
Then there’s John Pullum, a hypnotist and mind reader who provides corporate entertainment and motivational speeches. He’s uploaded videos of several of his appearances to YouTube; they’re both entertaining and informational regarding the services that he has to offer. Any viewer who likes what they see can then go to his website to learn more or to arrange an engagement.
The key is to create a video that people actually want to watch. That means something informative, useful, or entertaining. It can’t be a straight commercial, because people don’t like to watch commercials. It has to provide value to the viewer.
Once you get the viewer hooked, you lead him back to your website where your goods or services are for sale. It’s a two-step process—watch the video, then go to the website to learn more or buy something. If your video is interesting enough, viewers will make the trip to your website to close the deal.
Shooting for YouTube: Proper Production Values
When you’re producing a video for YouTube, keep in mind that the video will be viewed in a small (320 x 240 pixel) window on the viewer’s computer monitor. It won’t be viewed on a high-definition widescreen TV; it won’t even be viewed on the full computer screen. No, your video has to be compelling when viewed in that small YouTube video window.
What this means is that you don’t need to spend a lot of money on sophisticated video values. Skip the HDTV recording, skip the widescreen aspect ratio, maybe even skip the ultra-expensive lights and makeup. Make your video good enough to be viewed at a 320 x 240 size, and don’t waste your money on production values that won’t be visible to the viewer.
In addition, keep that size in mind when deciding what to shoot. Don’t bother with crowd scenes; all those people will be too tiny to see in the small video window. Instead, compose an image that has maximum impact in the small window. What works best, more often than not, is a large subject against a simple background. That might be nothing more than the speaker full-frame against a light background; it’s a big image with good contrast, which is what you want.
You should, however, spend a few bucks for onscreen graphics. You want a title for your video, appropriate subtitles throughout, and your company’s phone number and website URL. These graphics need to look professional, and be large enough to read in the YouTube video window.
You can shoot a video for YouTube using professional video equipment, a consumer-level video camcorder (shooting in digital video format, of course), or even a computer webcam. Many video blogs are shot with simple webcams, just a person in front of the camera, talking about the subject at hand. You’ll probably want to transfer the video to a computer for editing, of course; any consumer-level video editing program, such as Microsoft’s Windows Movie Maker or Apple’s iMovie, should do the trick.
As to length, YouTube lets you upload videos up to 10 minutes long. If you have a longer video—say, a half-hour seminar on tape—you can simply edit it into several shorter segments. In fact, shorter segments are generally better; I recommend keeping your videos to three minutes or less. Anything longer and you’ll start to bore people and lose viewers. Even if you have a 10-minute video, you might want to edit it into three or four 2- or 3-minute segments. YouTube viewers have a short attention span, and you need to compensate for this.
Uploading Your Videos to YouTube
The hardest part about uploading a video to YouTube is creating and editing the video. The uploading process itself is so simple a CEO can do it.
First, however, you have to make sure that your video file meets YouTube’s requirements, which are as follows:
- MPEG-4 format video with either the DivX or XviD codecs
- MP3 format audio
- 320[ts]240 resolution
- Frame rate of 30 frames per second (FPS)
- Length of 10 minutes or less
- File size of 100MB or less
If you shot your video with a digital camcorder or computer webcam, it’s probably in the right format to begin with, so there’s no conversion necessary. Your only concern is to stay within the length and file size limits.
To upload the video, click the Upload Videos link at the top right-hand corner of any YouTube page. This displays the Video Upload page; you now have a little paperwork to do.
First, enter a title for your video. Make sure it’s descriptive without being overly long. Next, enter a description for the video; this can and should be longer and more complete. (And don’t forget to include your phone number and website address in the description.)
Then enter one or more tags for the video, separating each tag by a space. Tags are keywords people use when searching; use as many tags as necessary to capture all possible search words and attract as many potential viewers as possible.
Now pull down the Video Category list and select a category for the video. Click the Upload a Video button when you’re ready to proceed.
Step two of the video upload process is where you specify the file you want to upload. Click the Browse button to open the Select File to Upload dialog box; navigate to and select the file you want and then click Open. This loads the filename into the File box on the Video Upload page.
With all of that done, the final step is to click the Upload Video button. YouTube finds the video on your hard disk and starts uploading it; the progress is shown on the Video Upload page. Once uploaded, take note of the video’s URL (to link to from your site and use in promotional material) and the embed code (to embed the video in your own website). Your video is now ready for viewing!
Learn more about creating business videos for YouTube on Michael Miller’s Video Blogging for Business blog.