There are a few advantages to putting your videos on YouTube:
1. You don't have to develop technology in-house to deploy on your web site.
Once posted on YouTube, you can imbed videos into your own site and others such as Facebook, blogs, wikis, etc. with minimal effort once.
2. By setting up your own organization's YouTube channel you "protect"
your brand to some extent. This is true of all of the social networking sites.
3. The #2 search engine is actually YouTube.
A YouTube channel is another mechanism to get your organization more optimally placed in indexes.
4. Video is the #1 content people are viewing on the Internet.
Video should be an integral part of your channel strategy and we should all be considering channel shift from other media where it makes sense. It's also a good time to start developing video skills in-house.
5. Part of your online strategy should include measurable outcomes you'd like to leverage the social networking properties for. i.e. Targets for subscriptions, # of views, # of friends, friends and other metrics.
6. By deploying on YouTube and other social networking properties, you are showing up where people already are and where they want to be.
Network television is actively moving to web deployed shows, such as what are available on Hulu.Com. (U.S. only.)
7. If you do a remarkable video, there's always the chance it will go viral and you'll get much better exposure for your brand.
The ability to share, subscribe, comment and other functionality on YouTube are effective enablers of viral marketing. Post, Imbed, Tweat ...
8.Videos posted on YouTube are viewable on the iPhone. Most smartphones have a YouTube application.
One of the challenges in our environment is that any one of us can create a web presence and start posting content in minutes.
Part of our thinking needs to shift towards how to take advantage of functionality provided in the cloud in ways that maximize our internal resources and simultaneously promote brand in the widest possible number of venues.
It's important to take the long view with all of this and it's good to start experimenting if you haven't done so already.
Brian Dowling
Principal and Founder