People are becoming increasingly more aware of the effect of social media sites on their business. We have realised that not only are they an important presence to have on the Internet, they provide an effective way to reach our target audience for a minimal cost.
According to the Morgan Stanley Internet Trends, March 1st 2008, 51% of all YouTube users visit the sight weekly and 50% of users watch videos until the end. 52% of YouTubers between the ages of 18-34 years old share videos with friends and colleagues ‘often.’5So we have a dedicated large portion of the population visiting a site that is free to upload videos to and anyone can have access to them. Individuals and business’s have become ‘Internet stars’ overnight and attribute their business success to YouTube.
How can your business benefit?
There are several ways to use YouTube to your advantage. At OfferMe, we have built a YouTube page for our business. It’s a place where we can create videos on areas of our business using it as a marketing tool, help area or user information centre. Customers who have a YouTube account can subscribe to our channel on YouTube and add us as a friend. YouTube allows business’s to create a community in a similar way to a Facebook or Myspace page. You are able to send messages to friends and subscribers of your page, letting them know of competitions, new videos, events or other user information.
Furthermore, YouTube offers its users a tool that allows you to see the statistics of the viewers of your videos. YouTube Insight allows you to see the number of views your videos receive per day, how popular your videos are compared to other videos in a given period of time and where your viewers are in the world. Using graphs the information is presented in an user-friendly, easy to read format.
Business’s can also use it to get people interacting with their business. Here at www.OfferMe.com.au we have just launched a YouTube video competition. People can enter the competition by creating a video and uploading it to YouTube. The content can be anything they like as long as they have the URL www.offerme.com.au showing on the screen at all times. The video with the most views by the closing date wins $10,000. We want our customers to interact with us, have the chance to be creative and have fun when they visit our website.
Many companies have made videos instructing people on how to use their products. A Canadian small business created a video to promote their blender.To show just how powerful the blender was they put an ipod in it. This creative idea gave the business a new found success.
The key to using YouTube as a marketing tool is to be creative. Get out that camcorder and start rolling! These days, anyone can be a director. We have only just launched our YouTube competition and have already seen users becomes friends of OfferMe, viewing our videos to see what we are about. Embracing all kinds of social media sites and creating a presence is vital in staying in tune with our customers.
Check out OfferMe’s YouTube video competition at www.offerme.com.au/competitions. Or visit our YouTube channel at http://au.youtube.com/user/offerme12.
Author: Katie Preston
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
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