YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos. Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations offer some of their material on the site. Unregistered users can watch the videos, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos.
What You need to know to get started on YouTube:
- YouTube is free. Set up an account, upload your video, and you’re good to go — YouTube will do the work of converting your video into a web-friendly format (Flash video, which has near-universal support among internet users), optimizing it for fast streaming
- YouTube embedding allows you to play your video directly in your website – YouTube even provides you with the code just copy and paste it into your site
- YouTube has a built-in audience.YouTube is the first place people go to to find online video. YouTube visitors will find your video when it’s added to YouTube’s database, so long as you tag it with the appropriate keywords. More people will view your video if you post it on YouTube than if you just post it on your website
- YouTube can generate traffic to your website. Active YouTube users generate interest in their Channel (profile) page, and this in turn can generate traffic to their website or blog. Check out the video below to learn how to customize your own Channel
- YouTube has excellent search engine ranking that can help your videos to appear among the top search results for your keywords
- YouTube is a Social Networking Tool – your audience can post comments and rate your videos giving you valuable free feedback
- YouTube’s reporting function – Insight helps you understand views, viewer demographics, popularity, and community
Ways to use YouTube even without producing video content of your own:
- Commenting (on others videos, or channels)
- Sharing (with YouTube friends and other social networks such as Twitter, Facebook)
- Creating playlists of your favorite YouTube videos
- Rate videos (1-5 stars)
- Favorite Videos
- Embed videos in your WordPress blog to enhance your post
Review our Video Marketing tips over on LearnWP and register for our next Toronto Smartphone Video Workshop
