Fans of NBC’s ‘The Office’ will love this quick segment that shows Ryan giving a demo of his new social media tool.

Holy shmorkle blinxx this is funny! If you’re a social media junky you’ll get a kick out of the new video from comedy troop, Derrick Comedy.

A giggle for your Friday that takes a swipe at Google Buzz. Video is well designed and humorous too. Enjoy and have a fantastic weekend.

This video has been out for awhile and chances are that most people have seen it, but we couldn’t resist posting to give everyone a good giggle. This one’s for all the Twitter fanatics.

Most of us know what YouTube is, but for anyone who may not know, YouTube is a video sharing site where users can upload, share and watch videos from around the world. In 2009, YouTube usage statistics revealed that the site was receiving 100 million visitors per month and 20 hours of video were being uploaded every minute, every day. In a nutshell, YouTube is a true video bohemeth that dominates the video sharing landscape with a 43 percent market share. Of that, YouTube accounts for 99 percent of video views with Fox Interactive Media at 3.7 percent, Yahoo! Sites at 2.5 percent and Viacom Digital at 1.9 percent.

Looking at all the numbers, you get the gist of what YouTube is about – big numbers and big business. The question for most is how do you use the site to promote yourself. Well, it’s actually easier than you think.

1. Build Your Channel

The first think you’ll want and need to do is create a YouTube account. Pretty simple, but you may want to consider creating a ‘brand channel’ for your business rather than just a standard user page. Brand channels are like your own video community with YouTube. Some examples of well-known sponsor brand channels include:  Apple, Mini Cooper and TripAdvisor. Get some inspiration on from their content and how they’re using the channels to promote their brands and services. Check out famous wine aficionado Gary Vaynerchuk and one of his early YouTube videos.

2. Don’t Tune Out

YouTube allows users to rate and comment on videos that are posted. Even though there is an option to disable this feature, resist the temptation. Believe in your content and feedback, whether bad or good, generates interest. Comments can create their own fan controversies and that’s what will catapult your video views.

3. Create Great Content

In January 2009, 147 million U.S. internet users watched an average of 101 videos per person. Your business deserves to be one of those watched videos. When you’re developing your video you’ll want to follow some of these guidelines:

Title: Get creative and use the title as your hook. Titles can be changed as often as you wish. Research video title trends and use them in your title.
Length: Keep it short and sweet. Aim for one to two minutes in length. Anything longer and you’ll lose the attention span of your audience.
Subject: Don’t start with a sales pitch or a product push. Your video should offer help, suggestions, tips or how tos for people.
Optimization: Use keywords in your video description, or your even your title. Just make sure that you’re using what works best for you.

4. Tag Along

Like most social media elements, YouTube videos can be tagged to effectively organize them and make them more relevant in user searches. The good thing about tagging is that it can also be used to make your current videos appear in the ‘Related Videos’ box. This is important because it will keep your audience engaged with your brand and the content that you produced. In addition, YouTube has created a ‘More From’ section that enables you to showcase your other videos right from the same page.

5. Analyze Your Endeavors

YouTube Insight is an analytics tool that allows video posters to view detailed statistics about the videos that they’ve uploaded. This is a great tool for YouTube advertisers because it helps businesses and people understand who their audience is, where the audience comes from and what they’re watching and when they’re watching. Insight analyzes data across six categories:  views, popularity, discovery, demographics, community and hot spots. This information can help with adjustments to elevate your video viewership.

6. Your Advertising Campaign

The flexibility of YouTube’s ad program is considerably diverse. Ads are hosted in five areas:  homepage, search/video/channel page, watch page, upload page and in-video. YouTube’s self-service ads make it very easy for businesses to choose what they want to promote, where they want to feature it and who they want to show ads to. The ad structure is based on CPC (cost per click), which means you only pay when someone actively clicks on you ad links. You begin by choosing keywords, entering your daily budget and just like magic – your up and running.

7. Promotion Pathways

Let people know that you’re on YouTube by embedding videos into your website. Share feedbacks in forums and comments on blogs that are relevant to your videos and let people know that your videos is available on YouTube as a good resource for a particular problem or situation. Use other social media tools like Twitter and Facebook to cross-promote your YouTube presence. Be your own fan and your own marketer. Use what you have to get the word out and you’re bound to see great results.

Check out how the University of Phoenix is using YouTube to promote their brand. This brand channel has been recognized as an outstanding case study in YouTube business marketing.

Don’t have the time to market on YouTube? Visit MindSprout Marketing’s services to learn how we can help.