Why YouTube Should be Part of a Brand’s Social Marketing Arsenal
Unlike earlier, when social media meant only Facebook or Twitter, marketers today consider YouTube to be a powerful social marketing and branding channel. Besides being the preferred platform for uploading videos online, marketers are leveraging YouTube for everything from improving brand visibility to engaging with customers.
Thismoment’s research on YouTube’s rapid growth and its popularity as a social platform unearthed some interesting findings:
- 72 hours of videos are uploaded every single minute on YouTube (YouTube statistics).
- Founded in 2005, the video-sharing site has grown exponentially. The recent spurt can be attributed to the ability to access YouTube via mobile devices.
- 500 years of YouTube video are watched every day on Facebook, and over 700 YouTube videos are shared on Twitter each minute.
- Millions of YouTube videos are “favorited” everyday.
- As of May 2012, YouTube’s top 5 corporate channels (Vevo, WMG, Machinima, Maker and Fullscreen) gathered a total of 1.5 billion views (ReadWriteWeb).
The Social Brand and YouTube
From SMBs, to big labels like Coca-Cola and P&G, almost all brands today have an active YouTube presence. Let us examine how YouTube is adding value to brands’ social footprint:
- Great Content Can be a Conversation Starter: Although mainly used for uploading and viewing videos, by posting creative content in form of interesting videos, brands can:
- Initiate conversations, spark discussions and engage with users: Approximately 100 million users like, share and comment on YouTube content every week (YouTube statistics). This makes YouTube a great platform for users to discuss branded content.
Created and customized using Thismoment’s DEC platform, Tourism New Zealand’s YouTube channel encourages users to join the conversation by commenting on the featured content or discussing the brand in general.
- The Must-Have Platform for UGC Campaigns: YouTube was built around people uploading personal video content. Although it has now evolved into a channel for social brand building, it’s still a powerful platform for hosting UGC campaigns. Considering the rising trend of consumers contributing to brands’ social media content, marketers should leverage YouTube to provide users with a platform for voicing themselves. Check out BMW’s ‘0 to Desir3 in 5.9 seconds’ UGC campaign (built on DEC) to know more.
- Extending Your Brand’s Reach: The fact that YouTube is localized in 43 countries and across 60 languages means brands have increased opportunity to reach users beyond geographical boundaries. By extending your brand’s reach, we just don’t mean making it ‘sharable’. Brands should also focus on making their content ‘findable’, both within and outside YouTube. How? By optimizing their videos for search engines. This means investing just as much time on titles and key-word rich descriptions as brands do on actual content.
- The Power of Story-Telling: What makes the GE Healthcare DEC unique is that the brand uses YouTube to tell their story through interesting, creative videos. By featuring real-life stories of people who have emerged disease-free, GE subtly highlights its products and services in the healthcare space, without sounding overtly promotional. Having understood the power of story telling, brands are disguising promotional content in the form of interesting stories. Taking this one step ahead, they are using videos instead of overwhelming consumers with text heavy content; and how better to do this than by using YouTube.
The Road Ahead…
With brands using YouTube for engagement and launching campaigns, this channel has emerged as a powerful social branding platform. Over the next few years, we can expect to see an increase in the deployment of UGC campaigns on YouTube. Additionally, the availability of YouTube on 350 million mobile devices will further fuel its growth as a social branding and marketing channel.
- Shama Ahmed
Thismoment
