Growing your business with YouTube
When you mention the terms, social media and business, a lot of people instantly conjure up images of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+ – along with a long list of questions. What they often forget is that while these are social networks aimed at curating content from around the web, you have to have content to share on them to keep them growing. Enter YouTube, an online video sharing community.
In addition to being the number two search engine (behind Google), YouTube is a tremendous social media tool where you can create your own online videos, build an audience, and drive traffic back to your business in a number of ways – by posting a video on your favorite social networks like Facebook or Twitter, encouraging visitors to check out your website, sign-up for your newsletter or as a way to leverage word of mouth marketing where viewers tell their friends about your video.
YouTube Beginnings
When I first got started making YouTube videos I’ll admit, I was pretty scared. Some of the questions I wondered about were if I could amass any considerable number of views – I also had a lot of questions about YouTube videos – will viewers like my content, will I even get viewers and how do I deal with comments and so on.
These are questions that anyone who is just getting started with online video might ask themselves. But just two years later (and 750,000+ views), I’m happy to say that I enjoy making videos – almost more than blogging. And it’s not because I’m shy or anything. I just find they allow me to express my creativity through story-telling along with the creativity that goes into writing each video.
So to help you out, I’ve come up with 5 ways you can use YouTube to grow your small, medium, or large business.