Let me guess: your company uploaded a YouTube video a few months ago, and you’re still stuck around 100 views or so. You’re not alone – more than half of all YouTube videos will be viewed less than 500 times. Ever. Considering people upload 48 hours of video to YouTube every minute, you’re going to need a better strategy than just recording stuff and putting it out there. “Like what?” you say. Glad you asked!
Put your company’s best face forward.
We’re talking about human faces, but “best” doesn’t necessarily mean “best-looking” or “highest-ranking” in this situation. The person you want in front of the camera might not be in your marketing department, so branch out. Take inventory of the people in your office: who has the smile that brightens up everyone else’s day? Find that naturally outgoing, charming person – they’re your on-camera talent.
Don’t speak in jargon.
Oh, so your company is results-focused? Do you integrate/deliver/synergize/think outside the box? By using a phrase like “think outside the box” you are, by definition, not thinking outside the box. Every company on the planet is results-focused; that is the purpose of a company. If you’re talking to people through video, just talk to them. Let your genuine passion for the subject shine through, and it’ll be way more interesting than anything you say about being a collaborative thought leader (yes, we’re already snoring over here).
Get creative with instructional/informational videos.
For this, let’s turn to the master of creative advertising: Google. After all, they own YouTube so it only makes sense that they would have pretty decent video content. In the past year alone, Google’s come out with a ton of new products. And sure, you can read tech blog after tech blog to figure out what’s going on. Or you can just head on over to YouTube and watch it.
For example, 4 million people have seen Google Chrome’s “Dear Sophie” video. It’s about a man watching his daughter grow up.
It’s also an ad for Google Chrome, Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, and Picasa. While watching, you get to see all the cool stuff you can do with Google Chrome – and even have your heart warmed at the same time! There’s also this popular video that demonstrates the effectiveness of Google’s search functionality (and yes, it also tugs at the heart strings – seems they’ve got a knack for that).
Use video to respond to and interact with consumers.
What do we mean? For an outstanding example, take this video by EA Sports featuring Tiger Woods. A player found what he considered to be a glitch in the Tiger Woods video game and posted a video about it to YouTube. According to Tiger Woods and the people at EA, though, he didn’t find a glitch at all.
In the video, Tiger mimics what the original video captured. Sure, making a famous golfer appear to walk on water is probably out of your budget for a single YouTube video – but you can still engage your audience by simply responding to them.
For example, why not have a question and answer session? Let people submit their questions to you via Facebook or Twitter, and you can respond to some with video. “Breaking Bad” actor Giancarlo Esposito recently used this technique to answer questions on Reddit. If you haven’t heard of that, perhaps you’ve heard of the Old Spice video response campaign – even we’ve referenced it before.
Have a YouTube success story?
Do you have a story about successfully using YouTube for online marketing? Drop us a line and tell us all about it!
