How Do You Tube?

There’s a lot of buzz going around about what your business should be tweeting, how you should use YouTube, and why EVERYONE needs a fan page. In a world full of opinions and with even more information, sometimes it’s hard to filter through everything and decide the right strategy for your own business. Hopefully over the next several weeks I can combine my personal experience along with some great examples that can help you make those long-term, strategic decisions.

YouTube

I wanted to start out with YouTube because I have seen some prime examples of excellent YouTube channels lately and had a bit of success within one of my own ventures with it. There are all kinds of reasons why a business would want to use youtube. Here are a few key examples:

1. To Show Expertise and Thought Leadership
2. For Marketing and Advertising
3. To Ease Customer Service
4. To Offer Free Content
5. To host a contest
6. Spotlighting employees or customers

Businesses have found lots of ways to make YouTube work for them, from simply posting their commericials to posting ‘how to’ videos and interviews. Whatever your business model, it’s likely that you can use YouTube to your advantage. Let’s take a look at a few prime examples.

Nationwide is on Your Side

We’ve heard the slogan a million times, but like most under 30 I don’t really care how long you’ve been in business or how much money you make a year or how often I see your commercial. What I care about is what does using your brand say about me?

What kind of car do you drive? Where do you like to go eat? Where do you get your suits? What about that tie? We are faced with these questions daily and we have to own up to a brand. So when someone asks about the insurance you use, I doubt you’ll ever reply, ‘I use Nationwide… because they are on my side’.

BUT… thanks to their recent use of YouTube I could reply, ‘Nationwide… you know. The guy who throws up the alphabet soup.’ Odd right?

Not really. Watch this:

This is a perfect example of YouTube. A brand usually viewed as older (we’re talking insurance here) suddenly became something I (a twenty-something) can own. Something I can tell my friends about and not feel out of place for saying. Even if they haven’t seen it all it takes is using their YouTube channel and suddenly my friends associate humor with me. Not just any humor either. This is young humor. Most over 40 probably wouldn’t laugh at this the first time.

You can find their YouTube channel (whose design is awesome as well) here. They have actually developed an entire story around The World’s Greatest Spokesperson… In the world.

Team Covenant

Team Covenant… What the heck is that? Oh… That’s the company that I run. The company I run is an online content site and retailer for table-top games. So how does a game company use social media? You guessed it. Or at least part of it. We use it to show the games off! We also do all kinds of other things with it. We show us interacting with customers at conventions, we post the final games in big tournaments, we make promotional videos for our own custom products, and on and on it goes. You can watch a prime example below.

This is good because it gives the people we meet a conventions a reason to come to our site over the next few weeks to see if they are featured in any of our videos. It also shows people that they don’t buy products from a company, they buy products from a group of guys who pour their heart and soul into these games. I think this is the most important part of videos on our site. It shows relevant content that also shows people who we are.

You can find our YouTube channel (which I must say is also awesomely designed) and a ton of videos here. I’m still doing a lot of trial and error research to define who we really are in the video space and will be trying some pretty crazy stuff out in the coming weeks. I’ll be sure and post updates at some point.

Who Are You?

I blogged a few weeks back about knowing who you are and I want to reiterate it again. Both of these YouTube pages and videos work because it relates to the company and the customer. This is the most important part in deciding how to incorporate video and YouTube into your business model. I’m not saying that this should replace your marketing or that it is to become your sole mode of interaction with your customers, but it can be a very important part of your marketing mix.

Do you use YouTube? If so, how? Have you found any success with it?

If you have questions or a unique situation you can post below. If you’d rather not post online your ideas or model, feel free to post asking for content. Be sure to use a good email in the email section of the comment so I can get back to you.

Zach