Why YouTube Must Be In Your Social Media Marketing Plans

While the words “social network” is nowadays usually synonymous with “Facebook” and “Twitter,” YouTube, though not as synonymous, has actually emerged as one of the most popular social media sites around as well.

Furthermore, it is gaining more and more features that users can quickly identify as belonging to the kingdom of social features.

The question is- how can you use YouTube if your interests, whether personal or business have absolutely nothing to do with videos?

For one thing, having your own videos is not a requirement to participate in the YouTube social network.
However, it is an advantage especially videos related to whatever industry you happen to be in. In the meantime, you can leave comments on the videos and channels of others, share videos you come across, create a unique playlist of share-worthy videos you come across, star rate videos, and finally have a section on your account for your favorite video content.

These activities make you visible to other users whether or not you have actually posted a video. On the other hand, you can create a simple video pertaining to your specific industry. For example, a “how to” or even a presentation snatched from your last PowerPoint.

After all, sharing content of value is encouraged on YouTube with all the various social sharing options that are the realm of blogs and social networks now found on YouTube. What’s more, you can share YouTube videos (whether your own or someone else’s) on Facebook and Twitter as well as post them on your blog via cut-and-paste.

All-in-all, you can actually aggregate all the power of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and your blog for effective inbound and outbound campaigning over multiple platforms with having to be too tech-savvy.

On the other hand, with all the social activity, how can you measure the effectiveness of your YouTube presence? To measure success on YouTube, you need to be wary of how your target audience responds to your video content or video content you share or have as favorites. Feedback can be left as direct comments or a 5-star rating.

Furthermore, YouTube features an indispensable (and free) tool called Insights.
Insights is YouTube’s reporting system that gives deeper data on each view your video collection is receiving, including viewer demographics, overall popularity, and communities your viewer fits.
You can use this data to further deliver content relevant to viewer and community. Furthermore, your video is dissected to where viewers stop watching (lose interest) and also as this performance rates against similar length video.

That is a lot of useful statistics at no cost. However, the real value of this data is what you do with it.
Finally, for new sites or blogs with little to no traffic, YouTube is a great way to get a jump start in visitors. You can link your channel and video to your blog or site.
This also applies to Search Engine Ranking as YouTube and social networks seem to show up in Search Results before your own website SEO efforts.

Even if YouTube is currently keeping it low-key compared to Facebook and Twitter, all the above tidbits are reason enough why YouTube is a key part of your social media marketing plans.

Source: http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com/2011/02/social-media-marketing-plans/