This week i noticed that this year has been called the year of the videos. Yeah i have a You Tube account but i never visit it. To me it like less of a social media site, or even a search engine, what do people even look for there except Harlem Shake and Gangnam style? I got a bad rude awakening when i searched for what is the next biggest search engine in the world and yeah, YouTube was all there smiling, what an embarrassment i got. As far as Social Media is concerned, its marketing a business online to increase digital presence and YouTube seems to be underestimated by many both as a search engine and as a social network. So how many companies have You Tube accounts in Uganda except the television stations? i have not looked but am sure not many because if platforms like Facebook and Twitter are still looked at as a waste of time then i wonder about You Tube which needs a little more than effort. Most companies who have used You Tube have got discovered like Anna Kansiime she is now locking the social media with her short comedy skits. Yeah yeah ‘SEO helps our website rank highly on search engines and this applies on social media too’ but yet again the work done on SEO is limited, you will end up doing all you can about optimizing on Google because its expensive to hire a SEO company. Solutions, yes i got some; as you adopted to blogging so you can do content marketing is the same way you can do it with YouTube. I am hoping to after realizing the following reasons, =>Yes, YouTube is the second search engine in the world. =>My father does not read blogs he has no time but he listens to podcasts and watches (read listens) to YouTube, so are many other people i know like my friend James Makumbi. (i already have an audience) =>YouTube videos are shown on Google search results => Video humanizes your business, you have no robots or computers running it but humans, so put some face to them, we want to see them. And its better than written content. => People search YouTube to learn about products and services more than any other social network like how to do something, i learnt how to repair my flat iron from a Philips YouTube video. => Video is easier to communicate and educate your prospects and existing clients around your products. => Video is easier to consume than written content, practical are better than orals we all this, it is not rocket science. => Many of your competitors have no presence on YouTube, but they do on Facebook and Twitter; i suggest if you are just beginning social media start there. =>The opportunities to produce great video quality are reachable to any size budget (even your Samsung , Iphone, Lumia can be enough => Videos, specially YouTube, are widely viewed on all kinds of screens (PC, mobile, tablet) => And the joy of all, YouTube videos are super easy to distribute to other social networks and to embed on websites and blogs.
Online Video Stats
Comscore published this presentation on Online Video Stats last week. These numbers are huge. Here are some of the main points you might be interested to know: The number of videos watched online has increased by 800% in the last 6 years. YouTube has 153 million unique viewers, that’s almost 100 million more than Facebook. YouTube own 48% of the share of content (video views), The second platform is AOL with only 2%.
