YouTube

What is it?
That's the site you go to to rewatch all of the funny Super Bowl commercials, right? Actually, it has a lot more to offer than Super Bowl commercials and cat videos. YouTube is a video sharing website that is owned by Google that offers a wide variety of content. Top categories include:

 - Music videos
 - Movie trailers and other entertainment videos
 - Vlogs
 - How-Tos and DIYs
 - News and Politics

How can businesses use the site?
There are really only two business purposes that YouTube serves, increasing sales and growing brand awareness. To increase sales businesses can use YouTube Advertising, partner with popular YouTube channels to feature their products/services, or upload their own original content. To grow brand awareness should seek to engage with viewers by:

 - Informing them about their business and industry
 - Educating them about their products/services through demos, DIYs, and how-tos
 - Entertaining them while showcasing your brand

Using YouTube Advertising
YouTube offers a multitude of advertising options that all vary in price. Some popular types include: video mastheads, in-stream video ads, in-display ads, standard display ads, and video overlay ads. One key feature of YouTube advertising is that you only pay when someone engages with your ad. This means you are only paying when someone is actually interested in your ad! How cool is that. YouTube also lets businesses have complete control over their advertising budgets and allows them to target customers for a better reach by age, gender, location, interests, and more. YouTube gives business users a variety of different analytics to see if they are reaching their target market and allows them to tweak their ads to expand their reach.

Using YouTube to Grow Brand Awareness
Other than paying for advertising, businesses can use YouTube to grow their following, help customers, and entertain them. In order to do this businesses should:

1. Post regularly and be sure to post more than just their advertisements that are already on TV
2. Include calls to action - add links to your videos, ask viewers to subscribe to your channel, rate and comment on your video, and share it with their friends
3. Customize your channel - reinforce your brand identity by using your logo, color palette, tone, and slogans so that viewers associate the video with your business
4. Make the most of your titles and include the right categories and tags - searching YouTube is a lot like searching on Google, so make it easy on viewers and get descriptive with your titles and tags
5. Think about collaborating with popular YouTube stars or having customer submitted videos featured on your channel
6. Post links to your YouTube channel on your other social media sites to drive traffic there


Why it's important?
YouTube is now bigger than any individual US cable network when it comes to attracting 18-49 year olds, advertising’s most sought after demographic. Growth in number of people on YouTube and watch time is 40% and 50% respectively year over year. YouTube is available in 76 different languages. The average length of time a mobile user's spends on YouTube at one time is 40 minutes.
Personally as a young, married homeowner who has little experience with repairs, both related to cars and home, I use YouTube a lot for how-to videos. My husband on the other hand, watches a lot of videos about gaming and game play throughs and creepy stories (to each his own haha). Either way, we have both seen multiple companies that do a good job with both advertising on YouTube and using it to grow their brand.