Introduction

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past few years, you’ve no doubt heard of YouTube, the video-sharing site owned by Google. YouTube lets anyone post videos online so that anyone else can watch. It’s a fun site and a popular one, constantly ranking in the top five of all sites on the Web with more than 130 million visitors per month. With hundreds of millions of videos on the YouTube site, it would take a viewer half a millennium to watch them all!

When I wrote the first edition of this book, back in 2008, YouTube was a lot smaller than it is today—still big, and still a major site, but less half the size. It’s more than doubled in visitors and videos in the two years since then, which is somewhat astounding. YouTube just keeps getting bigger.

It’s this size that makes YouTube attractive to businesses—as well as the relatively low cost of entry. The cost of making a YouTube video is next to nothing; you don’t need much more than a camcorder and a computer. If you can reach even a fraction of YouTube’s 130 million users, you can get a very big bang for your marketing buck.

That’s why I wrote this book, to help you learn how to add YouTube to your company’s online marketing mix. Judging from the number of interviews I give and questions I get asked, it’s obviously a topic of interest for a lot of organizations, large and small.

I try to answer as many of these questions as possible in this book. You’ll learn how you can use YouTube to market your company, brand, products, and services online; what types of videos you should create; how to create those videos; and how to promote and make money from your YouTube videos. It’s easy enough that any business can do it.

The new edition of YouTube for Business adds to what I first presented two years ago, to cover YouTube’s new features for marketers. You’ll learn how to promote your videos on the YouTube site, insert pop-up notes and annotations, add clickable overlays to your videos, and create a customized brand channel. I even address how to use YouTube for B2B marketing, which is always a hot topic.

Know that the information included in this book is both strategic and technical. That means you’ll find general marketing advice alongside specific technical instructions; you’ll learn how to use YouTube as a marketing tool as well as how to create, post, and manage YouTube-friendly videos. If you do it right, YouTube can become an important part of your marketing mix and drive a lot of traffic (and sales) to your existing website.

How This Book Is Organized

YouTube for Business, Second Edition is part marketing text, part computer book; that’s because you need both marketing and technical skills to take best advantage of YouTube as a marketing channel. To that end, I organized this book into four main parts, as follows:

• Part I, “Marketing Your Business Online with YouTube,” helps you incorporate YouTube as part of your online marketing strategy. You’ll learn how YouTube can help you market your business, as well as discover the three types of videos that can lead to YouTube success.

• Part II, “Producing Your YouTube Videos,” is all about the technical aspect of creating videos for online videos. You’ll learn the necessary audio and video technology, as well as how to create webcam, semi-pro, and professional videos. You’ll even learn how to edit your videos by using any desktop personal computer, and discover tips for producing more effective videos.

• Part III, “Managing Your YouTube Videos,” shows you how to upload your videos to the YouTube site, create a presence in the YouTube community, customize your YouTube channel page, manage viewer comments, and even incorporate your YouTube videos into your own website.

• Part IV, “Promotion and Monetization,” is all about the money. You’ll learn how to track your videos’ performance, get your videos noticed on the YouTube site, advertise your videos, create clickable overlays, generate revenues from your videos, and use YouTube for B2B marketing.

Conventions Used in This Book

I hope that this book is easy enough to figure out on its own, without requiring its own instruction manual. As you read through the pages, however, it helps to know precisely how I’ve presented specific types of information.

Web Pages

Obviously, there are a lot of web page addresses in the book, like this one: www.youtube.com. When you see a web page address (also known as a URL or uniform resource locator), you can go to that web page by entering the URL into the address box in your web browser. I’ve made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the web addresses presented here, but given the ever-changing nature of the Web, don’t be surprised if you run across an address or two that’s changed. I apologize in advance.

Special Elements

As you read this book, you’ll note several special elements, presented in what we in the publishing business call margin notes. There are different types of margin notes for different types of information, as you see here.

There’s More Online

While you’re online checking out the videos on the YouTube site, you might want to browse over to my personal website, located at www.molehillgroup.com. Here you’ll find more information on this book and other books I’ve written—including an errata page for this book, in the inevitable event that an error or two creeps into this text. (Hey, nobody’s perfect!)

In addition, know that I love to hear from readers of my books. If you want to contact me, feel free to email me at [email protected]. I can’t promise that I’ll answer every message, but I do promise that I’ll read each one!

Get Ready to YouTube

Now that you know how to use this book, it’s time to get to the heart of the matter. To learn more about YouTube, and how to make it an essential part of your online marketing mix, get ready and turn the page!