YouTube is one of many multi media social content sites that can be leveraged to increase traffic to your web site. These sites provide space to store multi media files like video clips and photos. It is simply a matter of knowing how to use these sites to increase your traffic.

If you sell products through your web pages, have you thought of developing short videos or taking photos of your products. Videos can be on any subject, however ‘how to’ type videos work particularly well. Open an account at YouTube or any of the other social content sites and upload your videos (or images) with accurate descriptions.

Consumers are now using social content sites to find information or help for products they are intending to purchase. YouTube provides a good search interface that enables users to find what they are looking for. Some of the searches they make include ‘how do I’ type questions. If your video provides a solution, they more likely to also visit your site.

Using social content sites can serve two masters. You are providing information for YouTube users (or which ever site you decide to use); you are also acquiring an offsite storage facility that reduces the load on your own servers.

An added benefit is the opportunity to include these videos (or images) into your web or blog pages when required. Search engines index sites like YouTube and include the content in their search results. Whilst it may be a three step process; search engine to social content to your site; internet users are familiar with the process and often follow through. When they do, they arrive on your site with a purpose - to buy or for more information.

Leveraging social content sites is the future, particularly if you are targeting under 30 year olds. They have adapted to the technology quickly and now often use it as their primary source of consumer information. Satisfy that need by providing the information that they are looking for. YourTube is one site that helps to provide the link between those seeking information - and those that have the information.

It’s available, it’s free, it’s popular. Social content is in demand and YouTube feeds that demand. You just need to feed YouTube.

Features of YouTube Insight - a free new social marketing tool from YouTube - gives YouTubers detailed stats about the videos they upload:

• How often their videos are viewed by geographic area
• A popularity comparison to all videos in that market in a certain timeframe
• How long it takes for a video to become popular
• what happens to video views as popularity peaks

How does this help you? Use these stats to:

• increase your videos’ view counts
• improve your popularity on YouTube

What if you discover that:

• Your videos are most popular on Wednesdays?
• You have a huge following in Spain?
• New videos that play off previous content become more popular more quickly?

These stats help you make better marketing decisions, such as:

• Tailor your content more to your target audiences
• Post these videos on days you know these viewers are on the site.
• Post your next video in Spanish?

A plan to increase your videos’ popularity is important for all the obvious reasons … including generating more revenue through on-site advertising. More new YouTube features coming soon:

• A specific breakdown of how viewers discovered the video
• Additional statistical information

To see your stats, go to:
YouTube > My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos

Click under the “About this Video” button.

You’ve no doubt heard the complaints that advertising on the social networking websites doesn’t get the return expected by online marketers. High pageviews, low click-thru rates.

However, there’s another way of looking at this: social networking websites can deliver a demographically focused audience that is not widely available online. Even offline, only TV can deliver this type of audience.

In February, the 25 top social networking sites put 155 million unique visitors face-to-face with advertisers. MySpace, Facebook & Classmates.com delivered over 70% of that total. Tacking on YouTube and Flickr increases the total to 215 million unique viewers a month. Best estimate for TV is less than 200 million unique viewers per month.

There’s more. According to ComScore Video Metrix, US web users watched over 10 billion videos just in December, 2007. Many of those were soft-pedalling commercials … and many more are ripe to have a short commercial attached to the end.

But the most attractive social networking media feature is the younger demographic with high disposable income, much sought-after by ad agencies and advertisers. It’s too big and too focused an audience for that strong marketing connection to not be made eventually.

Social networking websites may currently be struggling for traditional advertisers, but the signs point to a happy, profitable future for them - together.

When you step into the room, the social networking is in full swing. The party is already going strong. You see dozens of people … but you don’t know any of them. In one corner is a group of 8 or 10 obvious friends, laughing and talking and enjoying each other’s company.

You walk up to the group and smile and say, “Hi. I’m Bob. I have a great widget. Let me tell you about it!”

Yes, yes. That sounds absolutely ridiculous. But most marketers approach social networking websites like MySpace and YouTube with just about the same amount of tact, courtesy, and understanding.

To be a successful socializer at that party, what would really work?

• Study the interactions of the individuals and groups.
• What unwritten “rules” can you observe?
• Often, such groups have a special language they speak, unique to their group. Can you hear it?
• How do others join into ongoing discussions?
• Who are the “big dogs” in the groups? Do they bite?
• What’s your plan? Target the “big dogs?”
• Or start by approaching smaller groups, maybe even singles who seem to be standing alone and left out of the socializing?

Whoever you approach, consider this plan:

1. Blend in.
2. Add real value.
3. Stick around. (Don’t disappear, or you’ll have to start from scratch when you come back.)

Recognize that marketing in a social networking setting is much different from what you are accustomed to. In normal marketing, most of your targets want to avoid you. In social networking, your targets are there to talk to somebody. That can be you, if you understand them and approach them correctly.

YouTube has moved up near the top of the charts of most popular websites over the last couple years. You can hardly turn around online without bumping into a YouTube video embedded on whatever sites you visit, but the YouTube folks certainly aren’t resting on their laurels.

According to Jim Patterson of Product Management,

Nevertheless, we worried that we weren’t open enough. So, we pulled some all-nighters and added some powerful new ways to integrate YouTube content and community into other websites, desktop applications, video games, mobile devices, televisions, cameras, and lots more.

Let’s review. With YouTube, you can

• join and upload your videos
• access all YouTube videos from just about any website
• quickly & easily manage, search, & play back videos
• network with YouTube’s huge global audience
• build traffic to your website
• improve brand recognition
• attract users to your site and give them a better social networking experience
• … and do all of this for free.

And since that wasn’t good enough for them, they’re adding new social networking features:

• Upload video responses to posted videos.
• Add/Edit user & video metadata (titles, descriptions, ratings, comments, favorites, contacts, etc).
• Fetch feeds (most viewed, top rated, etc.) for 18 international locations.
• Custom queries optimized for those 18 international locations.
• Customize player control (pause, play, stop, etc.) through software.

It’s pretty creative. For instance:

• You can use the Electronic Arts game “Spore” to create some crazy creature, then upload your creation to YouTube.
• University of California, Berkeley, is pioneering the automatic publication of free educational content videos to YouTube.
• You can use Animoto to create a music video from your own photo … and upload the video to YouTube.
• Tivo is now integrating YouTube videos into its TV platform.

Continuous social networking innovation going on at YouTube.

You find so many social networks these days that give you viral social marketing opportunities. How do you take advantage? How do you go viral? It’s the eternal marketing question. What can you do that will make people laugh at your YouTube video and say, “Holy mackeral! THIS is incredible! I have to email THIS to everyone.”

Add to the mix the fact that all your competition wants to do exactly the same thing - before you do - and the whole puzzle gets stickier.

First, you need a viral social marketing model. Recently, an incredible photo made the rounds through email. It showed a naked man on a hospital gurney, attendants standing around. What made this man’s photo remarkable was the telephone pole sticking out of his butt. It had been been sawed off, so it was only about 3 feet long, and it looked to be about 8-10 inches in diameter. The article with it said he had been thrown from his boat while bass fishing. You can picture the rest. He survived, but had some serious soft tissue damage. Oh, man. I’ll bet he did!

So think of the TV show “America’s Funniest Videos.” People send in their home videos of friends and relatives doing really stupid things, which often lead to incredible pain … which causes the audience to laugh like crazy. And that is exactly the effect you want to create (the laughter - not the pain), so the clips on this show may be a great model for your own viral marketing campaign.

What if your business is … say … accounting? Or anything else perceived by the public as totally boring? How can you possibly go viral?

How about THIS YouTube video: “The Death-Defying Adventures of Accountant-Man!”

1. Accountant-Man, dressed in superhero garb, sits at a desk. A dog comes up and lifts its leg, peeing on Accountant-Man’s foot.
2. Accountant-Man, smiling and all full of himself, tosses a baseball to his small child. The child hits a line drive right into Accountant-Man’s … (you’ve seen this before, right?). And Accountant-Man doubles over and drops to the ground in agonizing pain.
3. Accountant-Man rides his bicycle. You yell, “Hey, Accountant-Man! Are you on your way to save another victim of bad arithmetic?” And Accountant-Man looks at you and nods vigorously and raises his hands in triumph … and crashes into a tree, getting thrown off his bike.

If you’ve ever watched “America’s Funniest Videos,” you’ve already seen these clips, and a lot of others like them. People do dumb things, they get hurt, and the audience cracks up. At home, you take it viral. You call your family into the room. “Watch THIS! This is incredible!”

So next time you watch this show, take notes. What you have here is a perfect viral marketing model for any business or product or service, no matter how essentially boring it may be.

Obviously, you want to maximize the social networking value of your blog. For that to happen, your blog content needs to be fresh and enticing and insightful and most of all, targeted to your market’s most passionate desires. If you do these things, they’ll keep coming back … and they’ll tell their friends.

But how do you get them there in the first place?

You do that by creating good entry points. One blogger calls it “Hansel and Gretel Marketing” (leaving crumbs around to help others find your blog). Your goal is to ultimately have your readers create these links themselves.

Until that happens, you need to be the one dropping crumbs in all the right places:

• Create really useful and thoughtful blog posts, then request a link from the top blogs in your niche.
• Guest-write a post now and then (best: feature a market-specific use of social networking) for other high-traffic blogs.
• Learn and use some basic Search Engine Optimization for your blog.
• Set up social marketing profiles at StumbleUpon, MySpace, YouTube, etc., and link to your blog in your profile.
• One idea that can easily go viral on the social networking media is a resource list. If you know exactly what your target market wants and needs, spend time creating a special blog post where you give them a resource list. This is exactly the type of post that can get you featured on StumbleUpon or Digg or other social bookmarking sites.

You can also comment on other blogs or forums in your topic and leave your blog url. But to do this consistently takes many, many hours a week. It’s probably more time-effective to invest a few hours creating that ONE special blog post that really optimizes your social network marketing.

If you’re a first-timer shooting promotional video to place on YouTube or one of the many other online video sites, here’s a hard-learned video marketing tip:

When you hear a shotgun in the distance and you think, “The microphone will never pick THAT up,” … you are wrong.

My friend and her partner took the video cam way out of town into the woods recently. They shot 4 promotional videos for their small business. They were well-prepared with a checklist.

1. They were totally passionate about their candle-making business, and they were prepared to bring that passion to the screen.
2. This video would be HOT! They had rehearsed again and again at home, and they knew exactly which points to focus on.
3. They made sure the microphone was recording.
4. The checklist pointed out that the wind could ruin your sound, so they had waited for a breezeless day.
5. They knew a certain spot in the forest where they’d have enough light, but not too much.
6. They brought a tripod so the camera wouldn’t shake. They set it up several feet away, to film them both.
7. They shot a minute’s worth of video, then checked it out to make sure the sound and lighting were good.

It was perfect. They assumed that the quality would hold. So they began their production. Neither of them thought much about those 15 shotgun blasts off in the distance. No way the microphone would pick THAT up, right?

Wrong. The whole trip will have to be done over. What the video social marketing tip sheet didn’t tell them was that the further away the microphone is from the scene it’s filming, the more background noise it will pick up. At least they’ll get another chance to commune with nature.

If your video cam microphone is any good, it is sensitive to ALL sounds. In fact, it will actually hear stuff you can’t hear. And even if it’s not any good, you can pretty much figure it will hear anything you don’t want it to hear.

My friend has added 2 NEW tips to her promotional video checklist:

1. If you hear ANY sound in the background, just start over.
2. If you’ve travelled to a particular place to shoot your promotional video, always check the quality before you leave. You may save yourself a long trip back.

1. Brainstorm with your customers or friends. Tell them you want a video that goes viral on YouTube to promote your business. Ask what they’d do that both promotes your business and would rivet people’s attention. Offer a prize or reward for anyone who submits a video that promotes you, and a bigger prize for the best video submitted. Let them know you’ll post their video to YouTube, giving them full credit.

2. When you do your own video, show your personality. Nobody expects - or wants - a Spielberg production. The purpose is to create a strong bond between you and your audience (or prospects). So as you make your point in the video, be 100% sincere AND show your personality. Do a Google search for “videos that have gone viral” or “popular videos”, etc., and watch them. Those are perfect models. What does that person onscreen do that especially endears them to you? How do they capture your attention? How do they get you excited? What do they do that arouses your curiousity, makes you keep watching? How do they astonish you? Make notes.

3. Attention spans are short. Make your point and get out. Videos that go viral are almost always pretty short - under 2 minutes, for greatest effect. If you have a lot to say, break it up into a video series - all under 2 minutes.

4. If you want your viewer to do something (e.g., go to some url), use Windows Movie Maker (in your Program Files; it came with your system) or other editing software to put that instruction in writing on the screen in the last few seconds of your video. Movie Maker also gives you special effects you can choose from, but keep it very simple. If you get carried away creating effects, you’ll wind up with a mess that nobody will watch.

5. Write down a dozen or more possible titles. This is a critical step. A great title gets you a lot of viewers. A bad title (anything less than great), and you’re dead in the water. You want your title short, punchy, to-the-point. If you can hit their curiousity, great. Don’t try to be clever - most “clever” titles just sound dopey and turn people off. Search online for “free headline swipe file” to give you models for your titles.

6. Upload your video and start planning your next one. You need practice and experience to get really good at this. And you’ll probably need to post several videos on YouTube before you get much of an audience. Meanwhile, include a link to your videos in every piece of promotion you send out. Always encourage people to go to YouTube, watch your videos, and give you feedback.

7. Make a list of bloggers who are read by your target market. Send them a short description with a link to your video. This is another reason you need a REALLY good title! If the right bloggers promote your video, then you have a real chance of that viral effect.

Repeat Steps 1 through 7 again and again. Watch your stats closely to see what works and what doesn’t. You’ll get better every time, and you’ll have a better chance of creating that viral video.

So social marketing will be bigger than ever this year. YouTube for one will pave the way for newer and more viral video superstars. Being one of the more effective marketing techniques in the Internet world, video marketing is said to be very SOCIAL because Web 2.0 has allowed such to be easily shared.

If your company still has not got into video marketing, then 2008 is the best time to start YouTube-ing. Notice that I only refer to YouTube because it is for me, the best video sharing website.

I’ve gathered some of the best YouTube tips everyone can benefit from. Some tips are more than a year old but can still be very effective. Others are simple tips yet very direct to the point.

25 Effective YouTube Tips:

1. Lip-synching. Remember those 2 Asian singing Backstreet Boys? Imitate them!
2. Animals do the funniest things. Animals are always cute when they “say” and do the funniest things. Start with your pet iguana.
3. Have an original idea no-one else would bother to do. So this can be quite a challenge but I am sure you have lots of unique ideas on your mind. All you have to do is make them a reality.
4. Fight strangers in the street. There are a few masochists out there who’d love to see more and more people get bruised and hurt. But don’t do this seriously. Act and just do it for fun.
5. Get your camera phone out at gigs. Help those who couldn’t afford to watch Justin Timberlake by taking a video. The day after a concert, people will surely be searching for such videos. You can never go wrong.
6. Be good at videogames. Geeks will love you for this. Video game fanatics
7. Corrupt innocent childrens’ characters. Again, don’t take this seriously though. Make sure that only adults can view such videos. You don’t want to be banned.
8. Drink. Lots. Drinking games always get a lot of attention. Make sure that you have a friend who’ll look after you and press the record button once you start stripping.
9. Rip obscure Japanese cartoons off the TV. Similar to number 2. Anime fans will hate you but more YouTubers will dig your video post.
10. Make high-quality one-minute vids reviewing hot gadgets of the day. More and more people search for gadget reviews. Unboxing posts are popular but reviews will be more informative.
11.Create a Relevant, Informative Video. Stupid videos can be popular but nothing’s better than a video who teaches a thing or two about a hobby or interest.
12. Keep the Video Short. Three-minute videos are good. Five-minutes is long. While 10-minute videos seem like forever. Make your video short and crisp so viewers won’t get bored.
13. Select a Catchy Title and Thumbnail. Like blog posts, your video’s title must catch the attention of the public.
14. Embed Wisely. Learn how to embed. Add videos to your blogposts but make sure you do it right.
15. Promote “Fresh” Videos . Social marketing eh? The key to a popular YouTube career is to promote. Post shoutouts in all your social networks.
16. Choose Your Video Category Wisely. And just like blog posts, adding the video to a relevant category will definitely attract the right target market.
17. Target the “Most Viewed” Lists. Don’t be content with just having 30 viewers. If others can have more than a million views, so can you.
18. Ask Your Community to View Your Video. Tell the whole FaceBook community to view your video.
19. Ask Your Community to Promote Your Video. Tell your social friends to promote your video. Just make sure it is something worth sharing.
20. Ask Your Community to Promote Your Video on Social Media Sites. Word of mouth, rather, social media promotion will always be effective.
21. Have a plan. Write down your YouTube plans for the year. Five million views in a month? Not impossible.
22. Make your videos ’search friendly’. Effective SEO is still hot and will forever be the name of the game. And why do you think Google invested on YouTube if not for search purposes?
23. Think & act like your viewer. If you’re the viewer, or should I say, YouTube addict, what would you want to see?
24. Learn about video-editing. Poor editing skills kills. YouTube has this very simple editing feature that you can use. If you don’t dig web-based video editing, you can always trust your goold old Windows Moviemaker or Apple’s iMovie. You don’t need to be a programmer just to figure how to do a well-edited movie.
25. Get It going. Key here is to get viral! No, not the flu virus kind. The best way to a successful YouTube career is to market the video yourself.

These tips were compiled from the following websites:

Collactive
The Register
SEO Blog

The first Open Web Awards hosted by Mashable was a success. The awards night was a bit late since the winners were already announced last December 21, 2007. But still, it was a success and I’m hoping this won’t just be a first.

The conference was held yesterday January 10 at sunny San Francisco, California at the Palace Hotel. The whole Social Media and Web 2.0 community has finally got to recognizing the best of the best. A total of 250,000 votes were cast. Next year, I am certain it’ll be bigger— more nominations, more finalists, and hopefully more sponsors so the prizes will be bigger.

Here are the winners of Mashable’s first ever Open Web Awards.

1. PEOPLE’S CHOICE
Mainstream and Large Social Networks
Netlog

Applications and Widgets
WidgetBucks

Social News and Social Bookmarking
digg

Social Search
facebook

Sports and Fitness
SPORTME

Photo Sharing
VOIS

Video Sharing
Kaltura

Start Pages
iGoogle

Places and Events
myspace.com

Music
PANDORA

Social Shopping
ZliO

Mobile
Google Mobile

Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks
cafemom

3. JUDGE’S CHOICE
Mainstream and Large Social Networks
facebook

Applications and Widgets
Flock

Social News and Social Bookmarking
digg

Social Search
Mahalo

Sports and Fitness
ESPN

Photo Sharing
flickr

Video Sharing
YouTube

Start Pages
netvibe

Places and Events
Meetup

Music
last.fm

Social Shopping
woot!

Mobile
twitter

Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks
FilmCrave

Websites like facebook and digg are lucky to have been awarded twice. I agree more with the Judge’s Choice than with the People’s Choice though.

Congratulations to the winners! Here’s to a more successful and social Web 2.0 and Social Media in 2008!

Definitely a first for the largest search engine in the world, Google and YouTube is teaming up with Japanase electronics company Matsushita,maker of Panasonic, to create flat panel TVs that allow viewing of online videos via YouTube.

I know of using the TV set as the computer monitor to surf the Internet but with this one, Google, YouTube, and Picassa can be easily accessed with just a press of a button.

So there’s the Google Phone and YouTube viewing in iPhones. An internet-enabled TV could be a welcome addition to the pack. I can see social marketing making its way to local TV sets making advertising and marketing have a larger reach.

If built-in Internet TVs catch the attention of the public, then web social marketing has a very bright future. Imagine Web 2.0 experience right in your own living room with just a click of the remote. I bet there will be more and more couch potatoes.

So we’re done with the predictions. Looks like social marketing is here to stay. Better yet, is here to lead the way of Internet marketing. The YouTube boom and the sudden popularity of Facebook are just perhaps two of the most memorable successes in 2007. From Web 2.0, we are slowly moving to Web 3.0 and now there are talks about Web 4.0. It can be quite confusing to differentiate, but only one thing is clear : Internet marketing, whether SEO, e-mail marketing, and video marketing, will still be the fastest and most phenomenal means of marketing.

Traditional marketing will still be effective but more people will turn to their Macs and PCs instead of their newspapers and TVs. I agree with Blue Magnet that “social and search marketing is clearly leading the way together with e-mail and mobile marketing.” And I so agree with their Top 10 Internet Marketing Tips :

1. Optimise your website’s content. SEO is still important. If you still haven’t gotten to optimizing your site’s content, start now. Love your audience. Love Google.
2. Create a content development strategy for your website. Nothing’s better than having a good plan. Check if it’s time for you to change niche or directions.
3. Invest in a paid search (pay-per-click) campaign. AdWords or Overture. Choose just one expect more search traffic.
4. Publicize your website through article marketing. Doing PR work is not just for traditional media. Article directories and submissions will be good for your linkbuilding efforts.
5. Develop a social media marketing strategy. Into Facebook? MySpace? There are hundreds of social networks and bookmarks that allow you to share whatever you have.
6. Create a Company Blog. Enough said. Blog will be bigger this year so take time to develop a readable and interesting blog.
7. Experiment with video marketing. You’ll be surprised how videos can help. Why do you think Google bought YouTube in the first place?
8. Engage your audiences with web widget marketing. Widgets are everywhere. Why not join in the bandwagon?
9. Discover the benefits of mobile marketing. Your mobile phone will only get thinner and smarter but it will be one powerful marketing tool. Companies should learn how to do more effective mobile marketing.
10. Create an effective email marketing strategy. E-mails will still be effective this year. Make sure though that you think of different ways on how to catch the attention of your audience. Don’t make them look like they are ready to be sent to the Spam folder.

I can’t believe it’s SEOmoz. You’d think they’d know better. Well, it’s a lesson for the rest of us.

If you’re going to post a video to YouTube and embed it on your blog then make sure it’s available. There’s no sense in posting a video only to have it removed then your blog content is useless because it relies on a multimedia presentation that once existed on another website.

I don’t know why the video isn’t available, but SEOmoz only posted this blog post yesterday. Who knows how long the video had been posted before that. But it isn’t available now. Just click on it as if you want to see the video. It’s all gone. Bad, bad, bad.

And I like what one visitor had to say, obviously while the video was still available:

It certainly sound interesting, but the one thing I would add even without watching is that I think it’s important to differentiate viral marketing & linkbait - they’re not the same thing.

Yes, that’s true. Viral marketing and linkbait are two different things. But both can be ruined by a good foible.

Video sharing is on fire from all quarters. First, Viacom took a punch at YouTube, but other large companies have done so as well. If the Napster story is any clue, you can bet the courts will step in rule in favor of the companies who feel as though they are being shafted by video owners sharing their video content with non-owners. But this will only affect those video owners who share content that was produced by someone else. In short, you will need to get permission before you share video content.

Most video marketers, however, produce their own videos. But what about those who do not? Is there any protection? Here are a few pointers if you want to get involved in video social marketing:

• Produce your own videos; do not use someone else’s content
• If you do use someone else’s content, get permission first
• Understand Fair Use Law and act appropriately
• Give proper attribution for material that is not yours
• When it doubt, throw it out

Play it on the safe side. Eventually, these companies will start going after the video sharers themselves. Or you could run the risk of losing your account status at the video sharing sites if the courts do decide against them. When it comes to video marketing, your business reputation is at stake so keep it ethical.