9 Reasons For Using YouTube for Local Small Business Internet Marketing

You wouldn't travel without your wallet, would you? Well, according to top social media marketing professionals, you shouldn't blog without using internet videos to market yourself and your product either.

Look at the success of YouTube videos that went "viral" almost overnight.  There are countless videos that have caught our attention for different reasons.  

Here are a couple of our favorite videos that went viral, because they:

Made Us Laugh! 

(Charlie Bit My Finger - Again) 

Made Us Want To Dance!

(JK Wedding Dance Entrance)

Short video clips are hugely successful ways of getting information out - obviously.  But they are not just for cute show and tell of our kids, fun parties, and pet tricks.  This is an ideal way to let customers see and know what you do on a personal level.  

One small business bakery owner decided to share a few tips on making a fondant cake.  He had no idea that his short video demonstration would take off with over 200k hits in less than three months.  

Consider what a 5 minute video could do to boost your business.

The best thing about creating YouTube videos is that they can be utilized on every social media outlet you are part of:  Facebook, your personal blog or website, Twitter, and LinkedIn, just to name the major ones.  By simply providing a link to your video, people will also have the opportunity to explore the additional videos will create over time.  

This is a great way to personalize your products, promotions, and to let people get to know you on a level which shows you as a likable, trustworthy business person to work with.  

Help4SmallBusinesses posted on the Top 10 Reasons to jump on the video bandwagon.

1. Yelp.com and CitySearch both maintain that having a YouTube video on their listing for your company doubles the likelihood that the visitor to your listing will take some kind of action. What their claim leaves out is that a poorly created video will not produce those kinds of results and might have a negative effect. On the other hand, there are dozens of other good reasons to create one of more YouTube videos for your local small business other than its effect on Yelp.com.
   
   

   
   2. Not every business, but most, will generate more customer calls and decisions to shop if the client has a reason to trust you. The written word is good at this, because folks tend to trust what has been made permanent on paper or screen. But you can really increase trust by allowing your customers to hear and see your personal passion about your products and services through a video.
   
   3. The internet is hungry for information. If your YouTube video has information that your client base is seeking, they will find the video to get that information.
   
   4. YouTube has a search function. If you do a good job of Titling your video, creating a good description, and providing relevant keywords in the title, description, and tags, your potential customers will find you through the search mechanism on YouTube. They may also find you because you are related to other searches they do and videos they watch.
   
   5. YouTube videos show up on Google Searches and other similar search engines. It is not uncommon for a thoughtfully keyworded YouTube Video to show up higher than your $5000 website.
   
   6. By adding YouTube videos to your Google Maps Local Business Center listing, MerchantCircle listing, Yelp.com and others, you improve your ranking on those local search engines, and that helps to improve the ranking of your website.
   
   7. You can add your YouTube video to your website as a URL link, like thishttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV-0VIHJCRk, or as an embed (see below). By putting the video on your website, you generate far more chances of it being seen. This is where you can really build trust and increase reasons for your customer to shop with you.
   
   8. You can add your YouTube video to your blog, your facebook, you can Tweet about it, and you can socially bookmark the original video, the article on your blog, and the facebook entry. All of these increase the chances of the video being seen, and also benefit your activities on these other web tools.
   
   9. Daily Motion and other video depositories similar to YouTube may pick up your video and add it to their listings. But if you don't want to wait and see if they do so, you can upload the same video to each one, or you can use an aggregator to put the video up on numerous of these sites all at once.

   
   You'll also want to read 2013's Top Blogging Tools and Plugins in order to enhance your business blog.
   

   
   

   Have you created YouTube videos to get your business name out there?  We'd love to hear your ideas and/or challenges with creating videos to market your business.