YouTube is one of the fastest growing ways that small businesses are using to promote themselves. It makes good business sense; YouTube is viewed by millions of people from all over the world every day. It is one of the best ways to get the word out about your business. YouTube offers many ways to help small businesses, particularly with marketing.

Low-Cost Advertising and Marketing

It is very difficult to grow your business without some form of advertising. Unfortunately, advertising can also be quite costly. Advertising is one of the biggest expenses most businesses, particularly small ones have. Advertising campaigns can cost many thousands of dollars. To air just one television commercial, you would have to rent expensive equipment, pay for actors, editors, and filmmakers, and the air-time. YouTube takes many of these costs away. For the most part it is free to post videos to YouTube. Not only that, but you yourself could take video with a personal digital camera.

Increased Advertising and Marketing Freedom

Most methods of advertising and marketing are very constrained. A television commercial can only be so long. Newspaper ads must be under a certain word limit. Certain words and images are not allowed in either medium. None of this matters on YouTube. If you want to give a fifteen minute demonstration of all of your products features, you certainly can. You can market towards an adult audience you will be able to, although there are limits. If you feel like your product is best advertised by a dose of adult humor, you probably will be able to on YouTube.

Advertising and Marketing As Entertainment

For the most part, people ignore advertisements. How many people use DVR’s or TIVO’s so that they can fast forward through commercials? In all honesty, how many newspaper ads do you read every day? The benefit of YouTube is that it exists for entertainment.

People watching YouTube videos are doing so for their amusement. Someone who watches the marketing and advertising videos that you post will be doing so by choice. Because they are doing so by choice, they are much more likely to pay attention to what you are saying. You can even disguise advertising and marketing as entertainment on YouTube. You could make a humorous video where your product is prominently featured or mentioned. There possibilities are only limited by your creativity.

Potential for Customer Identification

One of the most important aspects of marketing is customer identification – who are our customers and who might become our customers. Many millions are spent every year doing so. YouTube makes this easy. The people who view your content are at least somewhat interested in your company or its products. They saw that your video was posted, and they chose to view it. The people who comment on your video are likely the ones who are most interested. Many users have their own pages which you can comment on or may contain contact information which you can use connect with them in the future.

Viewer Feedback

It is essential that businesses receive feedback from customers about all aspects of their operation: products, services, customer service, advertising and marketing campaigns, etc. Feedback allows businesses to improve their products and their operations. Feedback also allows businesses to solve problems that customers have had with them, and thus make it more likely that customers will be retained.

Almost every YouTube video has a multitude of comments posted underneath them. These comments function as feedback. All comments, even negative ones are useful. For example, if users seem to think that the stars of your video are lacking in acting ability, you would be best suited in finding other stars for future videos. Or if users comment that a product which you are advertising is lacking features that a competitor’s product has, you may be able to add those features to your product.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are an ever growing number of social media sites and social networking has become ingrained into modern life. Social media is crucial to the success and failure of many small businesses and freelancers. Even though most people are at least somewhat familiar with social media, there are certain things every small business and freelancer should know.

Social Media Is Often the Cheapest Available Means

Many, perhaps most, social media sites are completely free for their users, and nothing is cheaper than free. The sites make their money from advertisements; therefore it is in their best interest to get as many users as possible. Even those sites that do charge fees are almost always less expensive than other means to the same ends.

Social Media Can Take Very Little Time

Depending on the site and what you are doing with it, social media can be used by spending very little time each day. 15 minutes a day or less is all that it will take to use most sites effectively. You are obviously free to take as much time as you would like, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to or are unable to.

Social Media Can Connect You to Customers and Fans

Business is all about using your connections to your advantage, and social media is all about forming connections. Social media allows you to have contact with current and potential fans and customers. You can use this contact to further your business or career.

Social Media Can Be Fun

The purpose of social media for most users is to entertain themselves. It is enjoyable to see the content posted by others, and to engage them in conversation. There is no reason that while you are advancing your business and career interests you can’t also enjoy yourself.

Choose Which Sites You Use and What You Put On Them Carefully

Every social media site functions differently and has a different group of people who use it. You need to determine what you want to get out of social media and which sites will best allow you to do that. Once you have selected which sites to use, you should only post content that will further your goals.

The Number Of Social Media Contacts That You Have Does Not Directly Correlate With Sales

Although there is some correlation between the number of social media contacts that you have and how successful your business or freelancing career is, it is not a direct correlation. You will probably find that as your number of contacts goes up, so will your sales, but the two might go up at drastically different rates.

Be Careful Not To Waste Time on Social Media

Social media can suck you in. You may absent-mindedly go from page to page and without realizing it have wasted half of the day. Beyond that, if you don’t use social media effectively, it will be a waste of time that you could have spent elsewhere. What is the point of spending an hour a day on your Facebook fan page if you don’t see any increase in business?

You Need To Have a Thick Skin in Order to Use Social Media

There are few places where you will get as much negative feedback as you will in the social media world. Some social media users take out their own feelings on others in the internet realm. You will get a great deal of criticism, some personal and hurtful, if you put yourself out there on the internet.

You Can Hurt Yourself by Using Social Media

Although the many benefits of social media likely makes it too good to pass up, there are risks associated with social media. Overuse of social media may mean that you will lose friends and contacts. It is also possible that others will contribute to your site or account and that contribution may be offensive or damaging. Always remember to be professional and think twice about anything you put into the public realm.