Some online marketers are strangely against the concept of web video as a marketing strategy. A few businesses just don’t see the value in dedicating time to social video sharing sites like YouTube. In fact by and large many people wouldn’t give YouTube marketing a second thought, but now more than ever businesses, brands and bloggers should start caring about YouTube. The following article outlines the 5 key reasons why YouTube should be an essential part to any Internet marketer’s arsenal:

1. YouTube Is Incredibly Popular
In 2010 YouTube was receiving 2 billion views a day. In 2011 that exceptional figure has done nothing but go up and up. This viewing figure is nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major American broadcast networks combined. Those kinds of figures are not to be ignored. YouTube is possibly the biggest video channel in the entire world, which is accessible all over the world on a variety of portable devices. This means your Internet video content can be projected to a far wider audience than any TV, radio or magazine advertisement ever could and at any time of the day too.

2. YouTube Is The Number 2 Search Engine
The majority of online marketers are battling it out every day to get ahead in the SEO race and beat their competition on Google. Well if that’s the case for you it’s worth noting that YouTube is almost as powerful as Google as it currently stands as the number two search engine in the world. It’s also good to know that YouTube will generate less search results than Google making your content easier to find on YouTube than on a Google search. YouTube may be the number two search engine, but its Internet video content frequently appears on Page 1 of Google meaning your presence on YouTube could infiltrate the Google results and get your brand or business to that coveted number one spot.

3. YouTube Can Boost Your Search Engine Ranking
Not only can your online video content be found easier on YouTube you can also use the tools YouTube provides to boost your search engine rankings on both YouTube and Google. YouTube offers some great ways for you as an online marketer to implement your keywords and phrases into your web video content. By making use of titles, tags, closed captions, descriptions and filling in your Channel details you can ensure both Google and YouTube searches scan your content for those keywords and phrases and help your Internet videos appear higher in the search engine results.

4. YouTube Is Compatible With Social Media Websites
YouTube has a variety of great tools for marketers to use, but perhaps the greatest tool of all is its ability to connect with social media websites. You can auto-share your new YouTube uploads on Twitter, add it to Facebook Pages and Groups, you can post your YouTube content on LinkedIn Discussions and even share it with your Google+ Circles. The convergence YouTube has with these social media websites allows you to easily and effectively get your web video content out to the audiences that each of these four social medias cater towards. Whether it’s the business sector of LinkedIn, the fast moving world of Twitter, the socialite atmosphere of Facebook or the exciting new world of Google+.

5. YouTube Is A Free Video Hosting Site
Perhaps the strangest thing about online marketers ignoring YouTube is the fact that not only does it do all of the above, but it does all of those things for absolutely free. There are extra avenues you can go up through YouTube that cost money such as Promoted Videos (much like Google Adwords), but that’s not really necessary. You can achieve a better search ranking, enjoy YouTube’s popularity and get your video found easily without having to fork out a penny (well bar the cost of your Internet connection). All of these attributes combined will undoubtedly help to generate more traffic to your site, ensure a better conversion rate for your brand or business and get your brands message seen and heard by thousands upon thousands of YouTube users.

Summary
The power, popularity and efficiency of YouTube as an online marketing tool cannot be ignored by Internet marketers regardless of their professional standing. Any business or brand of any size can make use of the perks of using YouTube for online marketing and by optimizing its attributes you can begin to reap its exceptional benefits.

*All data provided by Website Monitoring.

Andy Havard is a Marketing Executive at Skeleton Productions, a UK based web video production company.
http://www.skeletonproductions.com/web-video-production
http://www.skeletonproductions.com/web-video-production