Why you should be posting videos to Youtube

More and more people are using YouTube as a search engine. Here is a list of the the most searched for items in 2009:

Most Watched YouTube videos:
1. Susan Boyle – Britain’s Got Talent (168+ million views)
2. David After Dentist (37+ million views)
3. JK Wedding Entrance Dance (33+ million views)
4. New Moon Movie Trailer (31+ million views)
5. Gangnam Style (61+ million views)

Most Watched music videos on YouTube (Global)*:
1. Pitbull “I Know You Want Me” (82+ million views)
2. Miley Cyrus “The Climb” (64+ million views)
3. Miley Cyrus “Party in the U.S.A.” (54+ million views)
4. The Lonely Island “I’m On a Boat” (48+ million views)
5. Keri Hilson “Knock You Down” (35+ million views)

Don’t kid yourself by thinking that all people are looking for is mindless entertainment and wedding dances. Although it is true that arts and entertainment take up 86% of searches, Youtube is a vastly unused resource for every kind of search.

Let’s pretend you sell tomatoes. If you search “gardening,” you might get 166,000 results. If you search, “planting tomatoes from seeds,” you might get just over 1,260 results. But “How to Grow Organic Tomatoes” only gets 539 results. So! If you grow organic tomatoes, get a video on Youtube IMMEDIATELY. It is claimed that Youtube will surpass Google (by some) as a search engine in the near future, since many people prefer to to be shown rather than to read instructions.

Type in “How to” in Youtube search and almost 8½ million results show up….what does this tell us? that there are A LOT of people looking for instructions on how to do lots of things. Type in “make” and there are another 6 million searches.

Fix a car, change a tire, plant parsnips, can tomatoes, make angel food cake, make peanut butter cookies…you name it, people want to know it.

When you upload your video, there is a place for you to add tags, just like any blog or web page, so that you can optimize your video the same as you would optimize anything else.

Your video does not have to be professional, but it CANNOT be bad. Borrow a tripod. Plan what you are going to say, practice a few times. Be sincere. Be friendly. And most of all, be helpful.