Using YouTube to Promote Your Business?
I blogged about this a little at Biz Chicks Rule, but I thought it warranted some more tongue-in-cheek follow-up. There are definite advantages to YouTubing your business, but some disadvantages as well — the biggest being that you may just end up looking like a MORON instead of actually helping your business efforts.
For a primer on what NOT to do, check out this handy reference on making a crappy YouTube video:
Admittedly, that’s not so business oriented, but this is, if you think of promoting your business online as a kind of video resume (because really, that’s what it is!):
Would you ever use YouTube to promote your services? Or have you? Share your opinions — and your links — in the comments.
Tags: YouTube, self-promotion, marketing, publicity, video advertising
Like this post? Tip your waitress! Er, um, favorite blogger.Filed under: Resumes, Self-promotion, Publicity, Networking, Marketing
Kristen,
I posted videos of an interview (Brian Jud interviewing me on his community cable program in Connecticut). It has terrible production values (the lighting is awful, for one thing), which is what you get for free community access programming. And the interview itself (http://www.dmargulis.com/interview1.asp) is so boring that 60 percent of the people who start to watch it quit before going to the second 10-minute segment.
NONETHELESS, it’s a great marketing tool, because instead of being just another editor on the Internet making claims about my superior service, I’m now someone with a face and a voice. People can take a look and decide if I sound sincere and knowledgeable; and they can decide if my personality is one they can work with. (I can be prickly, and I’d rather potential clients know that up front. If someone is going to take offense every time I open my mouth, I’d rather they not contact me in the first place. Life’s too short.)
So what I’d say about the subject is, sure, doing a good, entertaining, informative, humorous YouTube video with great production values is probably a good tool to increase business. But even a half-assed video can serve you well if you position it right.
Dick
[…] Ink Thinker has a post up about using YouTube to promote your business. It’s something I haven’t thought of before, but could you use it for writing as well? If you’re a freelancer, I could definitely see some uses out of it. After all, most of your clients will never see you face to face, so having a video to introduce yourself seems like a good idea; that is, as long as you don’t end up looking like a moron, which is astonishingly hard to do on video. I mean, I already look like a moron anyways, but it’d just be ten times worse on video. […]
Unluckily ,it’s hard to post url on youtube .