Alistair Gleave » YouTube

What are the benefits of getting your Charity Video onto YouTube?

Alistair — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 20:08:48 +0000

This post follows on from my free Google grants for Charities that can be found on my blog here.

If you are a Charity and want to use the power of YouTube to connect with your supports through this incredibly popular visual medium then YouTube can help through its non-profit program that over four distinct program benefits.

premium branding and increased upload capability
you will be listed on the not for profit channels and video pages on YouTube
you can add calls to action overlayed on the video, so you have space to add a message and YouTube encourage you to do just that.
finally you have the option to ask ‘the crowd’ so you could for instance asked an expert YouTuber to create a video just for your charity.

As with all YouTube content there are some basic rules to follow;

Upload videos that get the viewers watching and talking, then ensure you answer any responses you get.
Upload content regularly, much like your website don’t let it go stale.
Don’t forget to embed the code for the video across other platform, news, blog and Twitter to name but three.
And finally be yourself, if you are fake then you will be found out!

You can find out more on http://www.youtube.com/nonprofits

Google Search Stories and some Parisian Love

Alistair — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:47:09 +0000

You may remember Parisian love a Google advert shown during the 2010 Super Bowl which traditional has ads focussed on beer or cars. The Google ad took a totally different approach showing the ‘search’ in the form of a love story and highlighting Google’s search in a totally everyday way that we can all relate to.

If you haven’t seen it you can watch it here;

So what does this mean to me, you may ask?

Well there is a very nifty tool that now means you can create your own, it is really simple to use. You have upto 7 search terms to input and choose whether they show as web search, image, map, news, blog, product or book. You then get a choice of music, can review and upload to your own YouTube account, and that is it.

My search story is below,

Go on give it a try by going to YouTube here, its great fun.

How to get the best out of YouTube

Alistair — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:56:02 +0000

I love YouTube how it works and how you can use it to your advantage as a company, one of the key way and uses is to express your opinion and start a conversation and there are many ways to express your company opinions within YouTube. I have detailed my top three below;

Leave a Comments on a video
Comments left on a video turn it into a conversation. If you look on the site some of the most watched videos can have literally loads of comments of all types, good and bad.

Al’s top Tip
When leaving a comment you do need to be sensible, YouTube has Community Guidelines which clearly spell out what they will not tolerate.
We encourage free speech and defend everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view. But we don’t permit hate speech which contains slurs or the malicious use of stereotypes intended to attack or demean a particular gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, or nationality.
There is zero tolerance for predatory behaviour, stalking, threats, harassment, invading privacy, or the revealing of other members’ personal information. Anyone caught doing these things may be permanently banned from YouTube.

Rate Comments
This is the bit I like in that you have the power to rate comments that are left by others. And is works simply by that if you find a comment that you like, you can give it a “thumbs up.” Likewise find a comments you don’t like and give it a “thumbs down.” All you need do is click on the relevant thumb to vote then a user can sort comments by these votes.

Subscribe to Channels
Many businesses have their very own YouTube Channel and usually this channel contains all the videos that have been uploaded by the company.

To put it simply if you like the types of videos that another user uploads on their channel, you can subscribe to that business (or persons) channel and when they upload more you will be notified.

So there you go, my top three tips to get the best out of YouTube, to see my other posts on YouTube see below.

YouTube over view and statistics click here

YouTube Insight click here

The Best Viral Video Ever Made?

Alistair — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 09:58:40 +0000

There are some things that just make you smile, and this for me is one of them surely the best viral video ever? and actualy its made by the Swedish TV licencing. Oh yes none of the ‘we know where you live’ that we get in the UK, this is real originality and for that they deserve a pat on the back….

Have a watch and let me know what you think?

Susan Boyle what's it all about?

Alistair — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 16:34:00 +0000

So some of you reading this will already have your order in, or may already have a copy of Susan Boyle’s album I Dreamed a Dream, the question i ask is why?
Hello there! If you are new here why not subscribe to my RSS feed for updates on this and other topics.
Lets face it the singer was seen once in an incredibly well publicised TV show in early 2009 and watched how many times on YouTube? – well in the first 72 hours it had 2.5 million views and depending on which video you look at 33 million at the last count – and i cant embed the video as that has been disabaled by ITV – she is simply THAT popular, and this is based on one audition.

Now Susan Boyle has broken records with her album as the fastest selling UK debut album of all time selling over 400,000 copies and its currently #1 in the Amazon music chart – that is some success i am sure you’ll agree.

Her album seems to be on lots of Christmas lists this year, not mine i would hasten to add but i can see the appeal, an uplifting story and a superb voice – we British like a story like this!

Also I guess that just goes to show if you have supreme talent and alot of it then you dont actually need to do alot, but if you do it really really well and it just happens to be in the right place at the right time you too may have your ‘Susan Boyle moment’…

BMW TV on YouTube

Alistair — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:22:37 +0000

Hello there! If you are new here why not subscribe to my RSS feed for updates on this and other topics.
So i love YouTube and could/do spend hours looking/laughing at ‘most’ of the stuff i find, every now and then i find a gem.

The video below is actually from the BMW YouTube channel and for me moves car ads onto a very emotional & funny level that i havent seen before – for me BMW are saying we know most people drive to work and back, to work and back so why not do it ‘different’. And all this is shown in a middle class ordinary way. Have a watch, what do you think?

The Flip Camera

Alistair — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 08:00:29 +0000

Hello there! If you are new here why not subscribe to my RSS feed for updates on this and other topics.
I often get asked about making a video for my company, ‘I need to promote a product or service’ and lots of people get put of by the cost of getting a professional in, or maybe think that good cameras cost a fortune. Well if you need a camera to take videos good enough for the web i have the answer, you need a Flip Digital Camcorder.

Why do you ask?

* It is simple to use, pocket-sized camcorder with one-touch recording and digital zoom
* The Flip holds 60 minutes of full VGA-quality video on 2GB of built-in memory; no tapes or additional memory cards required
* There is a convenient USB arm plugs directly into your computer for easy viewing and sharing
* With built-in software lets you easily e-mail videos, upload to YouTube and MySpace, and capture still photos from video
* Finally you can watch videos instantly on TV with included cable

So there you go the Flip Digital Camcordersimple to use, work and record really good videos, just great for YouTube or Vimeo.

YouTube statistics and why you need them – YouTube Insight

Alistair — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:48:13 +0000

Any marketer worth their salt will want data from [tag]online content[/tag], who has viewed it, from where – basically all the info that tells is whether something is working/or not. This is a big problem these days facing all marketers, is what I am doing on this new medium actually working?

With so much content online these days it can seemingly being increasing difficult to track where your content is, you can keep tabs on links and stories but to actually be able to analyse how people interact with the content on a site like [tag]YouTube[/tag] is a goldmine.
YouTube actually announce this on their blog,

‘… using these metrics, you can increase your videos’ view counts and improve your popularity on the site. For instance, you might learn that your videos are most popular on Wednesdays, that you have a huge following in Spain, or that new videos that play off previous content become more popular more quickly.’

So the question goes how do you do that?
• Sign into YouTube as you would normally.
• Mouse over the My Account tab
• Click on Insight: Statistics and Data

You are now in the summary screen, from this you can;

Change the date range – maybe you had a promotion running?
Country search – maybe video was of an event in France and you are based in the UK?

On this front screen you can see, how many views your videos are getting, the list of top videos, demographics and popularity relative to other uploaders.

[tag]Insight[/tag] is not as deep as analytics and in many isn’t supposed to be, what it does provide is a great ‘insight’ into how your content is being viewed and shared across the world.

See: Why does my business need a branded YouTube Channel?

You Tube Overview and Statistics

Alistair — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:21:08 +0000

Founded in 2005 [tag]YouTube[/tag] is the world’s NUMBER 1 online video [tag]social community[/tag] that allows millions of users worldwide to upload, watch and share videos. It provides a free digital platform for everyone from a home user to a multinational corporation to distribute their content in a simple and easy way.

There are no restrictions on who can view the videos and it is very much a community website with a large demographic worldwide user base.

• YouTube hosts over six million videos, growing at about 20 percent every month.
• The videos take up 45 terabytes of storage — about 5,000 home computers’ worth.
• The total time spent watching YouTube videos since it started last year is 9,305 years!

As you would expect businesses have grasped the power of YouTube to connect with audiences in a different and innovative way, this sees things as diverse as tours of hotels to videos of theme rides, anything that can be used to promote their business model.
YouTube offers a number of ways for the users and advertisers to benefit from using YouTube as a tool in their marketing mix, these (direct from YouTube) are;

• [tag]YouTube Insight[/tag]: A free tool offered by YouTube that allows anyone with a YouTube account—users, partners or advertisers—to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site.

• The YouTube Partner Programme: Original content creators have the chance to generate revenue from their work and receive the same promotional benefits afforded to YouTube’s other professional content partners.

All in all a DEFINTATE requirement for any business wanting to expand their social reach.

See: Why does my business need a branded YouTube Channel?

Why does my business need a branded YouTube Channel?

Alistair — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:52:50 +0000

Why does my business need a branded YouTube Channel?

With UK internet traffic to video websites up 40% in a year* and more searches on YouTube than MSN and Yahoo the answer is a clear YES.

A few facts for you;

YouTube hosts over six million videos, growing at about 20 percent every month.
The videos take up 45 terabytes of storage — about 5,000 home computers’ worth.
The total time spent watching YouTube videos since it started last year is 9,305 years!

If your business doesn’t have a channel on YouTube then it is about time it has…

When creating your channel there are a few things to bear in mind.

Username – think carefully as username is what your channel will be, so ideally you want to make this the name of your business, this way your channel URL will be youtube.com/businessname – some good examples I have worked with previously are, http://www.youtube.com/hqhairandbeauty and http://www.youtube.com/chaingangcycletours.

Branding – YouTube offers a degree of branding and customisation of your actual channel, so you can add logos, colours, pictures check out http://www.youtube.com/user/Bloomberg for another great example.

Text – this is another key area and you need to use text to support what you do as a business, it is no good just plonking anything there, it you don’t fully create your profile and stand proud as to what you do and offer how can you expect others to follow you or want to communicate with you?

This ends the general introduction to why you need a YouTube channel, next I shall cover what you can get out of it and how to make the most of it, subscribe to my RSS feed and you will be automatically updated.

*source Hitwise http://www.hitwise.co.uk/press-center/hitwiseHS2004/ukvideoupdate.php