Please watch the video below and leave your thoughts in the comments;

Sir Richard told the BBC: “People are suspicious of banks and they have good reason to be after the last few years. “The Virgin brand is well trusted and has always offered good products in a range of different businesses..We think we can come in and shake up the industry.”

Virgin purchased the Northern Rock from the Government at the end of 2011 and will be turning the 75 branches into Virgin Money branches during 2012.

The feature for me though is the advert, a full 3D spectacular typical of the Virgin brand – big and spectacular. Please watch the video and let me know what you think in the comments below;

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.

1. premium branding and increased upload capability
2. you will be listed on the not for profit channels and video pages on YouTube
3. 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.
4. 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

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.

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

Have a watch and let me know what you think?

1. Check out the price comparison website MySupermarket which lets you compare the big four supermarkets with online shopping and price check as well as compare offers, its fast easy and free.

2. So you shop online do you? Why not get paid to shop using a site like QuidCo, all you do is register then search for the shop you want and then buy through their links. You make your cut through the cashback that QuidCo gets from the retailer, and this can be as high as 10%.

3. Freecycle revolution has swept the country in the last few years; Freecycle groups match people who have things they want to get rid of with people who can use them. So why not check it out yourself at http://www.uk.freecycle.org/.

4. Those savvy online shoppers know there is always a deal to be had and one of the best is getting hold of a voucher code (I have just bought a cooker from Comet – 10% off) – check it out yourself, one I like is www.vouchercodes.co.uk.

5. The deregulation of the UK energy market has had a positive effect for all UK consumers, we have saved an average of £78 per household for Gas according to the UK Audit Office*. If you have switched or if you haven’t looked recently and checked you are on the best deal you really should, so try the in my opinion the best USwitch.

6. lets you make free unlimited phone calls using the internet to other Skype users and offers great rates on calls to all landlines and mobile phones. The software is free to download, you don’t have to pay a subscription fee and its fully integrated into the Three mobile network so you can call from/to Three for Free.

7. Those TV programs from when you were young, a crap night on the telly? Never mind you have YouTube, the place where you can find just about anything to watch, be it my favourite Ivor The Engine who remembers that? Or why not check out the Channel 4 channel here.

8. You don’t need to visit HMV or the like for your music; you can get it free and online by using the music streaming service Spotify. The only crux to the free service is that you need an invite, so get tweeting and ask for one as you can then have access to over 6 million tracks free – you just have to listen to adverts OR you can pay £9.99 a month for an advert free service.

9. Most of use have a car, and we all alike cheap petrol, so a good site to use is PetrolPrices.com, you register and add your postcode and it will list the cheapest stations in your area for Petrol, Diesel and LPG and you can sign up for email notifications also.

10. Last and by no means least when you are online and looking for stuff just compare prices, I use Google shopping which is a link in the top left of the Google home page, it’s simple to use and lets you search by price or shop, you have no excuse!

*source Gas Warehouse http://www.gas-warehouse.co.uk/

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.

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?

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.

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?