YouTube, more than dogs on skateboards

Most people, if asked, would describe YouTube as the home of the quirky, the weird and the downright bizarre, and in part they’d be right. You will find the weird and wacky on the largest video sharing website but there you will find more than that, much more.

So if you want to go beyond the wacky then here are three reasons why you should be into YouTube.

Search

It’s a search engine. In fact it is the second biggest search engine next to Google. People are actively searching on YouTube everyday. If you upload videos to YouTube and optimise them with keywords you will improve your search engine rankings. Google will still have the edge on factual searches. Search for information on the Prime Minister and you will get a ton of fist page links to Wikipedia and lots of factual information. Do the same on YouTube and you will probably get a video of a Little Britain sketch. Recent surveys have shown that young people use YouTube as their starting point for their web experience. As with all searches you will need to sift through the results but I like the alternative view I get when searching and researching.

Community

You probably think YouTube is not for you as you don’t upload videos to the site but even if you are not uploading videos you can still be a part of the community. From within the site you can favourite video, like and dislike, share via twitter, Facebook, Google+ You can comment on videos, respond to comments on videos. All of which helps raise your profile online. Use a video to spark a conversation elsewhere and thus engage with people. If you have a Facebook page you can generally post a video directly from YouTube and make a comment and start a conversation. It doesn’t have to be Facebook, it could be on your blog, or Pinterest, Twitter, or a forum. To the online networker YouTube becomes a great tool even before you upload a single video. Once you start to add content then things get even better but that’s for another blog.

Resources

Ever wanted to know how to do something? Of course you have. We all have. If you have a question YouTube may well have the answer. For example, some time ago I had a problem with my car. Occasionally it was difficult to start. Two garages looked at it and couldn’t find anything wrong. They could have done more in depth investigation but that would be expensive. I had found a temporary solution but the problem would very occasionally re-occur. After being late for a meeting because of said no starting I decided to search on YouTube, it is after all a very powerful search engine. I typed, “problems starting a Renault Megane”. This is the video I got. What could have been an expensive repair turned out to be easily fixed by me in 5 minutes. I have used YouTube on countless occasions to find online tutorials from using a piece of software to repairing something around the home. As with all things on the internet you need to be discerning. Some how to videos are just plain rubbish, or out of date or downright dangerous but when viewed with some common sense they can be an invaluable aid.

Admittedly if you have a penchant for skateboarding dogs then YouTube can be great fun, here’s my favourite, Tillman the Bulldog, but it is much more. So what’s stopping you?

Sign up to YouTube, start liking, disliking, commenting, favouriting and engaging,

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Guest Blog by Gordon O’Neill, iotaMEDIA

Gordon is an experienced & award winning producer/director and principal of iotaMEDIA video production. He was worked on video projects with SMEs,PR, marketing and large companies. He is a great dad and husband, part time stand up comic and writes all his own biographies.