Deeper Dive: You, Too, Can Use YouTube
Part One

YouTube is not all about viral videos. In addition to being the largest video- sharing channel on the Internet, YouTube is also the second largest search engine and is used to share tens of thousands of news stories and interviews daily.

Users frequently use the site to catch up on news from alternative and mainstream outlets, repost news broadcasts and offer their commentaries on the news of the day. And the site’s hosting platform saves many news sites from having to host video on their own.

All of this makes it an appealing place for news entrepreneurs to focus social media attention.

Setup and customization

Just like with your other profiles, your organization should take the time to customize your account. The site allows for custom colors and background images, in addition to the opportunity to upload a thumbnail photo, bio and link to your website.

Videos should be grouped into playlist. Playlists allow admins and followers to easily find and share videos throughout their networks.

When producing videos include the name and website of your organization as well as the producer’s information and the URL to your YouTube channel.

Margaret Gould Stewart, an early web pioneer and current leader of YouTube’s user experience team, talked with Web Pro News about ways to get the most out of posting videos on the site. For her, that means not only posting quality content but interacting with the audience.

“We find that video producers who are really active in the conversation, whether it’s comments or uploading ‘how this video was made’—you know, kind of the behind-the-scenes - people are really fascinated by that stuff, and we see some our most successful partners really having that, again, kind of ongoing conversation—not an arm’s length relationship to the audience, but very engaged,” she said.

“The secondary part is understanding your audience - understanding who you want to reach and proactively cultivating a relationship with the people in your audience. And on YouTube that means not just creating great content and uploading it to the site, but actively building your subscriber base, so that you can be in direct and regular interaction and conversation with those people.”

Managing and promoting your content

Shorter clips tend to perform better than longer videos, so try to keep videos to no more than five minutes. One option is to break videos into short segments that then can be promoted as individual webisodes.

Use the descriptions and tagging features to your advantage. Provide a full description of each video, including relevant keywords and links to your organization’s main website and other social media properties. Also, create video tags based on these keywords. These two steps will help increase the appearance of your videos in search results.

Vary the types of video content to include not only videos that accompany stories, but also audio slideshows created from Flickr images, extended interviews, promotions and fundraising calls and relevant “behind the scenes” video.

Promote YouTube videos and playlists by embedding directly into a website and social media platforms. Place a YouTube link and logos in visible locations on your main website, other social platforms, email signatures and printed materials.

YouTube Insights provides a top level view of video engagement. Check your statistics regularly to understand what types of content works and what is most effective with your viewers.