Why should businesses be on YouTube?

Grant Leboff: Danny, video is of the obviously becoming more important online, so just give us the business case for YouTube. Why should it businesses be on YouTube?

Danny Bermant: Users who look at social media content are increasingly turning off from anything that is text based. Users have an attention span of about seven seconds and it means that if you want to get them engaged to what you’re saying, you need to provide visual information and video works very well. You don’t need to have a huge budget and there are so many ways in which you can create engaging video content for little or no cost. What it costs is creativity and time.

Grant Leboff: So how do you come up with a video idea that’s going to work. If you’re a manufacturer somewhere, you’re thinking well how do I create any video that somebody’s going to watch?

Danny Bermant:  I think it’s first thinking about what you want to achieve. Are you looking at people who are uninitiated, so they’re not even at the stage of being ready to buy? They might be interested in buying but they need to be educated, so that they are at a stage where they might buy. Are they people at the buying stage or are they people who have already bought? So I think that’s what a manufacturer would need to do.

For the manufacturer, it might be a case of; we want to really engage with our existing customers so we going to put out some user guides, e.g., If you have bought our forklift truck, here are some useful safety tips to follow in order to use this in the workplace without harming anybody. If you are selling an air conditioning system; this is how to maintain it.

Then, in order to do that it’s a case of; you don’t need to create anything flashy. It might be some screenshots of things that people particularly need to know and to then put on a voice-over. There is software like Screenflow (http://www.telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm) on the Mac and Camtasia (http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html) on the PC that will enable you to do that very easily.

Grant Leboff: So it’s thinking about how you can create value to that audience?

Danny Bermant: Absolutely, it’s all about value, and the reason somebody will look at a YouTube video is; what can it do for me, how can it help me?

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