Confessions of a YouTube Noob
Did YouTube find its way into your life last week either with news of a meteorite crashing into Earth or by demonstrating the latest video dance craze? Once you saw the first YouTube video of these topics did you then go directly to YouTube and search for more? Most likely, the answer in both cases is, “Yes!” We can’t help ourselves! Either we need confirmation of the news which is provided quickly by discovering the same news from multiple trustworthy sources on YouTube, or we want to measure for ourselves how much of a craze the new video dance movement really is which can be quickly achieved by a simple YouTube search.
But those uses of YouTube are often incidental. Often I find my way to YouTube if I want to find out how to care for a particular plant or how to distinguish between tropical fish, but only recently did I think to search specifically on YouTube for information about a technical issue for my business. Typically I would have performed a general internet search and while it is likely I would have seen some YouTube videos in those general search results, it would have been a sample of results only and I’m sure I could have glossed right over them.
My YouTube search, however, produced reviews of the product, demonstrations of particular features, and some actual training videos which had been produced by the developer of the product. It was not possible to know if the developer had uploaded the videos in this particular case, and it appeared that it was most likely not the developer who had uploaded them, but YouTube had them on display nonetheless and they were fully accessible for all the world to see.
It was in that moment that I realized that YouTube is something I will most likely be accessing on a daily basis for as long as it exists. In less than five minutes it had transformed from a “nice collection” of videos to a powerful marketing, training, and business tool for which there can be a million uses. Why did I not see this before? How did I get behind the curve on the value of YouTube? Whatever those answers may be, I see it now. Now, with minimal impact to the budget I will be utilizing this powerful social networking tool much more often!