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34 P a r t I Marketing Your Business Online with YouTube

to gather all your employees at a single location, simply record your company execu-
tives on video and post those videos on YouTube. Create a private channel just for
your company’s employees, and they can receive the executive’s message at any time,
on their own computers. It’s more efficient than a company meeting and more per-
sonal than a memo.

Company Seminars and Presentations

Along the same line, you can use YouTube to bring all your company’s employees
into seminars and presentations that might otherwise be limited to a select few. You
might accomplish this by recording a meeting or seminar with one or more video
cameras, or by uploading PowerPoint presentations in a video format with audio
annotations. Again, this works best via a private company channel that authorized
employees can view at their discretion.

Tip

To convert PowerPoint presentations to video with audio accompaniment,
use a software program called Camtasia (www.techsmith.com).

User or Employee Submissions

Of course, you don’t have to personally create all the videos you post to YouTube.
There’s a wealth of talent outside your company’s marketing department, in the
form of other employees, customers, and other interested individuals.

You might, for example, solicit videos from your company’s employee base. Run a
contest, pay for participation, or just present the endeavor as a fun exercise, but let
your co-workers express their creativity in ways that are hopefully suitable for
YouTube broadcast.

The same goes with your customers, who have their own ways of showing brand or
company loyalty. Ask for testimonials, as discussed previously, or open it up to more
fully produced submissions. As with employee videos, you can roll the whole thing
up into a contest, which itself serves as another form of promotion for your com-
pany.

Humorous Spots

Finally, don’t fall into the trap of taking yourself too seriously. Some of the most
popular videos on YouTube are humorous ones; the funnier the video, the more
likely it is to gain a large audience and go viral. It’s okay to make fun of your com-
pany, your product, or yourself, or just to treat the topic in an entertaining fashion.