YouTube for business!

Today’s blog isn’t for the social media intelligentsia. It’s for communications professionals still skeptical about the benefits of online video for their business-to-business company.

 

We were riffing the other day about online video with an established technology company. Most of the folks in the room “got it” and were starting to see the potential of online video. They hadn’t done anything yet with this medium, but were kind of excited about it.

 

Except for one person with a different view.

 

“YouTube?” YouTube!? Why on earth would I want to get my company on that site?” That’s where teens and twenty-somethings go to waste time and be entertained. It’s not a place for business. Do you really think I’m going to put my executives, or customers, in that kind of environment?”

 

She was kind of worked up. Must have been the red blotches on her face and flared nostrils.

 

Luckily, it wasn’t the first time I’d experienced this kind of reaction from someone in corporate America. In fact, I’d had a conversation two days earlier with the head of corporate communications for a Fortune 50 company. He didn’t get the idea (had never thought about it) and kept coming back to “Okay, interesting, but do you have any ideas about scoring more op-ed placements in The New York Times?”

 

While some of us spend a good portion of our day in the social media world, let’s not deceive ourselves thinking this stuff is top-of-mind (let alone mainstream) for B2B companies. It isn’t. An amazing number of people are just starting to think about it.

David Meerman Scott’s popular book about social media The new rules of marketing & PR (read it if you haven’t) discusses the emergence of online video. “The idea of companies using video for web marketing is still new,” he says. “Some companies are certainly experimenting, typically by embedding video (typically hosted at YouTube) into their existing blogs.” Scott cites six different ways to leverage video. Arguably, online B2B corporate video activity has increased many-fold since his book was published - just last year.      

So getting back to red blotch lady, I explained how YouTube has morphed from an online destination solely populated with goofy, racy videos to a location where business people increasingly go to post – and view – business-related video content including:

B2B companies are directing key publics (think customers, partners, employees, prospects, partners, analysts, etc.) to YouTube to watch their videos. They link to this content from their home pages. They link to it when blogging and commenting on blogs. They populate their online media rooms with video content. And they urge their sales force/channel to direct prospects to it.

 

 

All this is happening because businesses are desperate for a place to post their video content. Smart B2B companies have figured out that authentic, guerilla-style video is a credible way to communicate. And while YouTube isn’t a perfect medium, it’s the best place right now to post video content.

 

YouTube says commercial content isn’t supposed to be on their site. Some of the business content posted there isn’t; some of it is. There hasn’t been a large-scale crack-down yet.

 

Jim Kukral of The Daily Flip thinks YouTube can add a billion dollars or more to its coffers by launching a business channel. He issued a “business manifesto” urging YouTube to get its act together.

 

Kukral says a chairman of a Fortune 500 company doesn’t want his corporate videos next to “some girl dancing in her bedroom in her underwear” and would be willing to pay monthly for a different business model. Not a channel, but a portal where companies can post their content, build private communities and do custom branding.

 

It’s gonna happen folks. It’ll either be YouTube or somebody else. There’s no stopping the video train. It left the station a long time ago and B2B companies are jumping on.