Have you ever seen the Old Spice commercials? Chances are if you have, you’ve seen them on YouTube. The Old Spice commercials first premiered as a television campaign, quickly turning viral once they appeared on YouTube. Viewers sent the links to their friends, rapidly spreading them throughout the Internet. Eventually, the view count for Old Spice commercials reached over 110 million views.

Although most associate YouTube with homemade videos and music videos, many companies and businesses are turning to YouTube as an alternative means to social marketing, and it’s working. Because creating a channel and uploading a video is free, the costs of utilizing YouTube are obviously extremely low. Users simply need a camcorder to get started. For businesses looking for an effective, affordable means of marketing, YouTube is a popular platform that can result in high potential gains. Here are 5 tips on how to use YouTube as an effective marketing platform:

1. Interesting Content

The goal of creating an effective video is to produce interesting content that will compel the audience to do something specific. Unless you have a keyboard playing cat or a pair of otters holding hands, it may seem difficult to create a viral video. However, companies don’t need a cute animal to create a marketing video; there are some general guidelines that companies can follow.

When creating a YouTube video, companies can choose from a variety of video formats. One successful type of video is the informational video, in which users create a ‘how-to’ guide or a tutorial on their products.  An important factor to keep in mind is that many people visit YouTube for the purposes of quick entertainment. Therefore, another valuable technique is to create a short, comedic video that possesses replay value and compels users to share it with others. In short, content is the most important component in a video; if your video is boring, then it is likely to disappear into YouTube obscurity.

2. Customize your YouTube Channel

Your YouTube channel is the main portal through which visitors access your videos. Therefore, customizing your channel is a great way to market to viewers. The most popular form of customization is through creating playlists to organize content, showing visitors your related videos or popular content. There are also many ways in which to brand your YouTube channel such as placing a logo, a banner image, or links to your business website or other social media platforms.

3. Call-to-Actions

An effective way of marketing your company using YouTube is to place a call out at the beginning and end of your video. Some examples of call outs include contact information, the company’s brand, or links to a website. In addition, YouTube allows uploaders to place annotations throughout the video, permitting greater applications in marketing.

4. Search-friendly Videos

When choosing a title for your video, don’t use a generic title with few keywords. Instead, try to be descriptive and place the most relevant keywords at the beginning of the title. Another way to make your videos more accessible to users is to write a description with keywords and links to your website. Tags are an additional way to promote search-friendliness; use as many keywords as possible in the tags field.

5. Social Networking

The marketing efforts should not stop after posting the video on YouTube. You’ll have to do a bit more legwork in order to extend the reach of your content. Twitter is a medium in which YouTube videos have the potential to quickly spread on the internet. As users “tweet” your videos, their followers spread it to others, creating a ripple-like effect with your content at the center. Posting your videos on blogs, Facebook, and other social media platforms are great ways to spread your content to potential customers. YouTube videos are generally more appealing to those on social networks, so your efforts have the potential to go much further than if you were to share an article.

More and more companies are turning to YouTube as a means of marketing their products and businesses online. With luck, your YouTube marketing campaign become the next viral sensation, and allow business awareness to spread rapidly to millions of viewers.

Guest Author – Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from social media to factoring. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including business proposals to small businesses and entrepreneurs for the leading business B2B Directory, Business.com.