Dallas Strategic Social Media Marketing

These days, we are far enough into our love-affair with social media to say it is here to stay. It will also quickly evolve and get better at meeting both our practical needs and impractical desires.

Numerous Social Media services will rise and fall, but there’s one innovation that in all likelihood won’t just endure, but positively thrive into the future. That innovation is online video, most prominent through YouTube.

The Right Time
The combination of increasing bandwidth, advances in Flash and the rise of social networks (where users could embed and share content) made 2005 the perfect time for YouTube to make its debut. The growth was meteoric, and within 18 months, the website became one of the most trafficked on the web. Today it is an enormously popular webiste, second only to Google Itself. The average user currently watches just over 3 videos a day. Just 6 months ago the number was a still-impressive 2.5 videos per day.

Detractors are quick to point out that a significant portion of YouTube’s growth was due in no small part to the hoards of illegal content that found its way onto the site. They’ll also point to its inability so far to turn a profit. But the legal issues are mostly history, solved through technology and legal maneuvering. And the monetization is starting to come, through continued experimentation with online advertising and new business models we’ll likely see in 2011. Today, the fact is quite simply that YouTube dominates online video in a way that looks unbeatable.

Embeddable Content
How does something “go viral”? In the case of YouTube, an enormous part of it is the ability to embed clips anywhere, from blogs, to social networking profiles, to the front page of popular websites. YouTube pioneered this concept, and today, it’s a driving force behind the collective 1 billion minutes we spend each day watching YouTube clips.

The concept didn’t stop with YouTube though -– almost all forms of content are now embeddable, from documents to music to maps. Technically, it’s one of the most important innovations we’ve seen in social media this decade. But it also means YouTube isn’t dependent on and single social network to be successful. Right now, it is the most popular way to embed video into Twitter and Facebook.

Citizen Journalism - Video News To The People
Another trend that has buoyed YouTube is the availability of low-cost video cameras, and, increasingly, the inclusion of video on many mobile phones.
YouTube has made everyone a potential journalist and the world a better place for it.

The Internet Famous
Much like YouTube has allowed anyone to be a journalist, it’s also allowed anyone to be an entertainer. And much like how blogs and the web have been incredibly disruptive to print media, online video is becoming incredibly disruptive to television.

Already, we’re seeing YouTube “stars” sign lucrative deals with advertisers, record labels, and movie studios. At the same time, consumers are starting to reconsider the need for cable and satellite TV packages thanks to the plethora of video content being made available online, both through YouTube and third-party services that embrace YouTube and other video distributors. Old media has fought back with a number of options, including Hulu, but in the long-run, online video is YouTube’s race to lose.

The Next 10 Years
YouTube’s biggest threat right now is in fact the old media companies, who are putting content online under their own brands. YouTube’s “professional” content selection remains relatively weak, but that’s likely to change. The music industry already has with Vevo, a re-imagining of YouTube designed for music videos and big brand advertisers.

Beyond that, here’s where else YouTube is likely going in the decade ahead:
To the big screen: There’s a good chance that the next TV you buy will include internet connectivity. And YouTube is prepared for it — earlier this year the company released YouTube XL, a version of the service optimized for the big screen. Coupled with the move towards hosting premium content that you’re used to getting through your cable provider, by the end of the next decade, turning on the TV might simply mean turning on YouTube. Apple is soon to announce its AppleTV and similar competitors are close behind.

To the small screen: Most smartphones make it exceptionally easy to view YouTube clips. As smartphones become more widely available and mobile broadband speeds increase around the world, the audience for YouTube will continue to expand — many times over in markets where mobile is more important than the desktop.

Live video: Considered a hobby for early adopters in 2008, live video turned into a new medium for celebrities in 2009, becoming one of the year’s hottest trends. Propelled by integration with social media sites, services like Ustream and Justin.tv have been able to attract hundreds of thousands (and occasionally millions) of viewers to live broadcasts. Don’t expect YouTube to take this lying down. The company has already started experimenting with live video on its own, demonstrating its massive scale with a U2 concert broadcast that garnered 10 million viewers.

The Right Choice?
In a decade that saw social media move from the fringes to the mainstream, YouTube is the innovation that touched the most lives, became a driving force for change around the world, and ultimately ends the decade with an opportunity to be as disruptive in the next 10 years as it was in the past four. YouTube has taken online video to the masses. 

Contact us for how to maximize the popularity of YouTube and Online Video for your marketing and communications!