YouTube and Your E-book

YouTube and Your E-book

There is a myriad of different ways to leverage the Internet to build a brand image for your e-book publications, but none are more potent than online video.

The growth in the popularity of online video sharing sites like YouTube, Vimeo and Daily Motion present a unique marketing opportunity for e-book publishers. But what exactly are these opportunities? In this post, I will examine some of the reasons why e-book publishers should be considering the use of online video to build brand awareness for their products.

YouTube, by far the largest of the online video sharing sites, is considered the Mecca of online video and for a good reason. Recent viewing statistics for YouTube point to an upward trend amongst Internet users for video content. Here are some vital stats for YouTube courtesy of http://www.website-monitoring.com:

1. YouTube has more than 2 billion views every day

2. The average YouTube visitors spend 15 minutes per day viewing videos

3. Seventy percent of all YouTube traffic comes from outside of the USA

4. Partner ad revenue had more than tripled in 2009

5. YouTube is monetizing more than 1 billion video views globally every week

6. The number of advertisers using display ads has increased 10 fold during the last year

7. Hundreds of millions of YouTube videos are watched every month on mobile devices

8. YouTube player is embedded across 10’s of millions of websites

9. YouTube video consumption across social media networks:

· Facebook – 46.2 years of video watched every day

· MySpace – 5.6 years of video watched every day

· Orkut – 12.7 years of video watched every day

· Hi5 – 1.2 years of video watched every day

With YouTube’s massive audience penetration, it is not difficult to see why you, as an e-book publisher, should be choosing online video as part of your marketing effort.

Contrary to popular belief, online video is not difficult or expensive to produce. Video production companies, such as Contrast Design, can provide high-quality online video for a modest investment, an investment which is indeed within reach of most online marketers. If you are feeling creative and have access to video making technology, then you can always create your own online video. Making your online video yourself is much cheaper than employing someone else to do it for you.

Once completed, your online video can be uploaded to the video sharing site of your choice. The great thing about sites like YouTube is the fact that you can upload your video for free.

Many video sharing sites offer online marketers some packages for building brand awareness. The most popular of these is YouTube’s Brand Channel. Using YouTube’s Brand Channel, however, doesn’t come cheap at $25,000 per channel, and for the small e-book publisher or online marketer, it does not represent a viable marketing option.

A more attractive option is to use YouTube’s standard user’s package. YouTube’s standard user’s package will cost you nothing. And while you won’t have access to the same features as Brand Channel, you can still create a fan following for your e-book publications by using targeted video content.

An alternative to YouTube is the French-based video sharing website Daily Motion. At the time of writing, Daily Motion gets over 72 million viewers per day, not as many as YouTube but still quite a significant number when it comes to a viewing audience.

Daily Motion has 26 categories for listing uploaded videos, including a business category aimed at helping small businesses and marketers to build brand awareness. Unlike YouTube’s Brand Channel, building brand awareness on Daily Motion requires no media investment. It is free. The only costs you are likely to incur will come from creating exciting video content for your audience.

With over 50 video sharing websites available to online marketers, the potential for building a solid brand image around your e-book publishing business is enormous and need not cost you cost you an arm and a leg.