I’m A Huge Fan of YouTube (Part 2 of 2)

I’m a tremendous fan of YouTube. Recently, in part 1 of this series, I shared my passion for YouTube as a purely incremental digital media channel. Today, I’m excited to share some of my other perspectives on YouTube and why I think it’s so critical to your career in digital marketing.

• When it comes to careers in digital marketing (or really any other career for that matter), public speaking matters. It’s important to present yourself well, and practice, practice, practice. The best practice is actually engaging in public speaking opportunities. I have a huge one coming up in the next few weeks, and I’ll be blogging all about it here on PPC Ian. Last year, my big public speaking accomplishment was Search Insider Summit. What happens, however, when you don’t have opportunities to speak at big conferences every month. (I’m so busy that I can typically only do one or two speaking events each year.) After all, public speaking requires consistent practice. Get out there an build your own YouTube channel! Leverage YouTube as a way to practice your speaking. You’ll quickly find that certain videos take multiple takes to get it right, and you’ll refine your presentation skills.
• The best digital marketers find ways to refine their craft. Moonlighting (dabbling in your own side projects/experiments) is a great way to learn and explore facets of digital marketing you may not get to engage on a day-to-day basis. Moonlighting allows you to bring added insights back to your job. As long as you stay in a completely different space from your job, get approval from your company, and spend a very small amount of time moonlighting, I see tremendous value coming from this practice. If you’re going to moonlight and dabble in something different, why not create your own YouTube channel? You’ll truly learn how to make money online, engage an audience, create compelling content, and so much more with your YouTube side project.
• There’s so much involved in building and ranking a website. Take PPC Ian, for example. I absolutely love my blog, but it has taken countless hours to get to where I’m at now. I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything, however what if you want to learn in your spare time and don’t have a lot of time or money. YouTube is a one-stop-shop for setting up an online business. Because it’s a really good product and because it’s a Google product, you get everything in one package. I’m talking about ease of use, ease of ranking organically (and in related videos), ease of management, ease of monetization, and so much more. With YouTube, Google takes the guesswork out of everything so you can focus on one thing: Creating amazing content. This point really ties into the last one: YouTube is probably the easiest and most scalable way to dabble in a digital marketing project in your spare time. Case in point: I have one YouTube channel that has 200,000 video views, and I only have a total of 14 videos.
• YouTube is the future. The future of television is interactivity, mobility, and limitless choice. I still truly believe we are in the very early stages of YouTube and online video. Embrace the trend now, and you will be incredibly well positioned for the future. Truly own your vertical. Create the best resource for your vertical. That is an asset that will pay dividends for many years to come. The time to embrace YouTube is now. From a strategy perspective, I encourage all brands to invest in YouTube.

Speaking of YouTube, please make sure to check out the PPC Ian YouTube Channel. Do you have a YouTube channel? Please share!

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