Maryland Social Media

Social Media Monday (Vol. 6, No. 7)

December 7, 2015

Alfred Hitchcock once told me, when I was analyzing a lot of things about his pictures, ‘Clint, you must remember, it’s only a movie. ~ Clint Eastwood

Most of us know that YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, right behind it’s parent company Google. However, it also has the most videos shared and watched within all social networks. People watch over 323 days worth of YouTube videos on Facebook every minute and over 400,00 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every day. Alfred Hitchcock might have been right, but movies/videos are turning into the tool that all digital marketing experts need to leverage or they will be left behind.

Top Story

The numbers below show the reach that YouTube has over a majority of the country. Since video can drive your community’s engagement, it is important to make sure that they can find you online when you are searched. By applying a few of these best practices you will make sure your videos are found when people come looking for your services.

YouTube Facts:

Facts about YouTube
1. Google’s auto speech recognition technology translates 51 languages including captions
2. The very first video on YouTube was launched at 8:27 PM on Saturday April 23rd, 2005 …it’s about elephant trunks
3. The most watched video which is not a music video is “Charlie Bit My Finger”
4. Greater than 1 Trillion hits in 2011 which equals 140 views per person alive on earth
5. Batman is the most popular of superhero on YouTube, over 3 billion views of 71,000 hours of video
6. YouTube reaches more adults aged 18-34 than any cable network
7. People watch 1 billion views a day on YouTube Mobile
8. Since April 1, 2008, YouTube has annually featured an April Fool’s prank on its site
9. More video content is uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than the three major U.S. television networks created in 60 years
10. The name “YouTube” reflect the founders’ hope that anyone could use the site freely

Demographics (% US Population using YouTube)
Men	54%
Women	46%
14-17	82%
18-34	81%
35-50	58%
51+	43%
White	57%
Black	76%
Hispanic	74%

Research from huffingtonpost.com

Be Accessible

Adding transcripts and captions make your videos more accessible to people who are hearing impaired or speak a different language. Not only does it allow others to understand the video it also can improve your ability to be found when searched online. Adding a transcript provides search engines with content that can be crawled other than just the title and description.

If you are using videos as part of your digital marketing strategy it is important for you to optimize them as you would any other content. Since videos are easily shared and consumed content optimization of the content can greatly improve the digital footprint.

Be Consistent!

As we repeatedly state the biggest issues for State agencies, related to social media, is the lack of consistency. Videos are harder to create than a simple tweet, but once a month or a quarter is still consistent. Test what level of consistency works best for your community and helps you meet your online goals. Content marketing research repeatedly points to one simple policy as the secret to success on YouTube along with all other digital marketing: consistency.

Bite Size

What is the ideal length for a YouTube video? According to a report, completed by socialbaker.com on the most watched channels, the average YouTube video is between 31 to 60 seconds.

When you consider mobile apps like Vine and Instagram videos, you see services that are built around very quick 6-second bursts of content. With more and more things on the web trying to grab our attention, we are overloaded with content. These days, it is often far more effective to take up a small amount of viewing bandwidth in order to keep your audience entertained.

Research is Good

Good topics that are trending will get you more exposure than arbitrarily making and posting videos. Make sure you do a little research in order to leverage trends in the Google-sphere before you create content and start filming. Viral videos are created when everyone wants to click on and view your trending video. The best way to find what’s trending it to visit Google Trends and start digging around. It makes no sense creating a video on a topic that is important to you but not your community. When using YouTube videos for your online marketing researching up front will pay off in the end.

Tips for Leveraging Social Media

Make your Facebook posts engaging!

Use questions, calls to action, or conversation starters to get engagement. Posting pictures from the most current event held by your agency might be important to the department but probably won’t get the digital community talking. An alternative to just posting the pictures might be to ask people to tag or share pictures with a unique hashtag. As an additional step, you could also announce at the event that pictures will be shared on Facebook the following week. That way you are setting expectations and driving more people to your social media accounts.

How often are you posting pictures on Facebook?