Social Media Marketing

It's hard to believe that YouTube is only three-years-old. In such a short amount of time videos have changed the way we market products and communicate with friends and family. If you look at Google Trends you'll see that as many people search for videos as they do shopping and news. So if you are an internet marketer, then, for social media marketing tips purposes, you absolutely have to include videos in your mix.

YouTube is the #1 video site, of course. It receives more traffic than Google and, because Google owns YouTube, the videos rank well in Google too. You shouldn't limit yourself to YouTube, however. New video sites pop up every day and some of them might reach a target audience that matches well with your niche. Let's take a look at some of them:

YouTube caters to a younger audience (18-24). Half have an income of $60K or more and half have attended college or grad school.

Metacafe is the second largest video site in the US. It focuses on creative videos from emerging talent and also established Hollywood performers. It gets 27 million unique visitors each month and attracts a heavily male audience with an average age range of 25-34.

Vids.Myspace.com has 10 million monthly unique visitors and is slanted more to females (57%).

Video.MSN.com reaches an older audience - more than half are over the age of 45. It gets 2.7 million unique visitors per month.

Google Video attracts a slightly younger audience than YouTube and the audience is mostly white (71%) and male (53%).

Dailymotion is set up for larger videos: 150 MB, compared to YouTube's 100 MB and has a video limit of 20 minutes compared to YouTube's 10 minutes. It appeals to a male audience (60%).

If you're not sure which video sites to use, there are video uploaders that will upload your videos to all the main video sites. Look for software or

membership plans that have testimonials and customer support. All you do is create the video and the uploading service will take care of the rest for you. Each video site has different requirements for tagging and descriptions and file size so it will save you a ton of time if you use a service like this.

If the thought of making a video intimidates you, remember that you don't have to appear in the video. You can place an ad in Craigslist or look on elance to hire someone else to appear in it. Or you can do a Camtasia or PowerPoint type video that is a slide show of screen shots.

No matter what type of product you sell or what type of market you are in, video will work for you. Please feel free to let us know how videos have worked for you.