Debbie Mayo-Smith: How to make YouTube useful for your business

Why would you use YouTube instead of the company intranet? Photo / 123RF

YouTube can be remarkably useful for almost every business, every manager I can think of - sales, human resources, IT, customer service, marketing, finance.

How? Naturally sales and marketing videos come to mind.

But what about internal use for: training, how-to, procedures, software tips, executive messages, demos, role playing, induction? This is just a beginning top of mind list. Your videos can be set as private so only people you select can view (maximum 50). Alternately set them as unlisted. Anyone with the link can view.

A primary benefit is the simplicity of uploading videos - via computer or your smartphone. Why would you use YouTube instead of the company intranet?

1. Cost

Let Google pay the costs of hosting and the bandwidth required to view them. Being so easy, you avoid the IT team who have much more on their plate.

2. Your own channel

Create your own department channel, customising it with your company branding, logos, colours if you like.

3. Editing ability

You can add captions and transcripts; Layer comments, hotspots and links over your video even edit and delete bloopers.

4. Categorise your content into playlists

If you plan on producing more than a few videos,

5. Who's watching?

Your Creator Studio Dashboard will show you video views, comments, likes and watch times. To get to it sign into YouTube, click on your channel icon in the top right and select Creator Studio > Dashboard

Debbie Mayo-Smith aka Ms Effective, gives speeches, seminars and trains on sales and personal productivity. Debbie helps you get more done in less time and increase profitability. Sign up for her monthly quick tip newsletter here.