Today is quite the milestone for YouTube. YouTube announced via their blog that users are watching and uploading more videos than ever before. The fascinating rate at which a video is being uploaded is one hour of video to YouTube every second. That means within the next 24 seconds of reading this article, YouTube will have another 24 hours of video ready for you to watch.  Speaking of watching videos, users are watching videos more frequently, a lot more. YouTube is now exceeding four billion views every day which is surprising.

YouTube Outreach

What is causing this larger than normal spike over the past few months? Well one idea is that the parent company Google has pushed into larger categories and making it even easier for the user to share, upload, and watch. Take for example that YouTube is no longer just being played on computers; instead your Xbox, smartphone, and television now come equipped with YouTube.

In addition to the astonishing fact, some of the data and fact crunchers over at YouTube have switched from the mind-boggling charts and infographics to their new site onehourpersecond.com. This site is pretty fun and puts a lot of their stats into a visual masterpiece so be sure to take a quick look at it. Interested in more YouTube videos? Check out our YouTube channel. Give your company’s Youtube page a facelift by signing up for a social media package today.

What is a better way to share those special moments between your family and friends then with Google+ Hangouts? Google announced last month via their blog that their social networking site will offer you the ability to “hangout” with your friends online. The days of commenting back and forth on a status update are over as users can go beyond the typical “status sharing” and begin a live face-to-face video chat.

The idea behind Google+’s Hangout is to initiate a live, instant chat whenever you and your fellow followers read or write a compelling status update. Have a funny picture or an interesting news feed? The Hangout button will be seen at the bottom of every status update and you can click the Hangout tab and the poster will be notified that you are interested in video chatting. If the chat has already started then that will be notified on the wall.

On Air Hangout
Move over Skype and Facetime, in addition to Hangout a program called On Air provides a broadcasting platform to record and post live videos. While on the go do you want to share a baseball game or a new dance you learned? Google+ Hangout mobile allows an instant video stream to capture those feel good moments. We have already seen the Black Eyed Peas, the Dalai Lama and even the Muppets use and promote On Air but Google is now releasing the feature to a larger list of celebrities, public figures, and powerful social media users with a large following. Although many of us are unable to use it, the ability to chat or perform a presentation to a large audience raises some interest. The platform is also connected to YouTube and is completely self service which makes On Air Hangout a very enticing program to use in the future.

Google Panda has reorganized the way that Google evaluates search results. As a result of this update, some websites have been pushed up in search engines, and others have been pushed down. This new update aims to provide users with the most up to date results. According to Searchmetric, “Google thought that Panda 2.5 was a bit too much,” and rolled back large portions of the update a week later. Then, on Nov. 3, 2011, Google rolled out a “freshness update” that impacted 35% of queries.

“Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old,” Google says in a blog post announcing the big change.

 This Panda update is estimated to have an affect on up to 35% of all Google searches, specifically those for recent events and hot topics. SearchMetrics has been tracking the effects of the recent update on different sites and it brings both good and bad news.
One of the companies that was hit hard was Demand Media. According the Forbes.com, Demand Media’s site  lost around 29% of their search engine traffic due to the update targeting content farms that contain low quality content. Shares of Demand Media are off more than 70 percent from its year high in March of $26.25 due to worries that Google’s search engine changes have hurt the companies prospects. During the third quarter, Demand said that around 31 percent of their revenue was from Google, compared to the 33 percent in the second quarter of 2011. To fix this issue, Demand is putting more of an emphasis on video and is partnering with YouTube in three new channels on home improvement, pets, and health. It is also evaluating the content of its site eHow.  Ehow brings in about 29 percent of total revenue for Demand, so they are placing a main focus on increasing its content quality.

On the contrary, this update of Panda has helped many news sites such as Washington Post, Rate my Professors, ScriBd, Zappos, and Last.fm. However, the biggest boost was to Youtube and Android, both properties of Google themselves. Google and Android saw a gain by 10%, with YouTube topping the list of absolute gains.

The Walt Disney Company (commonly referred to as Disney) is the largest media firm in the world in terms of revenue and YouTube is the largest video sharing website have now partnered together to create dominance on the Internet.  To gain this dominance they spent a combined $10 to $15 million on a video series they created to in turn help involve children more in the online world.  This new channel is set to launch in the New Year (2012), as Disney Interactive Media and Google (owners of YouTube) officially announced their plan on November 7^th, 2011 by means of a press release.

Disney feels that this move will help them reach out to the younger generations as they are losing their hold on the younger children, who are instead running to the Internet to watch videos on sites like YouTube.  Over the past years, Disney Interactive Media Group has seen their losses grow to $300 million in only their last 4 quarters, which was a tell tale sign for them to make some changes.  Not to mention that investors were putting pressure on Disney to make some changes.

Now Disney is working on recreating their company’s brand in order to connect more with children who are looking for videos to stream online.  By creating a partnership deal with YouTube it will help them reach their target market because they can use the cooler YouTube as an intermediary to stream their entertainment.

“It’s imperative to go where our audience is,” says the co-president of Disney Interactive, James Pitaro.  In addition he added their strategy is to “bring Disney’s legacy of storytelling to a new generation of families and Disney enthusiasts on the platforms they prefer.”

Google’s deal with Disney is not only the  partnership they have created, as they have reached deals with the likes of Jay-Z, Madonna, Shaquille O’Neal, Red Bull, and The Wall Street Journal to name a few of the many new channels coming to YouTube.  YouTube has decided to allocate about $5 million per channel in order to create high quality and original media.

This is only the beginning of a new race to become the number one content provider in the world, while being able to reach the necessary target markets in a society that is becoming more fragmented than ever.

Team Google remain strong! Thanks to Google, Google assisted YouTube through the whole agreement with major music publishers. According to the article, “YouTube Makes a Deal with Music Publishers,” Google has made an arrangement that will allow YouTube to put the copyrighted materials online with a group of music publishers, including the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) and Harry Fox Agency (HFA).  Of  course, Google will take care of the royalty’s fee.

YouTube announced this great news on Wednesday, August 17^th on YouTube official blog page.  Both YouTube and a group of music publishers expect profits to increase from the great number of YouTube users and fans. With the agreement with HFA, YouTube will be able to represent 46,000 music publishers and license their musical compositions. While users play their music video, YouTube will run ads alongside, which represent the compositions, publishers and singer songwriters. In this way, publishers are able to generate profits. YouTube will continue encouraging HFA to invite more music publishers to join their services.

Another advantage in taking a part of new YouTube community is YouTube’s Content ID system. Using this Content ID system, YouTube can easily identify the precise information on each music video. It will not only improve YouTube creative aspect, but also help increasing the revenue for the composition of music. Content ID will provide more performance opportunities for their song as well. It is indeed a win-win situation for both YouTube and Music Publishers.

Although the deal was made between YouTube and publishers, it will also benefit recording artists and record labels. YouTube can run ads alongside only when the copyright holders authorize, and YouTube has already made agreements with four major record labels and many independent labels. Now, YouTube will be able to make even more profits with this agreement with music publishers that we all will benefit from.

Outbound marketing is just not as effective anymore.  Outbound marketing for companies could be the use of traditional mass media, making cold calls, or going to trade shows.  These activities are active methods “selling” products and services through finding and approaching potential customers.  Tired of cold calling?  Try investing more on inbound marketing and let the business come to you!

Inbound marketing involves attracting new customers and letting them find you because you present your brand as a credible and trustworthy source.  Consumers or companies seeking products and services that you  might be offering are looking online and doing research through Google searches, reading blogs, and even reviewing content on social media sites.  Instead of putting your brand out there to people or companies used to quickly tuning out mass media, why not just be “found” by your target customer when they are looking?

Inbound marketing through search engine optimization simply means that your site is going to be well optimized for keywords most important to growing your business.  Without SEO, your company’s website will never be found in the natural search results and therefore lose market share to competitors who are in fact being “found” by your potential customers. 

Inbound marketing with blogs and social media involves developing great content.  This will in turn drastically improve your SEO efforts.  Social media is of course about more than content but is driven by sharing valuable information with your audience.  The information on your blog and social media platforms should be compelling and offer your audience a chance to quickly learn something of value.

Most companies these days are still spending about 90% of their time and energy on outbound marketing and only 10% on inbound methods.  Once a company truly embraces the theory and strategy behind inbound marketing they generally improve the inflow of new business leads.  They quality of these inquiries is usually better too. 

In conclusion, if your company wants business to come to you rather than having to chase down “leads”, then pursue these strategies:

• Position your company and people within your company as industry experts
• Develop great content for your website and blogs (i.e. articles, white papers, blogs, videos, etc.)
• Distribute your content to social media sites like Facebook, other blogs, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
• Forget the “sales pitch” and let new business come to you