Who’s using YouTube?   Businesses—lots of them. Is yours?
In my October social media column in the Durham Business Times, I suggest plenty of ways to make this fast-growing marketing tool work for your business. But seeing is believing.

Consider these viral video successes. The Old Spice Guy’s rich “Hello, Ladies.” Home Depot’s easy how-to’s. T-Mobile’s “Welcome Home” flash mob. You’re probably familiar with at least one of these runaway hits.

But not every great application needs a big business budget. Right here in Durham, the Bowmanville Zoo uses YouTube to provide an intimate, bars-free visit with some of their beautiful but dangerous critters.

So let’s put our heads together. Has your organization found a creative or effective use for social media video? Post the link here. Have you seen great examples on the web? Share them with us. Comment on why they work. Let’s see how many outstanding videos we can post.

On October 15, I’ll do a random draw from everyone who shared a link. One lucky winner will win a free ticket to the social marketing webinar of his or her choice ($50 value.) The winner will be announced in my November social media column which explains how to incorporate and optimize your company’s videos.

Check out YouTube Trends (http://youtube-trends.blogspot.com/), a new YouTube site that tracks the latest videos gaining traction on YouTube.

via Google Launches “YouTube Trends,” A Site For Keeping Up On The Latest Viral Videos.

YouTube has many ways to help you find and watch videos. You can also interact with other YouTube users and around shared interests. If you make videos, you can broadcast them to the whole world, and maybe even develop an audience for your creations.

via YouTube - Broadcast Yourself..

TubeMogul, which allows you to upload a single video clip to dozens of video sites including YouTube and get comparative statistics such as; how many views did your video get on each site, and how long on average did viewers watch your clip on each site? It’s a great tool for moving beyond video upload to strategic video optimization.

If videos are your thing, please visit and subscribe to my youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/aWEBthatWORKS.   If  you have a moment, please click on comment link, and tell me what you’d like to read more about. I’ve been helping people market themselves on the Internet since 1993, and  time permitting I’d like to help you too. Click here to find out more about YouTube, who’s using it, how often. If you require urgent assistance with YouTube, website, e-marketing and other social media, contact aWEBthatWORKS at 1-800-579-9253.

We recently discovered that the code YouTube provides to allow us to embed videos into our websites does not validate. Why should you care?  If code is not valid (is not properly written), although it may very function okay on your computer, it can cause lots of problems for other software such as:

• printers - ever experienced your printer spitting out page after page of gobbly goop?
• web browsers - page may not display, ormay display inconsistenly on different computers/browsers
• search engines – search engines can’t index information they can’t read. If your content is not indexed you lose all hope of coming up for that term if some types it in a search box.

Kudos to Bernie Zimmermann who suggests that instead of using their suggested format…

<object width=”425″ height=”350″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/7_6B6vwE83U”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/7_6B6vwE83U” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”425″ height=”350″></embed></object>

Use the following format:

<object type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” style=”width:425px; height:350px;” data=”http://www.youtube.com/v/7_6B6vwE83U”><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/7_6B6vwE83U” /></object>

which still functions correctly, and validates.

How do I add a video to my blog or web page?

How do I add a playlist to my blog or web page?

How do I add a video to my social network page?

How do I add videos to an eBay auction?

via YouTube – Broadcast Yourself..

What’s your favourite YouTube channel?

Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal, YouTube, and Blogger came under a sustained, simultaneous DDoS attack yesterday, with Twitter going offline completely for a while, and Facebook running slowly and reporting strange error messages to users before its security staff managed to wrestle control back

Read more about this attack at Technomix | Fast Company.

YouTube Brands: 5 Outstanding Leaders in YouTube Marketing.