YouTube and Publicity

YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. YouTube was created in February 2005. The free service uses Adobe Flash Video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content such as videoblogging and short original videos. Youtube's instant and continuously growing large scale popularity has been used as a route for free publicity and high priced advertising. The viewers it reaches are a large network varying by age and interest, so companies know their efforts in reaching the desired demographic (or interest group) will not be futile. In January 2008 alone, nearly 79 million users had made over 3 billion video views.

Now, using this internet service as a mode of publicity has proven quite successful. Especially in the music industry. For example, Soulja boy, a young Hip Hop artist who's musical ventures and creations started-and continue- as Youtube video posts. Now the young artist has been signed to a label and continues to perform and produce his music around the world. He used sites like Youtube and MySpace to link back to his own official site and build a fan base. Boston Public Relations firms can use and learn from this example as it is a very relevant viral marketing tactic. Many Boston Marketing Agencies and Boston Public Relations Firms have used this technique by posting commercials and ads on the Youtube site free of charge and then tagging the appropriate client keywords.

One of the biggest benefits from using services like Youtube is increased returns to scale. That is the power that lies within Youtube. So, now that Boston Public Relations Firms have realized this valuable publicity tool, they have begun to exploit. Take into account the increasing costs of advertising, free publicity in the form of viral web is the way to go if a company is not trying to spend on TV ads but still reach the same target audience.