Customer Reviews

YouTube for Business: Online Video Marketing for Any Business

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I loved this book. It is well outlined and well written. And it is very topical in today's business marketing world where small businesses can use YouTube to enhance their online marketing efforts significantly. The book has 16 chapters divided into the following five parts:

I. Marketing your business online with YouTube (1-3)

II. Producing Your YouTube Videos (4-8)

III. Managing Your YouTube Videos (9-11)

IV. Working with YouTube Video Blogs (12-13)

V. Promotion and Monetization (14-16)

And each Part is concluded with a "Profile" which applied what had been discussed in the chapters preceding it. I found these profiles very helpful and informative. Not too long ago I read and reviewed "Show Me: Marketing with Video on the Internet" (ISBN: 1884230016). I had high hopes for that book and wanted it to be like the instant book being reviewed. Unfortunately it fell short of my expectations. However, after reading "YouTube for Business" this other book might be a good companion read?

Internet marketing today seems to be about putting together successful ways to generate traffic to your company or nonprofit Web site. You can do this by performing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques. You can do this by creating lots of content pages in your Web site. You can do this by writing articles and posting them on free article-posting sites online. Each article will have a by-line directing traffic back to your site. You can generate traffic by creating one (or more than one) blog which will direct traffic back to your site. And after reading this book you can generate traffic by creating simple videos you post on YouTube that will direct viewers back to your Web site.

The really neat thing about YouTube traffic generation is that it not only generates traffic, but it allows you to get your face and voice in front of people as though you were standing there talking with them. You can become three-dimensional rather than just two.

My favorite part of the book was Part II where the author goes into some depth into how to produce videos for posting on YouTube. And it is these same videos you will want to paste into your main Web site and your blog posts. I highly recommend this book for just about any small business owner who wants to make a name for themselves better and quicker. 5 stars!

PS. Take a look at the Search Inside material offered by Amazon so you can examine the Table of Contents of this book and more fully understand what this book has to offer.

I am reading a lot, on various marketing topics, and now, i am at the stage, where I can distinguish between really honest, helpful and hardworking books on subjects - especially on marketing.

Such an honest book in 2009 in virtually impossible to find! No really! Author does not tries you sell his stuff. Author does not asks every second page to subscribe his newsletter of whatever. Instead - he packs book full with VALUABLE info, on just exactly what the topic is - how to use youtube in your marketing matrix.

And one more thing - if you afraid (same as I did), that author will pack 3/4 of book on useless topics on what youtube is, and how to use it and bla bla bla - then don't! I was such a positively surprised that this book is all packed with valuable info, covering as technical issues, and then goes giving you most valuable that can be - examples and tips on what and how you can put on youtube. Just read the book - stop a little - and think how it apply to your business - and a spark happens in your mind. Thanks to author I had a lot of a-ha moments when I was reading his work.

Highly recommended!

"YouTube for Business: Online Marketing for Any Business" is a very simple guide on how to use YouTube and how it can help your business become more modernized and tech-savvy. However, the content of this book is somewhat decieving. The first few chapters actually talk about how YouTube vidoes can help enhance your company's image and increase the overall awareness of your company. It elaborates on how producing YouTube videos allows your customers to put a face to your company and become, in a sense, more personable. In addition, Miller also talks about why your company's online presence is benefitical in the long run and how it can be used to reach potential customers from all over the world. Information of this nature is, unfortunately, brief and the remainder of the book serves a very basic step-by-step guide to producing effective videos, managing them on YouTube, and how to track your videos in terms of website traffic.

Personally, I found that this book was a bit of a disappointment. I believe that the first 3 chapters are legitimately benefitical to companies that are curious about how to utilize the internet and online videos to better organize and promote themselves. Aside from these chapters, and a few chapters on to generate revenue for your business via YouTube, the rest of the book is relevant only to those who struggle with the concept of creating different types of videos and managing a YouTube account. Nonetheless, this book can help any business (or individual for that matter) learn about the practical uses of YouTube and can be benefitical for very inexperienced internet users.

A bit too basic but solid concepts to help position your business on Youtube. Very useful for a small business owner who may be never to the internet or new at exploring social media, social networking, and emerging technology, widgets, gadgets, etc. haha. For most advanced users, this is certainly too simplistic and more of a 'how does it work' functionality then useful tools to help make money or position yourself, your brand, or your company on the web through youtube. I did really like the case studies used which helped to get my creative juices flowing.

Most books of this kind are quickies turned out by hack writers who scoop up stuff from the web and regurgitate for those too lazy or inexperienced to do the same thing.

But there are occasional gems like this one. Michael Miller may be prolific with more than 80 how-to books to his credit, but he is also professional in his approach and a skillful writer.

He tackles the cocnept of using YouTube for business in a very methodical way. He walks the reader through the reasons for using YouTube, the basics of video production, managing your online videos, video blogging and promotion and monetization.

Obviously those who know their way in production can skip those pages, but on the whole, Miller's book is well-worth reading in its entirety. Even though it covers many basic areas, Miller is an informative writer who never conscends. This is a book on using YouTube to market your business and Miller never lets that object out of sight. He also includes a few profiles of real-life users of YouTube mrketing videos that are quite compelling.

Overall this is a solid read for anyone with even the vaguest interest in exploiting YouTube for their own business interests.

Jerry

I loved this book because it is simple, clear and concise in it's instructions and explanations of marketing ideas. For anyone who doesn't know anything about marketing, this book is for you because it explains why you should do something. Until I read this book, I had no idea of the power of YouTube as a marketing tool, as well as other social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. It's a gem for sure!

I have been trying to figure out how to get started in adding video to my marketing mix to complement my blogging and make my ideas more tangible to people. This book has the right mix of theory and practice. It helped me think about how to organize myself, how to frame the shots and create a compelling view. But it also helped me buy the right camera and deal with practical needs. I recommend the book to anyone looking to get started--and do it right from the beginning.

I bought this book as backup research to validate a paper I'm writing on using online video for business marketing.

It seems to me that this author was so proud of the fact that he figured out how to use YouTube's interface that he made an entire book on the process, and that's it.

It should be called "How to use YouTube", because that's all it's good for. Most anybody can figure out a website's interface, but if you're reading this book based on the assumptions the title has created, then you're looking for strategies to implement in your business' marketing channels.

After he so GRACIOUSLY points out that it's basic marketing skills to figure out your target audience and desired result (then proceeds to tell us all about it anyways in terms that would make a child fall asleep), he then teases the reader with topics like "How will you measure the results of your YouTube video?" (which is included in the opening chapters, and is dedicated ONE ENTIRE PAGE! hooray). That topic is one of the REASONS you'd buy the book, to understand market psychology when it comes to video and how it can influence behaviour and how you can keep track of what metrics to validate a real return on marketing objectives for your video... but no.

Here's what he says about measuring effectiveness:

"if your goal is to generate sales, measure sales."

"if your goal is to measure traffic, measure traffic {...}"

... and my favorite,

"if your goal is to build brand image, measurement is more difficult. You need to conduct some sort of market research after your YouTube campaign has had a chance to do its thing {...}"

Overall, if you're buying this book for learning what the title tells you, then save your money and read your old Marketing 101 chapter on "Marketing Goals" instead, then pop on the YouTube website and read their very informative "help" section.

... although, YouTube has far less pictures than this book, so if you're horrible at reading instructions and guidelines, then buy this book to learn "how to upload your videos" and "how to create a channel".

EDIT:

Michael Miller puts his YouTube prowess to use on YouTube with HUNDREDS of views on most of his videos!

Note how he leaves it up to the viewer to imagine all the "video editing techniques" he mentions in his book.

(example: watch his recent video on High Definition videos, and when he explains the "rule of thirds", he opts to use hand gestures and simple language to explain the concept, rather than use "video editing techniques" to overlay a simple grid on the screen.)

Final Conclusion:

regretting not verifying that the author

a) has a proven track record using YouTube for himself or another business, and

b) knew something impactful about YouTube for business rather than guessing at it (which is what it seems like he's doing)

I recommend this book to anyone wanting to create an effective youtube video. When I first put up my youtube video I wasn't dressing professional and I got bad comments, and I didn't read a sample of my book, and I didn't know how to get views. This is an excellent wonderful book. I'm reading other books on youtube and they don't even come close. With this book I wrote many notes.

YouTube for Business (I have the second edition) is a helpful book for anybody who wants to use video marketing. You can always tell a good book by the depth of its table of contents. The author of this tome, Miller, goes the extra mile to provide extensive amounts of info to his reader.

I'll touch some brief pressure points. First, I liked how Miller emphasized the need to track the performance of your videos. If you're trying to put people into your funnel then you need to know what content works and what doesn't. I also like how he gets across the versatility of video marketing. You can make several types of videos including educational and entertainment videos, it really runs the gamut. He also includes a lot of pictures pointing out specifically where things are in the various software and online accounts you may run into. On the downside, all it takes is one update and the menu displays could change.

In terms of negatives, there isn't that much. I wish he would've went into greater detail for solopreneurs (that is, people with lean operations). I also wish he would've devoted more attention to the actual process generating content for YouTube. I always have a tough time trying to repurpose content for videos so it would've been nice to discuss how this could be done. Also, some readers may be off-putted by the minutiae. In some parts, Miller goes into a lot of technical detail (such as discussing hardware and codecs) which may overwhelm the casual reader.

Aside from these points, I think it's a great book and well worth the investment.