YouTube is the world's largest video sharing platform, owned by Google. It works as a social network, a video archive and at the same time the second largest search engine in the world. It lets users upload, watch, rate and share videos, subscribe to channels and communicate through comments. For companies it is a key channel for video marketing, educating the market and building brand awareness through organic content or paid advertising (Google Ads).
YouTube is not merely a video repository but a complete ecosystem with its own algorithm, personalising recommendations based on a user's watch history and preferences. It offers various content formats:
Key to success on YouTube is YouTube SEO — optimising titles, descriptions, tags and thumbnails so the algorithm correctly judges a video's relevance to a search query.
Imagine a company selling garden tools. Instead of conventional banners it creates a series of videos on YouTube: “How to prune fruit trees properly in spring”. In the video an expert demonstrates the procedure using that brand's tools. Gardeners looking for a guide find the video through search. The video gives them value (the guide), builds trust in the brand, and in the description they find a direct link to buy the tools used in the e-shop. The video thus works as an automated salesperson operating 24/7.
