There are many benefits for politicians using YouTube. Videos are quick and easy to create, many digital still cameras include video recording facility, and with millions of YouTube users of all ages and backgrounds your messages will reach a whole new group of people and possible voters.
Benefits for search
You already have a website, you may have a Facebook page, both of which will help the public find you on search engines such as Google and Yahoo! However without content on YouTube, YouTubers using the YouTube search box will either find no content about you – or possibly worse – only content created about you by your opponents. Once you have created your YouTube Channel you should link to it from your website which will help ensure it will be picked up by search engines and very soon could result in your videos appearing in the main search results on the key search engines.
Where do I start?
To start adding video’s to YouTube you need to create a channel. To create a channel you simply sign up to YouTube. When doing this it is important to note your YouTube username cannot be changed after it has been created. It will appear on your channel so think carefully about what you use as a username.
Do my videos have to be high qualitiy?
The most important issue with creating YouTube video’s is ensuring the viewer can hear the message. Beware of background noise when recording the videos. The quality is not a major priority – in fact if your video is too polished it would look out of place in the YouTube environment. There is a limit to the size of your videos on YouTube which is a maximum of 10 minutes in length and a file size of 1024 MB (if you keep you video to 2 – 3 minutes you will not have to be concerned about file size, you will need to use the multi video uploader for videos over 100MB ). You could customise your video’s using video editing software, adding titles etc. this could be something you go on to at a later date and should not be a barrier to starting your channel.
Adding videos to YouTube
After you record your videos, select ‘upload videos’ then enter a title, description and ‘tags’. The content of these fields are important as this will help influence where you appear in YouTube searches. It is essential that you set up the ‘sharing options’ selecting for comments and video comments to be allowed after you approve them. Whilst you want to get responses from viewers you will want to filter any messages that are purely abusive without any substance.
For step by step guide to uploading a video to YouTube visit their how to pages.
How many videos should I add?
There is no limit to the number of videos, I would start with at least three video’s. Keep your video’s short, creating separate video’s for each video.
What next?
You will be able to monitor how many times your video’s are viewed, see who is linking to your video or make it a favourite on their YouTube account. YouTubers can subscribe to your channel, where any new video’s you add will appear when they log into their homepage.
You can help visitors to your YouTube Channel find related content by finding related content on YouTube and selecting these as your favourites and subscribing to other channels.
Christopher Wellbelove DL 