5 ways to market your company on YouTube

Have you visited YouTube recently?

No, I don’t usually have time either, but I have identified five different examples of using YouTube as a marketing tool for you. Each of these is a slightly different approach to marketing the company to potential recruits.

1. Classic talking heads: executives and experts

The first example are the videos placed by companies to discuss issues related to their industries.

For example, BDO Stoy Hayward have added a series of videos discussing retail issues such as the ethical agenda, and the resurgence of the High Street. These are a way of conveying the expertise of the organisation, and are a long way from the singing guinea-pigs or roller skaters racing against cars for which YouTube is well-known. But is YouTube the right place for this kind of video?

2. Interviews with new recruits

BDO Stoy Hayward also place videos of their new recruits discussing their day, and their reasons for choosing that company. This is likely to be interesting for potential recruits, but may not get many views – YouTube isn’t the easiest website to navigate. These videos look as though they were filmed and scripted by professionals.

Both these are classic uses of video as recruitment tools to explain the company, its industry and the roles available. Usually, this kind of video is to be found buried in the corporate website, so BDO Stoy Hayward should be commended for their outreach efforts, though these videos are not likely to gain any viral strength.

3. Selling the job by showing the product

Hallmark placed a video on YouTube inviting applications for its intern program, with no talking heads at all, just an end-line “be a part of Hallmark”. This is a slightly different strategy, aiming to excite the viewer with the range of design used, and entice them to visit the careers site to discover more about working with Hallmark (the landing page is quite a let down, after the video – the rest of the site is more interesting).

The video is very appealing – and certainly made me click through to the website. I came across this video via Pica and Pixel, so this video does have some viral capacity, and is being spread around the internet by recommendation. Also made by professionals.

4. Selling the job by selling the culture

I wrote recently about the difficulty of communicating the culture of an organisation. Sodexo have done a good job of this by placing an entertaining video apparently created by and starring its interns. Again, this is a very low-key sell, showing the Sodexo interns having fun and enjoying their work. If the comments people have added about the video are to be believed, this is a great way to appeal to Generation Y.

5. Selling the job by going where the recruits are

I’ve written previously about people trawling social networks for appropriate people to recruit. Here’s a slightly different angle: Standout Jobs place ads on YouTube advertising jobs with their clients. These tend to be talking heads videos, but often with a humorous angle, aimed at technical web-oriented types.

In the example below, Akoha want to recruit a Python expert who understands the social internet – so they are asking for a screencast or a video, as a personal statement, and links to the candidate’s blog, open source contributions, Flickr stream or online communities. If the person you need is likely to have one or more of these, then YouTube is surely the right place to advertise, particularly if the video is likely to go viral, and be circulated among the relevant audience. This video is months old, but I came across it via a blog (can’t remember which one now), so this definitely has some viral capacity.

So there you have it: 5 different approaches to recruiting using YouTube. Using YouTube to market your product is a topic for another day …

Author

Lucy Nixon

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Lucy is Editor at Corporate Eye