Everyone knows YouTube is popular, but it’s easy to lose sight of just HOW popular it is. It’s become the goto video service on the web, so much so that it’s often times used synonymously with “video host” the same way people call all facial tissue Kleenex or all gelatin Jell0. This week, the service hit the incredible milestone of 1 billion unique months views, and now companies performing SEO for business the world over are reevaluating their YouTube strategies.
First, lets look at what 1 billion YouTube view monthly actually means in a more understandable way. This is from the YouTube Blog:
- Nearly one out of every two people on the Internet visits YouTube.
- YouTube’s monthly viewership is the equivalent of roughly 10 Super Bowl audiences.
- If YouTube were a country, it would be the third largest in the world after China and India.
- PSY and Madonna would have to repeat their Madison Square Garden performance in front of a packed house 200,000 more times in order to reach an audience the same size.
These stats show what is so amazing about YouTube. Ten years ago, marketers would have KILLED for the chance to be seen by an audience even close to the size of the Super Bowl. Those ads are still some of the most expensive in existence. Today, we have the power to be seen by an audience 10 times that of a Super Bowl audience, and many businesses STILL AREN’T TAKING ADVANTAGE OF IT!
Listen, there’s no magic formula I can give you to make a YouTube hit. All I know is that it takes time, patience, and effort. You might strike out a hundred times, a thousand times, more…but who cares? Even videos that aren’t smash hits help build your library and bolster your SEO. So take a chance, open a YouTube channel, and broadcast yourself to over 1 billion unique visitors a month.