It looks like the marketer's cry for more data has reached YouTube's ears, and not too long after Facebook beefed up its analytics with new features for Facebook Insights. While YouTube had previously offered an Insights tool that let you view data for videos on your channel, the Google-owned online video giant announced on its blog this morning that, over the course of today, it will be replacing your YouTube Insights with YouTube Analytics. Here are the four latest features YouTube Analytics will tack on to the almost-defunked Insights. Audience Retention. MORE >>

From Adam Sutton at MarketingSherpa comes a look at how Orabrush created a successful marketing strategy built around their YouTube page. Orabrush created a landing page around an independent YouTube video titled "How to tell if you have bad breath." The company's YouTube page is now their inbound marketing hub, and represents 80% of their marketing. Results: 35+ million YouTube channel views. 116,000+ YouTube subscribers. Key Tactics: Create an Effective YouTube Page. Customized YouTube channel. Customer testimonial videos. MORE >>

YouTube is one great social networking tool that helps brands to reach out to their customers in real time. Fashion retailer French Connection knew how often its target audience was asking this question, and happily responded by creating a YouTube channel: Youtique. The company combines the mini-video format of YouTube with the ethos of the Home Shopping Network to offer women snack-sized personal shopping videos based on occasion. Youtique’ is a collection and compilation of bite-sized fashion videos that inspire customers what to wear for every occasion. There MORE >>

by Andrew Stivelman | Tweet this In November, I asked what now appears to have been a rhetorical question:   Is YouTube replacing the Printed Manual? Then, just as I sat down to write this follow-on article, I saw a tweet that YouTube is holding a  Next How-to Guru  contest for creators of How-To videos, the winners of which will receive training and equipment, promotion and mentorship. Interestingly enough, the data that I analyzed for Eloqua shows, for 2012, that while using YouTube over the course of the year increases, the number of support cases remains relatively stable.  MORE >>

'Over the past few years I have been giving a speech about the “six layers” of customer engagement. We are in the process of creating increasingly complex layers of digital distance between our companies and our customers. Historically, we dealt with customers face-to-face, with a trusted word and a firm handshake. Then in the late 1990s, with the creation of our first company websites, we took a one way ticket AWAY from these personal relationships and created the first, permanent digital divide between ourselves and our customers. So, let’s change that. There is. MORE >>