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 the very first ‘webshop’ on YouTube. Name : Youtique : French Connection’s Twitter Handle [link]. Description. MORE >>

No matter how much money you spend on a graphic designer, a social media expert, and a community manager, you may very well not find the kind of success you want and expect from your investment in social media and social networks such as  Facebook , Twitter , Google +, YouTube , and Pinterest. Being beautiful, friendly, clever, generous, and charming is no longer good enough when you’re not just competing with the student body for Prom King and Queen, you’re now competing with potentially every other beautiful, friendly, clever, generous, and charming person on planet earth. MORE >>

How to Use YouTube To Increase Sales. Most of us have a video camera and when you talk to the camera like a person, you easily come across as conversational. HubSpot CMO Mike Volpe says to keep in mind that “ social media isn’t a strategy, its a technology ” Use technology YouTube to share the information with anyone that wants it. This will show up as a clicakble link on YouTube. Use YouTube annotations to “gently” let user know that you sell the product(s) in the video. This is a guest post authored by John Lawson. Why Video? MORE >>

Many engineers, specifiers, users and buyers of industrial products regularly use social media in their personal lives but work-related usage is limited among this audience. Probably the most common use of social media is videos on YouTube. These people have readily embraced video marketing, YouTube and social media. On YouTube, I found a video from CARR Machine & Tool Company that takes a refreshingly different approach to differentiate the company by putting the focus squarely on the customer. They actively use YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. MORE >>

I've been reading a few articles lately about how some user-generated content ad campaigns such as the one that Dove ran called Dove Cream Oil Body Wash Ad Contest "failed" as it wasn't well received by the YouTube community. YouTube vlogger oneparkave (AKA Shmuel Tennenhaus) mentioned that the ad only received a 1 star rating out of 3 million views and received some extremely negative comments on YouTube. Shmuel argued that Dove angered the entire YouTube community as YouTubers perceived the video as self-serving for Dove and not adding to the YouTube community. MORE >>