How Effective Is YouTube For List Building?

In your quest for building your list, you must leave no stone unturned. With this attitude in mind, you must pay special attention to all the popular social networking/bookmarking sites which now command much of the traffic on the web. The same goes for the video sharing site YouTube, which is owned by Google.

You also have to consider the fact that YouTube will play an even greater role in the future, CNN reports that Google plans to spend 100 million on original programing to create 20 premium channels. In addition, recently when Larry Page took back the CEO job at Google, he created vice presidents in seven key areas - YouTube and video was solidly in the mix with search, social, Chrome, mobile, local and ads. This shows that Google is placing a lot of importance and emphasis on YouTube going forward.

YouTube is already the third most popular site on the web, after Google and Facebook, so you do have plenty of opportunity to attract visitors and subscribers. And when you consider YouTube has a built-in subscription system, it's really a no-brainer. Even if you do nothing to promote your list building, you will still get friends and subscribers with YouTube.

However, to effectively build your subscriber base it is helpful if you do some promotion and become pro-active. Even something as simple as placing subscribe buttons on your YouTube channel and on your web sites, will get you more subscribers. Also asking viewers to subscribe and comment at the end of each of your videos is important. Mainly because the same marketing tactics also applies here... you must have a "call to action" just like you would have on your squeeze or sign up pages.

The most successful YouTubers with the biggest subscriber numbers have lists in the 100's of thousands. You even have some young tubers, barely in their teens, with large subscriber numbers in the millions. Those numbers can present great marketing opportunities and we are just not talking about Google Adsense. Savvy companies are taking advantage of these numbers and enlisting many of these popular tubers to promote their products and goods.

We see the same thing happening around Twitter where celebrities with millions of followers are selling/promoting products and services. Keep in mind, any program or any one with the ability to reach a targeted market in the millions, will have commercial potential. Monetizing these lists will only increase as more and more people see their true value.

Of course, the key here is the same as with building any list, you must have a targeted list around a common topic or subject. YouTube is especially effective because it lets you create a channel on your subject area, whether it be growing roses or capturing video gaming action. You can build a large community of like-minded individuals who will be interested in your latest video or offer.

YouTube itself is an online community and the most successful YouTubers are those who interact with other channels and tubers, exchanging links and doing co-operative videos and collaborations. Some even form collab channels with each member contributing videos on a common subject. Others post video responses as a way of getting more traffic and subscribers.

You also see a lot of cross-promotion between the different social networking sites, many will promote their YouTube channel on their Twitter/Facebook/MySpace accounts and vice versa. In the process, they are cementing their connections and relationships with these subscribers. And it is another effective way of building your list of contacts.

Overall, YouTube can be a very effective way to build your list if you do some promotion and actively grow your numbers. You will build that list faster if you also become involved in the YouTube community and exchange links. Also it helps to present a "call to action" in each of your videos and in your video descriptions. YouTube should be on everyone's list as an excellent place to get subscribers.