YouTube Direct: Friend or Foe?
If an organization is savvy, it will make this new tool a friend. Disregard it, it could become a foe.
There has been quite a bit of buzz this week surrounding YouTube Direct, a platform that narrows the gap between news organizations and anyone with video-capture capabilities. Thanks to digital cameras that shoot video, the economically priced Flip video camcorder and the fact that many cell phones can now shoot video, that means A LOT more people just became citizen journalists.
The new tool allows media organizations to request, review and rebroadcast YouTube clips directly from YouTube users.
If you work in or with your communications department or agency, then you may be familiar with the idea of pitching stories to, or having stories broken by bloggers. You may have also heard horror stories of disgruntled customers sounding off on blogs, Twitter or Facebook. You also hear great stories about customers promoting brands themselves through those same outlets. Imagine all of this in video, and figure in that these videos may have just gotten exponentially easier for news organizations that hit your key demographics and stakeholders to upload and share.
There is a lot of exciting opportunity that YouTube’s new tool presents. Only time will tell whether or not this really takes off and how much the media will really put it to use. I imagine it will take off, though, since everyday people like you and me can capture a video faster than a news crew can arrive on a scene, and because having video to accompany a story makes the content much more rich and the story much more authentic.
The Washington Post, ABC-News, NPR and the Huffington Post are among the media outlets that have already used YouTube Direct.
Consider what doors this development opens, as well as what you need to be careful of. If you do not do regular YouTube searches related to your brand, you could be missing out on something that just got a lot easier for a news organization to find… for better or for worse.
