Many people don’t even know that YouTube is a social network, where one can add friends, subscribe to channels, “like” and “favorite” videos, interact and share these videos with their friends.

According to a study released by Google in June of this year, YouTube is the second most popular website in the world.  With 790 Million unique monthly visitors, YouTube is second only to Facebook in terms of popularity. Contributing to  these numbers are over 2 billion videos viewed every day, 5% of which is via YouTube Mobile, with 100 million views.

Zeroing in on Australia, another study discovered that  those aged 18-29 accounted for 32% of YouTube users in Australia,  followed by the 30-39 age group at 20%. However, if you added up those aged 40-49, 50-59 and 60 and above, this would amount to 41% and represent the largest demographic of Australian YouTube users.

Of those Australians surveyed, 57% are working, 19% are stay-at-home, and 15% are studying. 55% are married, 35% are single and 9% are divorced and as proof that YouTube is not just a website for techies, 61% of those surveyed described themselves as not tech-savvy. 86% of them said YouTube is their favourite place to watch videos, with 62% visiting at least once a week and 79% spending an average of one hour and 9 minutes per week on the website and 47% share videos when they find a video which they love.

What does this mean for your business? When planning ways to promote your online business, consider YouTube as part of your social media marketing. Putting content about your business on YouTube allows you to be discovered by people that are out searching for information and is a great way for driving traffic to your website, as well as building leads for your business. Using simple tools such as a PC video camera, you are able to take videos of yourself and speak directly to your potential customers.