YouTube and You

Well, here we are. Another week is almost gone, and for that matter, summer is almost gone. Now how did that happen?

Our focus this week was on YouTube. There is no question that video is becoming an increasingly common tool for marketers, and from the time Google bought YouTube, video has also been extremely powerful. However, it might be hard to tell how exactly your company could use YouTube effectively, especially if you're a manufacturer. Monday's post talks about why all companies, including manufacturers, can benefit from a YouTube presence.

All silver linings have a cloud (not really, but bear with me). While YouTube CAN be great, it's like any other marketing tactic--it's only as good as what you put into it. We see a lot of mistakes on YouTube that can make the channel less effective, but all of the mistakes are easy enough to fix. Wednesday's post talks about what to avoid when posting a video to YouTube.

Who Was Your Personal Google Before There Was Google?

Not to point out the obvious but Google is a wonderful tool that we all use every day for a variety of purposes. We search information about people, companies and other things of interest. We find our destinations thanks to Google Maps. We look up trivia that we would have had to use our brains to try to remember, etc.

But for those of us over 30, there was a time when there was no Google. Before we went on a trip, we went to AAA to get our TripTik (loved those things). If we were trying to remember the 23rd president of the United States, we pulled out the encyclopedia or asked our friend who was really into history. By the way, the answer is Benjamin Harrison. Why on earth would we want to remember him? If we wanted to look up an old news story, it was either look through our stockpile of old newspapers that we stacked in the basement or a trip down to the public library to look it up. Want to know how old an actor is or to whom she or he is married? Good luck with that one. Now we have IMDB as our savior.

In short, there were ways to come by all of this information in the past. It was just more laborious or required that we burn up a few more brain cells. But most of us had a secret weapon or multiple weapons. Even though we didn't call them that at the time, it turns out that they were our Personal Googles.

In my case, my brother served that role for a number of purposes. If I wanted to know anything about our hometown Akron, I could just give him a call and as the self-proclaimed Mr. Akron, he would always have the answer whether it was history, politics, etc. If my question was music related, I had numerous options. For British history, my wife could reel off all of the kings and queens going back to the 17th century. For movies, I had a friend (now living in Boston) who was and is a movie encyclopedia.

You get the idea. We all had our Personal Googles. Now that "googling" this information is so easy, I want to honor and pay credence to these Personal Googles who played such an important role in our lives.

For people like me who do not have the best memory, I have always used a crutch when it came to critical information that I was trying to remember. Before, it was Personal Googles. Now it's just Google. Personal Googles were much more entertaining, IMHO.

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