With the multifold increase in all social media consumption and participation, using video content, specifically created for a brand, and distributed via the You Tube channel is becoming increasingly popular. YouTube is by default the world's second most popular search engine – meaning more search queries are conducted on the popular video channel every day than any other search engine, bar google. YouTube has an inherent power to generate traffic to a brand's website or promotional presence online, and the potential to move the consumer from informatoin to decision to purchase.

Brands are now using viral videos as a medium. Videos that appeal to a large section of the target audience are called viral, and because the videos themselves are shared, posted, passed on by the people.And, for the most part, these are posted on YouTube. In essence, it's word of mouth – in video form. While there are plenty of low quality, user generated videos posted by millions of people, brands are now able to post fairly high quality video content, tag them, label them, use brand products and service promotions in them (cleverly, we hope), and generate a lot of traffic and absorbtion.

Being able to promote these 'brand driven' videos is key. No video automatically becomes viral without marketing support or the intial push. Promoting the videos in blogs, on the barnd's website, in promotional sites, across other social media, via email links is important. Viewers should also be able to find the content when they search on the subject or topic. So, in effect, the brand's video content needs to be search friendly. Using proper tagging is key, and as well, using keywords in the title of the video or its description does have a lot of search impact. Finally, limiting the placement of video content on YouTube without supporting it via links across other social and online channels.

The final bit of course is the quality of the actual content. The creative element has to be interesting, engaging, fun, and always adding value to the end user. Therein lies the power of video content that is shared by the people.