By some accounts, YouTube is the second most used search engine in the world. Perhaps even more significantly, it is even more popular among high school and college students.

Before thinking about how to use YouTube as a marketing tool though, take a moment to appreciate how revolutionary it truly is. Video advertising had long been the preserve of only major companies. Huge production costs and the high cost of television advertising conspired to keep it that way.

Then, sometime around 2006, the world reached a critical mass of high-quality, inexpensive video cameras, and sufficient broadband capability for people to share their videos. Suddenly the cost of broadcasting your video was zero! The only costs were production, which for many people were also zero!

Imagine going back in time 30 years and trying to explain to the ad men on Madison Avenue that you are your firm’s marketing department, that your budget for video production and broadcasting is $0.00, and that last year your videos were watched by millions of people.

Now, before I get ahead of myself, let’s look at a few ways to make sure that the videos you upload to YouTube are going to be the kinds of videos that people share, share, and re-share. A poorly executed video could actually be worse than no video at all.

When you make a video, make sure that it is optimized for maximum potential. You can optimize videos for YouTube much in the same way that you can optimize a web site for a search engine’s web crawlers, although the specifics are a little bit different. When you upload a new video, make sure that the title is descriptive, and make sure that it includes a keyword or phrase that you want to focus on.

You’ll also want to think about the length of your video. The most popular videos on YouTube have an average length of 2-4 minutes. If you opt for anything much shorter than this and your video may be looked upon unfavorably by the site’s search algorithms. Much longer and people will lose interest.

Additionally, address the other factors that the YouTube search algorithm weighs heavily. Much like any other search engine, it gives a lot of weight to inbound links. In addition, it relies heavily on user ratings and comments. So encourage people to rate comment on your videos, and to give them ratings. How do you do about doing this?

By getting involved in the community, of course. Much as you would with any other community, look for people who are posting a lot of videos, and whose videos are being linked to often. Watch their videos, and comment on them. Provide meaningful comments, and provide an occasional link back to your own content.

Also, be sure to link to other people’s videos and reference them in your videos and in your blog postings. They will appreciate the engagement, and they will link to your media in turn.