KUJH-TV going to YouTube... anybody familiar with my blog knows where I stand on this. In the first blog of the year I said that everyone should put their news on YouTube, to me it's just common sense.
So before I wrote this blog on putting KUJH on YouTube I tried to think of any possible negatives from putting videos up on YouTube. Here's what I came up with...
Putting videos on YouTube takes away viewers from the KUJH website
This is the classic argument that this will hurt by pulling people away from our website. However, the main purpose of our website is to showcase the news and the work of our reporters and anchors and YouTube does just that. Not only are the videos now on two different websites but by being on YouTube they are more likely to be seen.
YouTube has millions of visitors each day and odds are a lot of these visitors will stumble across a KUJH video at some point. It gets our brand further out on to the web and even if they only stay on the video for a 15 seconds the will likely see a KUJH logo in that time.
I don't want to make it sound like subliminal messaging for KUJH, but really that's what it is. At the time I'm writing this blog this story has 63 views and has only been up for 4 days. Even if only 10 percent of those viewers see KUJH for the first time, that's 6 people that have learned about our station in the past 4 days. Keep on that pace and it would be more than 500 viewers learning about us in a year, just from that one story.
News stories are only remembered on YouTube when they are embarrassing.
If you asked me to name 3 news stories I've seen on YouTube they would be 1. News lady falls while smashing grapes, 2. The Boom goes the Dynamite guy and 3. My personal favorite, the Leprechaun.
As long as we keep Brian Collins away from the newsroom, KUJH on YouTube can't fail. Photo: Ebaumsworld.comAll three of these stories have their charms, but in the end I remember them because the reporters, anchors and news stations embarrassed themselves. A disaster like that could be harmful to KUJH.
But here's the beauty of our newscast (and I hope I'm not letting out a huge secret here), we don't show things live!! If any of these moments had happened at KUJH they would have never made it onto air and consequently never made it on to YouTube.
Viewers may laugh at bad sound, bad video or even how much bigger Sam looks when he anchors next to Stephen but there certainly won't be anything that makes a classic YouTube moment.
Putting videos on YouTube creates more work for me
As a last resort I decided to get selfish. I decided I would argue against the extra work I would have to do. However, this argument was trumped the first time I tried to upload a video. It only took about 2 minutes and it was easy enough that I didn't even have to ask someone else for help.
So, I finally realize that all of my arguments are null and void. As much as I try there is nothing wrong with putting KUJH on YouTube. YouTube is the future of the Internet and I'm now happy to be a part of it.
Your comments about a viewer seeing the KUJH logo are interesting. Perhaps in the future we could supplement the video with a short still image before and after the video that includes the KUJH logo as well as our web URL. I think that could really reinforce the KUJH brand and our website in the viewer's mind.
The flu story is up to 83 hits this morning. Could something good be going on here? Sure hope so... Has anybody ever shown Petritas the trick of sitting on his coattail so his jacket collar doesn't bunch up? ...But back to the news. What is our top draw on YouTube so far? Flu? And what are we doing to draw those views?
Now at 90 hits and growing. Looks like the head "flu mist" is driving the traffic. We're number two on Google's "flu mist" vid search screen. Watch the numbers roll.
I don't know what's driving people to that story but it's quicker results than even I envisioned and I've always been one of the biggest proponents of it. I think we need to start putting a URL or a logo up in the story because it certainly won't hurt things. I don't know how YouTube manages the still frame thumbnails on the side of the links that you click on, but I also think it would be a good idea to look into just making those little thumbnails in KUJH logos. Again, it can't really hurt.
I think your idea of branded thumbnails is great. All of it matters. Especially when people are inundated with other choices. We were concerned about the traffic question at TreeHugger but found our YouTube presence actually pushed people back to our site. An end still with our URL couldn't hurt.