Credit Unions on YouTube: 2008 vs. 2009
Informal research conducted by The Financial Brand indicates a significant increase in the utilization of the popular video-sharing tool YouTube within the credit union industry. Still, the relatively small number of financial institutions that have YouTube accounts is very surprising.
[Note: This is a companion piece with today's other story, "The Weirdest Credit Union Videos on YouTube."]
Search results for “credit union” on YouTube went up 356% over a one-year period:
- January 2008: 772 videos
- January 2009: 2,750 videos
Google Video results for “credit union” increased 310% for the same period:
- January 2008: 1,069 videos
- January 2009: 3,320 videos
Credit unions are using sites like YouTube for a range of purposes:
- Sharing commercials
- Showing outtakes or how commercials were made
- Providing a behind-the-scenes view of the credit union and/or its staff
- Financial education
- Video contests
The vast majority of the 2,750 “credit union” videos on YouTube aren’t actually uploaded by credit unions themselves. Most are uploaded by those connected to the credit union industry in some way, including leagues, associations and (of course) vendors. Of those credit unions with YouTube accounts, the most common use is for sharing commercials.
Reality Check: Don’t go on YouTube expecting your videos to “go viral.” It takes a lot for a video to “go viral.” Unless your video/commercial is exceptionally good, you probably won’t get more than 500 views. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Bottom Line: Even if you’re the only one who looks at your videos, having an online library of them handy at YouTube is worth more than it costs, which is nothing. So there’s no excuse. Besides, it can’t hurt can it? Potential employees, reporters, and the public in general might find them useful and relevant. The least it says is, “We ‘get’ YouTube.”
Search For More: Credit Unions, Social Media, TV/Video, YouTubeAll content © 2013 by The Financial Brand and may not be reproduced by any means without permission.
Nice post and good info. We started experimenting with different “video hosts” and players. There are some limitations to You Tube that other services have gone above on.
Our favorite service is blip.tv simply for the fact that the integrated player works a lot better from a design perspective. In addition, the player has a built in viral sharing tool (mail to a friend). Plus there are no limitations to the length of the video (see thoughts below on this).
We have also experimented with Vimeo but there are some limitations such as you can only upload a certain amount each week and then it caps you. So this is not a good option if you are uploading a lot of videos.
More thoughts on video length… we have found that the time users spend on sites with videos is longer than users spend of sites without video. On average, sites we have done with video have a 25% – 35% view to visit ratio.
But when looking at the times compared to the video run time, we found that the attention span is around 1.5 – 2.5 minutes max. 3 minutes is pushing it.
So unless you have really compelling content, anything after three minutes may not be viewed.
We are finding it’s all about short, sweet, funny, relevant edumentainment.
Great point James. There are a lot of other video services out there. Plenty of financial institutions simply embed the Flash directly in their site. I see this when someone wants to protect their content (like an ad) and make it harder to download/reupload somewhere else.
When I started tracking this back in 2007, I only monitored YouTube, so I was just going along with the data stream I had.
Great article Jeffry. Like you say, YouTube is free, so what’s stopping you?
It’s hard to believe how much YouTube has changed the Internet in such a short period of time.
We had a microsite for our agency in 1999 called afewseconds.com. My two web developers at the time, Josh and Peter, would do a 3-minute weekly show. A couple of cool young guys riffing on whatever. It was essentially a video podcast 8 years before that term even existed.
We put the videos out in Windows Media and Quicktime format and served it off a development server in our shop. One episode went “viral” when a writer linked to it from MSN.com. We had 25,000 views in 24 hours and it crashed our little server and even though we had a T1 line at the time that we paid $2,000 per month for, we received a bill from our Telco for $28,000 for extra bandwidth!
I managed to wiggle my way out of the bill, but we had to take the site down due to its popularity. Fast forward ten years and you can do this for no cost! It’s amazing and credit unions should be taking advantage of this service.
(P.S. I sold afewseconds.com for peanuts 4 years ago through a broker. I had no idea at the time, but the buyer was Pfizer and they ended up using the domain to promote Viagra!)
Hi Jeffry,
YouTube has been important in promoting the credit union cause, also in sharing ideas…in Australia a credit union has utilised the concept ‘Ilove you’ and recreated it using Aussie Actors. The orginal creators will be happy to know their original version is still the best! http://www.communityfirst.com.au
Interesting watching the Aussie version state side… they also use a Coast Capitol “Julie” like web rep…