Web 2.0 technology has helped level the playing field for small and home based business, and in some cases, gives us the “home” advantage. We can be fast and creative, where big corporations are by their nature, often very slow. YouTube has made online video marketing accessible for all of us. Anyone can create and post a video in mere minutes, and there are many ways you can use YouTube for your Business.

YouTube can help you draw traffic to your website, increase your sales, communicate with your customers, demonstrate your products, showcase customer testimonials, reward customers or employees, and more.

How it works: You sign up for a YouTube account (it’s free and takes just a few minutes) and then upload your videos. Uploading the videos is a bit more time-consuming, because video files are pretty large. So, patience is a must. In the help files, they indicate some videos may take up to 24 hours to upload. After uploading, the videos process, which again takes some time.

When the upload process is complete, you will get code that you can embed on your website, linking to the video.

There is also a YouTube handbook with lots of information on creating good video. Plus, you’ll find many videos on how to use YouTube.

Other features include YouTube Insight, a feature which lets you see who is watching your videos. These statistics are great for marketing and statistical purposes.

Plus, there is a moneymaking feature: you can make money with your YouTube videos on their site using AdSense. Of course, you will need videos that get a lot of traffic to take advantage of this feature.

Once you get started and have videos uploaded, you can use the code provided to link to the video from your own website. And, you can promote it on various social marketing sites: Facebook, Twitter it, Digg and many more.

You can also build a community of friends, clients, and prospects, who can both view and subscribe to your videos.

Video is a great marketing tool and the Web 2.0 community atmosphere at YouTube gives you access to this tool. A few years ago, it was very expensive to hire people to shoot a video to promote your company. And, then, the only outlet to distribute that content would be television ads you paid (dearly) to run or making multiple copies of the video to send to clients and prospects. Now, you can do much more with a video camera and a few clicks of your mouse.

You may think you have nothing to promote on YouTube, but do a little brainstorming and you’ll come up with tons of ideas (Or, go to the Small Office/Home Office Forum and ask for help with ideas.)

Video can help you answer your customers’ questions about your products and services in ways that other media can’t. You can show product features and explain benefits. You can entertain, educate and earn money all at the same time! Try using YouTube for your business!

You will need a video camera. Here are a couple of good, inexpensive options: