Google Recruits Nine Businesses as YouTube Marketing Ambassadors, Turns Them Into Teachers and Mentors

There’s no shortage of businesses and organizations that have smartly leveraged YouTube as a channel to grow their business, launch a new product or create brand awareness.  Recently, YouTube identified nine of the best examples of businesses that are using the video-sharing site smartly as a marketing channel, and made them their first ever YouTube Marketing Ambassadors.

The nine businesses were chosen based on their ability to leverage YouTube as a channel to perform one of the following marketing functions: Launch a new product, Spark a conversation, or Find new customers.

From Google’s blog: “To recognize these businesses and their work in fostering a culture of entrepreneurship on YouTube, we’re introducing our first ever YouTube Marketing Ambassadors—a group of outstanding organizations that have used YouTube to drive sales and grow operations. We’ve invited nine businesses from across the country to participate in this program, and last week our YouTube Ambassadors joined us at our headquarters for a two-day summit to meet with executives and learn more about online tools for businesses.”

Here’s the part I absolutely love about this program: Inclusion in the program means the ambassadors will now begin teaching other businesses and organizations how to use the same strategies on YouTube that they did.  Upon joining the program, each of the nine businesses picks a non-profit and immediately begins mentoring them on how to get set up on YouTube.  Throughout the year, the ambassadors will contribute to a special YouTube for Marketers page on Google Plus, as well as participate in Hangouts designed to teach other businesses and organizations how to correctly use YouTube to reach their business goals.

This is why it is such a smart move for companies to embrace and empower their advocates.  Everyone wins here:  Nine deserving non-profits now will learn how to use YouTube from a business that already has a proven track record of using the site to grow its business. The YouTube Marketing Ambassadors besides feeling awesome about being able to Pay It Forward, get a ton of additional exposure from their involvement in this program.  YouTube not only gets a lot of additional exposure for the program, but it also gets to better identify some of its members that are best using the site, which means it can better encourage other businesses to join the site.  Plus, it now has a way to bring future members of the YouTube Marketing Ambassador program into the fold, so the program becomes self-sustaining.

Everyone wins.  Which typically happens when businesses and organizations Think Like a Rockstar and reach out to their biggest fans.