A lot can be said as to why video should be used in promoting your brand, product, or yourself for that matter, so at this point we will not go into to details concerning that topic and reserve that for a later in-depth discussion. Another topic for detailed discussion is the use of YouTube for promoting your company and brand, which I will also hold for later on. So for now we will jump straight into adding YouTube video to your Facebook Fan Page.

In this discussion I will look at two different methods for adding YouTube to your fan page all of which require two different levels of complexity.

The first question you are probably asking yourself is why use YouTube and why not just upload the video straight into Facebook and be done with it. The short answer is searchabilty. YouTube is a product of Google and Google owns the search market. Therefore, establishing your own channel on YouTube is bound to help you get discovered.  Then adding this highly discoverable media to an additional potential of 400 million viewers even improves your opportunity to get your message out there. As I said we won’t go into details about creating good video, the importance of it ect and at this point and assume you already have a YouTube video ready to go.

The fastest and easiest way to put YouTube Video on your fan page is to use the Involver Application designed specifically for this purpose. First, I must tell you the downside of using Involver is that they have a big old ad on your video page and also you are not allowed any customization for the tab. Oh, by the way tabs can be rearranged by dragging them around so you have them in the order you want them, so drag the YouTube tab over closer to the Fan page wall when you are done with adding the tab to your page.

Ok, first thing to do after logging into Facebook and navigating to your Fan Page and in the search box type, Involver. Then look for the company Involver (usually at the top of the page) or just click this link http://www.involver.com/pages/gallery.html which will take you to their application page. To make things simple just go to http://www.involver.com/pages/gallery.html and make sure you are also logged into Facebook on another tab of your browser. On Involver’s Gallery page look for the YouTube Channel and click the install button. You will quickly notice that Involver has several applications that work with Facebook and although you can apply these techniques to installing all these apps on your page you are limited to two of these unless you buy a paid subscription for the rest. After clicking the install button  if you have multiple fan pages select the page you wish to install the YouTube Channel to or select you page and click the “Add YouTube for Page” Then you will be taken to the Involver fan page applications page where you just enter your name, email, phone number and YouTube channel name, and then just decide to Import Uploads, Include Favorites (which will be other videos that you have chosen on your YouTube Channel) and also select which video to be featured and select save and continue. Don’t forget to accept the terms and conditions. Once clicking the save and continue button you will be taken to the Involver Last Step page where you will click the Continue to Fan Page. This will take you back to your fan page. Once here go up to the tabs section, Click on the + sign and select YouTube and your done. Then you may notice that none of your video’s have an image thumbnail. 

To fix this log back into YouTube and Sign into your YouTube account. Hover / mouse over your username (in the top right-hand corner of the screen). A drop-down menu will appear. Click "My Videos". Find the video for which you'd like to pick the thumbnail and click its "Edit" button. On the following page, under the heading, "Video Thumbnail", click on one of three thumbnails to use as a picture to represent your video. Once you've chosen your preferred still, the border around it will become highlighted. Finally, click the "Update Video Info" button at the bottom of the page. As with all site changes, it may take a short while for the new thumbnail to appear. Once this is completed be sure and allow a little time for the changes to make their way back to Facebook. 

Go back to your page and you may have to refresh your browser a few times to flush out the cache and see the final results with the video thumbnails. Here is what your final result will resemble http://www.facebook.com/pages/Therapeutic-BioSystems/290220729364?v=app_57675755167 This was just stuck on one of my pages so don’t get bent out of shape trying to relate the videos to the actual fan page it is just there for a example. As you can see the Involver app picks up the entire YouTube channel and also has all the necessary features for easy sharing and forwarding to fans and friends which is a great feature to take advantage of.  Again make sure if your video is an ad to exercise discretion before blasting it out to all your friends and fans they probably will not like it. At this point I have discussed one way to get a YouTube Video on your Facebook Fan Page, and since this is already running long I will address additional methods for adding YouTube to your Fan Page tomorrow.