YouTube video plays several key roles in the Customer Journey. The video platform offers customers a way to engage through comments and sharing content with one another and plays a supporting (sometimes starring) role in other social media campaigns by serving up videos for Twitter,Facebookand blogs.

While it is more obvious that these other Social Media Platforms steer the customer journey towards YouTube videos, it is also interesting to note where and how the customer journey continues on from online video. Video can and does assist in the continuation of the customer journey towards these other social media platforms. The trick is optimizing YouTube to tap the full potential online video has in supporting and continuing the customer journey:

• Annotate YouTube
  YouTubeAnnotations are an excellent way to guide customers to the next steps in their journey. Throughclickableoverlays, you can turns video into an interactive medium, engage with users and serve them up the next step on their journey-whether it is a web landing page, a support site or a product purchase page. The best part? They are free.
• Brand Your Channel
  Branded Channels are a great solution for marketers further your brand, increase brand loyalty and, on a more practical note, associate specific URLs withplaylistsso folks can link directly to specificplaylistsand navigate on towards their next video interests.
• Utilize Custom Gadgets
  Custom Gadgets add additional goodies to your YouTube Channel such as contests, input forms and social feeds. Consider how adding social channel feeds to you YouTube Branded Channel would allow your visitors to continue their social journeys more easily from the YouTube page.
• Optimize for Search
  YouTube is the second largest search engine on the web, which means that many of your potential customers are already beginning their sales journey with YouTube. Optimize keywords for search to increase the likelihood that they begin their journey with your videos, rather than your competitors. Limit your titles to a search-friendly 50 characters. 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, so competition for search results can be fierce-always consider long tail keywords for your videos.

YouTube keywords and Google's blended search results mean that video increases the traffic and readership of blogs and website. Forrester reported back in 2009 that video is 50 times more likely to appear on the first page of search results, so regardless of whether or not a customer starts their journey with an actual video,  because of  blended search results, YouTube is already assisting in the start of many a customer's journey. YouTube matters, so start optimizing it to support, continue and strengthen your customer's journey.