I read recently that an internet marketer I know had a video taken down by YouTube for allegedly inappropriate content. YouTube has a number of ground rules that you have to follow if you want to post videos on their site. Here are the most relevant ones if you are an internet marketer.

Copyright

Only upload unique videos that you have made, had made specifically for you, or videos that you’re authorised to use. If you want to use content in your videos that someone else owns the copyright to, such as music tracks, text, parts of copyrighted programmes or videos made by other users, obtain authorisation first. If you want to use content that has already been created by someone else and that you are automatically allowed to use take a look at my post on creative commons.

Misleading metatags

Don’t use misleading tags, titles, descriptions or thumbnails in order to get more views. Adding additional tags to the description of your video may be seen as spam and lead to YouTube removing your video.

Misleading information

If you are making wild claims about becoming a millionaire or something like that it’s possible that a viewer will flag your video and YouTube may remove it. Posting large amounts of untargeted, unwanted or repetitive content, including comments and private messages, can also lead to trouble.

YouTube is a great resource but it is possible they may remove a perfectly fine video at any time. Like so many other free-to-use sites online it should never be relied upon. As a precaution you can also upload your videos to dailymotion, Vimeo or any other video hosting site so you can embed from there if YouTube mistakenly considers a video inappropriate.

For more information on YouTube guidelines go to:

https://www.youtube.com/yt/policyandsafety/en-GB/communityguidelines.html