Social Video Marketing Tools Resource Center 

So what's really in McDonald's Chicken McNuggets? Why doesn't your Quarter Pounder with Cheese look like the one on the menu board? McDonald's Canada answers tricky questions like these in a series of candid videos in its YouTube channel.

The link above points to the hottest video in the series, showing how a food stylist gets a Quarter Pounder ready for its close-up while a narrator explains the legal and artistic reasons why the burger looks so much better in the photo than in real life. It generated more than 5.6 million views in the first week it was posted.

The video works because it tackles a question that probably every fast-food customer has wondered about, without overtly spinning it to the company's advantage.

You don't need a Fortune 500-sized marketing budget to create an engaging video channel on YouTube.

ModCloth, an online-only fashion retailer, gets 4,500 subscribers and more than 1 million views with videos that look as if they were shot with a FlipCam and perky narrators who reflect ModCloth's stylin' 18-34 female demographic.

ModCloth's YouTube videos soft-peddle the sales pitches, but every video reflects the company's look and feel, whether it's a merchandise promo, a scarf-tying demo, interviews with up-and-coming designers and funky shop owners or a quick travel video on a hip city.

How well are your videos working to promote your company on your website and at YouTube? This video grader will run a series of automated diagnostics to assess how closely your videos follow best practices for SEO and video sharing and suggests ways to improve.

To get your complimentary report, supply your company's website, your YouTube channel URL and a little information about your company. This report will rate four areas:

• Your website videos
• Your YouTube video channel
• How your videos score in search engines
• How viral your videos are in Social Media

The resulting one-page report gives you not only a wealth of data about your videos but also concrete suggestions for using the data to boost your video performance.

For example, the YouTube channel we used to evaluate the report had all of the videos coded correctly with complete descriptions, which boosts their search score. However, the channel lacks a playlist for its 14 videos, which helps viewers find videos more easily and can increase time on the page.

Pixability, a video marketing company, also offers a complimentary downloadable guide to SEO for your videos.

You won't find any cat-yodeling videos on this video search engine. ShareThrough features only brand videos submitted by the agencies that created them. It gives you multiple ways to filter your search so that you don't have to sift through dozens of results to find the video you want.

Each of the four search variables expands to show multiple options that let you zero in on your choices, such as the following:

• Brands (Band-Aids, Mercedes-Benz, PlayStation)
• Agencies (72andSunny, JWT, Ogilvy & Mather)
• Video type (such as animation, contest, short film, etc.)
• Industry verticals (Jewelry/Watches, Manufacturing, Tourism)

ShareThrough isn't just a database. It also gives you the option to submit your own video campaigns and to track their performance by number of views and shares. It's an opportunity to get your videos out in front of influential audiences.

Tracking your YouTube channel's performance can be tricky, but a complimentary report from this Social Media analytics service will show you at a glance how engaging your videos are.

The report shows your video channel's overall performance on key factors as well as how individual videos fared. Below are the metrics Simply Measured uses:

• Number of videos published in the channel
• Number of channel subscribers
• Total and average numbers of views for all of your videos
• Total and average numbers of "engagements" per video (how many videos were "favorited," commented upon or rated)

The individual rankings also count the number of thumbs-up and thumbs-down ranks for each video. Instantly you'll know which of your videos are viewer favorites and which are relative clunkers.

The report is complimentary, but the company asks you to Tweet out a promo while it generates your report.

Socialcam is like Instagram for videos. It gives you multiple opportunities to increase the reach and exposure for videos you shoot on your iPhone or Android-powered phone, both on the Socialcam site and on Facebook, with which Socialcam is tightly integrated.

First, there's the Socialcam site itself, where you upload your videos from your phone. Your goals here are to generate lots of "likes" and to get viewers to follow you, like subscribing to a YouTube channel. The site tracks popularity two ways: videos with the most "likes" and users with the most followers.

Then, every time Socialcam users view your videos or follow your account, those actions will show up in their Socialcam newsfeeds, potentially giving your videos an even wider audience. If those users also link their Facebook and Socialcam accounts together, those actions also show up in their Facebook newsfeeds, with links back to your videos.

Finally, when you link your complimentary Socialcam account to your own Facebook account, your fans will get links in their newsfeeds every time you upload a new video on Socialcam.

You can use Socialcam without having a Facebook account, but you won't get the same social sharing juice without it.

This site is the king of all social video tracking charts, which shows you the 100 hottest videos of the moment, measured by how often they've been shared.

The chart slices and dices its video database several ways for more efficient searching. View a compilation of either the top 20 or top 100 list across all of its categories.

Or, you can filter results using the navigation buttons at the top of the chart to see just the top 20 or top 100 branded videos around the world, or narrow your results to the top videos in the UK, France or Sweden.

Unruly Media, a global video ad platform, publishes the chart. It also collaborates with Mashable and Dagens Media (Sweden).

Those famous videos that show what happens when you put an iPad, a vuvuzela or a bunch of marbles into a blender and turn it on aren't just entertainment. They're actually product demos for BlendTec, which manufactures a line of home blenders, mixers and mills.

After you've watched to see whether a crowbar really does blend, take a look at the channel homepage. Blendtec's YouTube channel is an excellent example of how to create a destination site on the normally plain YouTube interface.

The company uses distinctive artwork and layout that can easily entice the casual visitor into spending extra time on the site checking out other videos.