Why do some corporate YouTube videos have thousands or even millions of views, while others of similar quality and content seem to fade like a NASCAR fan at the opera?

Everyone interested in social media as a marketing tool should write the following sentence on a stickie and put in on his/her bathroom mirror for a month. (An ankle tattoo is not out of the question.)

JUST BECAUSE YOU POST IT, DOESN'T MEAN THEY'LL VIEW IT.

And, while you've probably mastered the basics for optimizing search with meta data (title, tags, description) when posting to YouTube, here are a few more handy tips and new tools:

1. Max out the meta data - title, tags, and video description. Yes, it's important to choose relevant terms about the product, benefits and people featured in the video, but we often tend to be more conservative than necessary. Include name brands as well as category generics. Define what type of video it is. Generally, as long as it's germane, more is more in this arena.

2. Upload a transcript AND enable CLOSED CAPTIONING. Independent research on YouTube and Google search indicate that they are indexing on both. (Speech to text recognition/ indexing in the works.) And of course, closed-captioning is helpful for supporting the hearing impaired and translations.

3. Encourage engagement. The # of "Shares", "Comments", "Subscribers", and "Favorites" all contribute to your ranking. Make sure you enable the interactive options when you upload the video and take advantage of the GOOGLE MODERATOR feature introduced in May for specific promotional or crowd-sourcing efforts.

4. VIDEO ANNOTATION is another relatively new way to add interactive commentary to your video—perhaps to add background information about the video or suggest links to related videos or channels.

5. Promote early, often and everywhere (appropriate.) Leverage AUTO SHARING when you post your video. Send emails with the link, post it to your blog, and encourage your friends and colleagues to do so too.

6. Make sure you’re content is something people want to watch/read/interact with. Yes, this one is straight from the Department Of Duh, but it’s worth a mention. People read what interests them—hopefully this includes your content.