Success on YouTube is as much about effectively tapping the social network as it is about the content. Brand-building viral videos such as the ones I blogged about recently only happen if the conditions are right.

If you don't follow MarketingProfs, you may not have seen that my article "How to Market on YouTube" came out this week. For the article I had interviewed the marketing director at Blendtec about their famous "Will It Blend?" videos. "Will It Blend?" is one of my favorite examples of viral marketing on YouTube. It didn't take a big budget and an ad agency to dream it up, but boy did it work wonders for their brand!

So what are the secret ingredients to going viral on YouTube? I guess you'll have to read my article to find out! ;-)

It can be really hard to compete for eyeballs in YouTube with so many videos being posted every day. Some marketers manage to stand out in the crowd with their videos. Here are a few I think are worth mentioning...

• Will it Blend? by Blendtec -- Tom Dixon, founder of Blendtec, made a whole series of videos of himself blending all sorts of crazy things in his rugged and seemingly indestructible blenders, including marbles, iPods and rake handles.
• Sue Teller by Mountain Dew. Here is an elderly lady who is really down with the haps sharing her streetwise tips for young people. It is a real hoot.
• TaxRap contest by Intuit's TurboTax division -- They recruited rapper Vanilla Ice to kick off their video contest where you can rap about taxes and maybe win $25,000. Nice integration of celebrity endorsement (which incidentally, Intuit got for a very reasonable price), consumer generated content, and a contest with a highly motivating prize.
• Mr Cupid by Ice.com. Ice.com founder Pinny Gniwisch made his first foray into YouTube marketing as "Mr. Cupid" -- his code name on the streets of Manhattan, on the slopes in Utah, and places in between, where he asks passers-by questions about Valentines Day. Some of these clips are quite humorous and Pinny shows his stuff as being a very talented interviewer.
• Zeros by NBC. This is a spoof on the popular TV show Heroes. Very funny. It isn't immediately obvious that NBC is behind it, but it's a bit too professional to have been done by an amateur. So when it was revealed that NBC was behind it, it wasn't a big surprise.
• Tea Partay by Smirnoff -- This one is done as a music video and is really hysterical.