Noel has clearly been let loose with his imagination. The show consists of a mixture of animation and real life with many strange and random characters. Noel plays himself during the main part of the show however he lives in a tree with an ant eater butler called Smooth played by his brother Michal Fielding, a robotic Andy Warhol (Tim Meeten) as his cleaner and Dolly (Dolly Wells). The rest of the show is sketches of many weird and wonderful characters that Noel has came up with such as Tim Reason, a manta ray music producer who lives under Noels tree house and Roy Circles, who is a chocolate finger who used to be in the army and is now a PE teacher (obviously). There are so many more random characters that I don’t have time to mention.

I will admit that not all the sketches are to my liking but others I have found really funny. The Adventures of Joey Ramone is very funny as are the Fantasy Man sketches that end with the character leaving his fantasy land and back to reality where he’s usually in some trouble. Some parts of the show zip between character to character in a Flying Circus style. In fact if I was asked to describe the show in a sentence I would say ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus on LSD’.

Clubs who have one short guy, one tall guy and a keeper.
Human Goalkeepers who are just unbeatable.
People who change their strip for no reason.
People who take ages to continue.
Players with afros.
Players with any unnatural hair colour.
Players with stupid faces or beards.
Players who use the names of real players.
Players who has a commentary name nothing like their actual name.
Players who name is not actually a name at all.
Playing in the rain.
Teams who’s name or short name has ‘reem’ in it.
Teams who’s commentary nickname is ‘legends’.
Teams who has the kit from one team but they all clearly support another team.
Team’s with more than 3 players.
When your AI controlled defence make stupid errors.
When your AI controlled players always play chipped balls instead of playing along the ground.
When your AI controlled goalkeeper passes it out to their striker.

Any of these sound familiar? I’m sure there are loads but these ones are just off the top of my head.

So how will 2012 be better? Well my aim is to take my online business to the next level. I’m lucky that I find it hard to keep up with demand so naturally I need to stock more and therefore make more money. It will be gradual and depend largely on what budget I have each month but I believe that this time next year I could be earning up to 50% more online. I also plan to start a new website offering online business advice for people wanting to turn their hobby into a business. The there’s getting a girlfriend and keeping hold of her. I do enjoy the single life but I’ll always keep one eye open. You never know who’s waiting around the next corner.

Happy New Year.

Below are Gigaom.com‘s 34 ways to use YouTube (and other video hosting services) for business.

Expertise and Thought Leadership

1. Upload recordings of presentations you’ve given, to demonstrate authority and public speaking skills.
2. Share slides from presentations that weren’t recorded.
3. Create short videos of valuable tips of interest to your clients and prospects to show off your expertise.
4. Conduct an interview with an expert.
5. Turn your podcasts into videos, to expand your reach.
6. Engage with the YouTube community by leaving comments and uploading video responses to videos on topics related to your business or industry.
7. Enhance your videos using YouTube’s special features, such as annotations, audioswap, insight, language options and quick capture. Also see what’s cooking in the YouTube Biz Blog and TestTube for more  upcoming features.
8. Record an important meeting to share with employees, shareholders and others, as appropriate.

Marketing and Advertising

1. Set up a channel to reflect your brand and engage with others. Here’s an example from The White House.
2. Choose a user name that reflects your brand for your channel URL.
3. Add your channel URL to marketing collateral and social network profiles.
4. Post customer video testimonials to add to your credibility.
5. Put together a creative video explaining your product or service.
6. Show your product in action using movie trailer-style: fast, creative and catchy.
7. Show the results of someone using your services.
8. Promote your events using recordings of previous events.
9. Introduce your staff to add authenticity.
10. Take viewers on a tour of your offices and city to help them feel connected with you.
11. Ask others to use your product in their videos (like product placement in movies) and cross-promote each other.
12. Post links to your videos on various social networks.
13. Look into YouTube Promoted Videos to reach your target through contextually-relevant search results.
14. Use Google AdWords on Google Content Network, which includes sites like YouTube. These use text-based ads and don’t require a video from your business. Research the Placement Tool to identify the best placements for your ads.
15. Earn money from your videos by entering into a partnership with YouTube.
16. Run a contest.
17. Add Call-to-Action overlays to your videos to drive traffic to your web site.
18. Study your channel’s performance with the integrated Google Analytics and YouTube Insight to make the most of your videos.
19. Display company information in every video including name, URL, phone number and email address.

Customer Service

1. Create “how to” videos to help your customers use your product or service.
2. Post solutions to common product or service problems.
3. Answer customer-specific questions using videos. Imagine how surprised a customer will be when you point them to a video with the answer!
4. Embed videos on your web site on appropriate pages, including customer support and product tours.
5. Post a blog entry discussing a problem and include a video for visual support.
6. Go the extra mile by adding closed-captions or subtitles to your videos. Remember that not everyone can watch or hear videos in the same way.
7. Show a work-in-progress project to a customer for review and approval, without the need for a face-to-face meeting or in-person demo.

All these are just ways you can use Youtube on your own channel. I have advertised on other peoples channels via banner advertising as well as running my own videos. Not all of these may apply to your business but using just a few will show notable results.

You only want to follow people who are interested in what you’re selling and these people are very easy to find. There are two ways of finding them:

1. Following the followers of market leaders and competitors in your niche – Imagine being able to walk into your competitors business and asking them for their client list or asking the for their email list. They would laugh in your face and show you the door very quickly. You can however with just a few clicks find everyone who’s following them on Twitter. Simply find the Twitter page of your competitor or someone else within your niche and you’ll see the number of followers they have. Clicking this figure will bring up the list of followers. All you have to do is follow them and wait for them to return the favour. I found you  usually get about 30% of them following you back. Twitter only lets you follow 1000 people per day and 2000 in total unless you get more followers yourself but this will still give you a few hundred followers straight of the bat.

2. Follow people who are talking about your niche or market – The search function on Twitter will not only let you search for people but also what people are talking about. By typing in keywords for your niche you can find exactly who are talking about it and you can follow them. Again you’ll find a good percentage of them will follow you back.

Once you have followers you can start tweeting updates for your business and website. As I mentioned in the last article I will do a whole piece about what to write in your updates to keep people hooked.