• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, March 21, 2012

Brands should draw from various sources to feed their YouTube channels. That was the insight from brand, agency and YouTube executives at the OMMA Global conference held this week in San Francisco.

“You don’t have to create something every day or every week, but create something that brings value so people will come back and hit subscribe so the next time they are on YouTube they will come looking for you,” said Eric Meyerson, Head of Video Advertiser Marketing at Google. He explained that some of the most successful brands have built audiences by drawing from content they produce on their own, content they curate and content from fans about the brand.

Travel brands are particularly good at that, such as Disney Parks and Royal Caribbean Cruises, Meyerson said. “Travel does a great job at this because travel vacations are the best selling points for what they are selling. Think about a video of your cruise and these brands took the best and aggregated them into their channels.”

Lowe’s too is another example of a brand that’s done a good job populating its YouTube home with hundreds of how-to videos. The how-to nature of the content helps ensure that consumers find Lowe’s through organic search, he added.

Finding the right mix of high quality and user-produced content is vital, said Tammy Gordon, Director of Social Communications & Strategy at AARP, during the panel. She said the AARP has experimented with various types of content in its YouTube channel. “There is a sweet spot between something produced really well and something shot with a flip cam, but that middle ground between the two doesn’t work well on YouTube so we produce things really well done.”

For any brand though, it’s critical to make sure videos are tagged, captioned and properly described. Captioning makes the videos more accessible to people with disabilities, while correct tagging helps make the videos more visible to search engines, she said.

Brands that aren’t sure where to start with video should remember that every company has a good story to tell, said Bryan Boettger, Chief Creative Officer of ad agency The Buddy Group. “It’s just a matter of finding out what that story is, whether it’s the founder’s story or what you do in the community or something else.”

In other YouTube brand channel news, My Damn Channel is introducing its daily live comedy show starting next Wednesday, March 28. My Damn Channel  was one of the original content producers in YouTube’s slate of new channel partners. The 30-minute show called “My Damn Channel Live” will be released at 4 p.m. ET each weekday and will be hosted byBeth Hoyt .

Hoyt will interview celebrity guests, chat with viewers in real-time and showcase videos from My Damn Channel’s original series.

Correction: The Wed episodes of My Damn Channel Live will be 30 minutes, but Mon, Tue, Thu and Fri episodes will be 10 minutes.