These are the 7 ways to get more views on YouTube so more people can know about your message and expertise:
Publish videos consistently. If people know when you will come out with a new video, they will know when to go back on your channel to see a new video.
Have a lot of videos. The first video may be good enough to get a subscriber, but your subscribers won’t be replaying that first video all day long. You need to publish new YouTube videos as frequently as possible so your subscribers and viewers have more options.
Feature your other YouTube videos during the final seconds of your other YouTube videos. After watching a video, the process of looking for another video to watch from the same person can lose the attention of some of your viewers. At the end of every YouTube video, you will see more options. When one of your viewers sees another option, that can result in you losing another view. When you are finished with your video, include links to 6 of your other YouTube videos at the very end. This will give your viewers easily accessible options. When the options are easy to find, your viewers will view more of your videos.
Tell them who you are. When people view your YouTube video for the first time, they won’t know who you are. They don’t know your name or anything about what you do. Start all of your videos by telling everyone who you are.
Comment on other people’s videos. By commenting on other people’s videos, you will build more backlinks for your YouTube channel. Those backlinks will result in you getting more viewers.
Create a video that answers your viewers’ questions (FAQ). Ultimately, it is your viewers who decide how many tweets contain a link to your video, how many friends get to know about it on Facebook, and how many people get to see your video on Pinterest. By creating a video that answers frequently asked questions about your expertise, your video is more likely to be shared.
Use a channel trailer to get more subscribers. If the channel trailer does a good job at explain who you are, your message, and your expertise, more people will subscribe to your channel. The channel trailer automatically plays so it will be able to rake up views, and people will have to click the pause button in order for the video to stop playing. As the video plays, some of the viewers will continue watching the trailer until they ultimately subscribe to your channel.
Lights! Camera! Action! To get the most from your ecommerce product videos, it's important to make them engaging. Take a look at these important tips to help your online business boost conversions with your product videos.
It’s time to pull out your director’s chair and make some killer product videos for your ecommerce site. Regardless of your experience or access to technology, follow these tips to make your videos a selling machine.
First, keep your videos short. No one wants to sit and watch an epic telenovela about why your products are so amazing. Keep it less than two minutes and try to make it flashy.
Next, demo your product. Remember, you’re trying to sell with these product videos. The goal here is to essentially turn your product description into an interactive and engaging video. Thus, make sure that you’re showing off what the product can do and why customers should purchase.
Along the same lines, it’s important to show the benefits of the product within your video. Don’t sit there and go through a laundry list of technical features. Instead, explain why those features are beneficial to the user and put them into a lifestyle perspective so customers can see how it will enhance their lives.
Fourth, include product close-ups. Have you seen those restaurant commercials on TV where they have extreme close-ups of the food? You know, the ones where they splash the lemon juice that makes everything fantastic? Your job is to do the same thing – your product video will complement your product images, so make sure that you zoom in and show your products in a good light.
Last but not least, always, always optimize your product videos when you post them to YouTube or distribute them elsewhere. Make sure you have a keyword-rich, engagin headline. Also be certain to include your tags and relevant keywords.
Following these steps will help your videos appear higher in organic search results and help more people find them. Hopefully this is helpful in making your ecommerce product videos a selling machine! If you have any questions, we’re always happy to help.
As more of you expand your efforts invideo content marketing, you undoubtedly know (and have been told) that a call to action (CTA) is an absolute must have. That all-important prompt encourages someone to actually dosomething and it offers an opportunity to evaluate your video’s effectiveness.
Advice on how to weave an engaging and tightly integrated CTA into your video is much less decisive. Create a funny and personal or slick-motion graphic? Incorporate in video or description? The fact is that there is no single answer. The secrets to crafting a great CTA depend on your unique circumstances.
This guide focuses on YouTube because the CTA design is more direct and easier to measure than on other platforms. (Vimeo, for example, is a popular tool because of its visual clarity and compression for crowd-funded campaigns like Kickstarter, but those initiatives often have different goals.) In a medium where there are no one-size-fits-all solutions, access to information is key for successful content marketing.
Step 1: Assess your goals
Your CTA is the nudge you give viewers so that they will do something. So what do you want them to do? Take stock of your business goals in both abstract and specific terms:
What do you want to achieve with this video? Be broad. Evaluate how the video is designed to contribute to your goals. Do you want viewers to buy a product, install an app, or subscribe to your channel?
How can your CTA support those goals? Be specific. If you want someone to purchase a product, does the CTA allow them to click through to the sales funnel? If you want more YouTube followers, does it encourage them to subscribe to your channel? If you want viewers to visit an affiliate, is the affiliate identified with a clear link?
After you’ve nailed down exactly what you want your CTA to achieve, your next task is to create something that meets these goals as effectively as possible.
Step 2: Identify the best options
At this point you have two decisions to make: How should you craft your CTA stylistically and which tools can help you meet the goals.
How does your CTA fit with the video content? Think thematically. Let’s use Dove’sReal Beauty Sketches as an example. The video is pensive, introspective, and emotionally charged. As such, the CTA on the screen at the video’s end is thoughtful, restrained, and unobtrusive. Dove didn’t use brightly colored annotations or loud noises. In its description, Dove simply included a hashtag and link.
Now look at Cartoon Hangover’s Bravest Warriors episodic cartoon’s CTA end card. It’s busy, colorful and energetic, just like the video.
Its visible description focuses on the episode and doesn’t include a CTA, and the full description reads like closing credits for a show.
Both Dove and Cartoon Hangover understood their videos — they matched the CTA to the video, and more importantly, they matched the CTA to their goals. For a B2C like Dove, its primary objective was to encourage viewers to further their experience with the brand, while Cartoon Hangover’s primary objective was to inform viewers about the show.
What tools will effectively communicate your CTA?
Annotations: These pop-up messages on the video don’t have to detract from the viewing experience, but if they show up in the meatier content they can. The upside is that users can interact with your CTA immediately within the video experience. The downside is that annotations have a tendency to make users bounce, and annotations don’t appear on mobile or set-top boxes. Annotations in end cards? Totally cool.
Descriptions: A video description offers two-fold viewing — a few sentences on the first screen underneath the video and an expanded version after the viewer clicks “show more.” Including CTA links in descriptions is both better and worse than annotations because they don’t distract the viewer from the video experience. They’re more versatile than annotations and engaged viewers will naturally check your description for more information. But be careful about how you use your real estate: The first three lines of your description are a critical part of YouTube SEO (YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine), and the first lines are all that appear on the first screen.
Verbal (speaker mentions) vs. (direct host): A CTA during the video that comes from the narrator or host can carry more emotional weight than an end-card CTA. It also requires you to lock into a single CTA, so make sure the CTA is sufficiently attractive or powerful to engage viewers. Unlike an end card, which can be changed and updated easily, a speaker mention cannot be changed without significant production overhead. Many Kickstarter videos use this technique because viewers are likely already on the campaign page, making the next step obvious.
In addition, if your videos involve multiple speakers or subjects, the person speaking may not be in a position to deliver a meaningful CTA. In those cases, consider filming a separate end card with a familiar host that can be shot and edited separately.
In this edition of its Ripple Effect videos, Red Bull opens the video with its general web address then uses Red Bull.com/Surfing on the opening credit slide. The CTA returns 14 minutes 30 seconds later in the end credits. Note the lack of annotations in the video, though.
End cards: CTAs on the end cards can work, but it’s a risky move given that a good portion of your audience may not still be viewing. That means you should explore all CTA options, but don’t give up on end cards. The 40+ percent of your audience that may still be watching is probably interested and looking for more information.
As we’ve seen, there are pros and cons to every tool and stylistic decision you make, but this can be mitigated by combining CTA styles. Make sure they all support your goals so that you don’t risk overcomplicating your pool of results and possibilities.
Step 3: Test, measure, and iterate
After you implement your CTAs, the evaluation begins. What happens with your CTAs? How you measure your CTA depends on what goals you’re trying to hit, but since many marketers are ultimately trying to push YouTube viewers off site and into their own funnels, we’ll focus on three critical measurements:
Measure in-video CTA viewership: If you click on Audience Retention in YouTube Analytics, you can see at which points viewers are dropping off, and this information can be used in multiple ways. For example, a significant drop-off that coincides with an annotation is a good sign that viewers do not think the CTA is too disruptive to the experience. Perhaps more importantly, these analytics allow you to see what percentage of users even makes it to your CTA. You can calculate a CTA viewership number by multiplying the number of total views by the percentage that made it to the point in the video with a CTA.
Measure click-throughs: Other than clicking the universal “X” in the right corner of a page to cease viewing, there are only two ways to click out of YouTube – through annotations to your verified website (known in YouTube parlance as Associate Website Annotations) or through links in the description.
Ultimately, you want to extrapolate the conversion rate of your CTA by dividing the number of views by the number of out-bound clicks. This CTA conversion rate is a really handy way to compare variations in your execution.
Tip: Further track your CTAs by using custom links through shortened-URL sites like Bit.ly, which can bring in demographic and easy-tracking data for each CTA.
Measure your annotations: You can see how well an annotation is performing by visiting the Annotations page under Engagement Reports in YouTube Analytics. Enter the name of your video and not only will you get your number of clicks, but also the close rate (the number of times a viewer closed the video when the annotation appeared).
Conclusion
This three-step video CTA process can help you create a goal-oriented CTA, pick the right delivery avenues, gauge each CTA’s effectiveness, and adjust and use analytics to evaluate what you should continue, change, or stop. It will likely take a few tries before you’ve developed an effective style, but once done, you will have a systematic approach to engaging your audience, increasing retention, and in turn, boosting the number of people responding to your CTA.
Finding a way to unleash the power of video in social can be essential to your brand's long-term success. In fact, according to Cisco, social video will account for 69% of consumer Internet traffic by 2017.
However, cracking the code to video success on social networks can be mind-boggling: from allocating budgets to measuring results, to finding the right audience on the right platforms.
So what might be helpful for you to know before your next campaign? Here are some tips to help you win in one of the most competitive advertising landscapes.
Apply traditional planning principles. With more than 1.3 billion Facebook and 271 million Twitter users globally, social can deliver as much scale as traditional reach channels. Combined with industry-standard audience insight, this provides brands with the unique opportunity to effectively distribute their video content and connect with potential new customers. Planning your social campaigns on reach & frequency (as you would in other channels) will ensure cost-efficient delivery vs. traditional video channels.
Go native. The ultimate driver of your video advertising should be to deliver the best possible experience to your audience. The new Facebook and Twitter video solutions provide high-impact premium video experiences in native environments. As a result, advertisers that use native video formats are seeing campaign performance up to 5X better then many leading VOD channels.
Personalize content. As marketers and advertisers place more and more emphasis on how to engage with their audiences, a one-size-fits-all communication strategy is convenient, but not always effective. Instead of sending out just one video to a broad audience, experiment with bespoke messaging for specific audience groups. Test lessons provide scope for future creative and targeting strategies.
Tell a story. A brand’s narrative is not limited to 15” or 30” video spots, and social video solutions allow for improved storytelling through depth of content and lasting customer experiences. Engaging content and use of sequential messaging delivers best results.
The combination of sight, sound and motion, with the addressability, measurement, and scale of platforms like Facebook and Twitter, means social media has the potential to be the most powerful brand-building medium yet, delivering as much scale and performance as any other traditional reach channels.
One of the most critical components of your Advisory Marketing plan is to stop chasing clients and start attracting them.
Today, we will show you a simple 3 step strategy on how to do just that.
There are two types of consultants and advisers : attractors and chasers.
Attractors do things differently than chasers and as a result, have a boat load of ideal clients in their lead generation funnel. Not surprising, they almost always make more money than advisors who follow the chaser model. Chasers spend the majority of their time on the hunt for new clients. They are often desperate for their next deal. Even though they spend the majority of their time chasing clients and attempting to close the deal, their closing rates are rarely better than their counter parts who use an attractor model. The chaser business model is like a roller coaster business – going from feast to famine and back again to repeat the never ending cycle.
But don’t worry, these 3 simple steps will show you how to stop chasing clients and start attracting them.
Step #1: Become an Attractor-
To become an attractor, you need to create a business that attracts your ideal prospects and clients. First, you need to find out what your ideal prospects and clients want, need, value and even fear. Once you find out what your ideal client wants, you simply need to deliver it. Chasers, on the other hand, are too busy selling or trying to sell that they don’t have the time to find out what their ideal clients want. Chasers generally believe they do not have the time to find out what their clients and prospects want, need, value or fear- nothing could be further from the truth. If they knew just how valuable it is to find out what their clients and prospects want, they would find the time to start asking questions.
Step #2: Find the Answer-
One of the biggest insights shared by Socrates was to never assume or tell but to ask, ask, ask. By asking your clients, prospects, centers of influence and reciprocal referral partners exactly what they want, you will know exactly what you need to do and offer to have a boat load of clients lined up wanting to do business with you. The best news about asking anyone and everyone who has knowledge of your ideal client, is that they are almost always willing to help you out by answering a few questions.
Some great questions include:
What keeps you up at night?
What is your top objective?
What has to happen in 1, 3, 5 years for you to be ecstatic about your financial situation?
What do you love about your current advisor (if they have one)?
What would you like your advisor to do differently, if anything?
How do you want to be remembered?
Do you have a plan to ensure that will happen in your estate plan?
Before you begin asking questions, take some time to create a questionnaire that includes all the questions you need to know to best serve your ideal client.
Step #3: Deliver it-
Once you have interviewed the people tied to your ideal client, you need to create a plan to deliver it. Your plan ideally includes the inner game, game plan and outer game. From your 12 month plan, identify the to-dos from most important to least important. Then determine who will complete each action. If you do not have the staff to ensure you complete the plan, hire another part or full time employee who can assist you execute the plan. The worst thing you can do is to start a plan and then stop it because you are too busy to execute it. To ensure you follow through on your plan, you need to plan for contingencies and do the upfront work to make it a reality.
The best advice is to understand that our actions produce our results. Consistent, right action produces consistent, right results just as inconsistent action produces inconsistent results. To ensure our actions are consistent, take the time to create a plan and do what is necessary to complete the plan to ensure you get the results you desire.
You can make the most informative and entertaining video on YouTube, but that alone won't guarantee you an audience of potential customers. You'll still need to promote your video in as many ways as possible to help spread the word about your startup.
Here are some of the most successful tactics for promoting a new YouTube video:
1. Promote it on your company blog.
Your company blog is the perfect place to promote your video to your loyal customer base. Talk up each new video in its own blog post, linking to it or even embedding it in the post.
2. Tell your email list.
When you upload a new video to YouTube, send a message and link to your entire email list. If you send out a periodic email newsletter, mention your new videos in it, too.
3. Connect to social media.
Mention your new videos in your tweets and status updates, and link to or embed them in the messages. Facebook, for instance, lets you embed YouTube videos in your status updates. Just paste the URL into the status update and Facebook will put the video in your News feed. Twitter doesn't let you embed videos, but you can link to them from your tweets. And on Pinterest, you can "pin" YouTube videos to your virtual pinboards.
You also can promote your videos on social bookmarking and news sites such as Reddit and StumbleUpon. When you post a link to your video on these sites, you can broaden the viewership beyond your existing customers and social media followers. Note, however, that self-promotion is often frowned upon on many of these sites, so do so as sparingly and subtly as you can.
4. Do some old-fashioned public relations.
While most companies focus their promotional efforts on the web, you shouldn't neglect traditional public relations. This means issuing a press release when you've uploaded a new or particularly important video, and also picking up the phone or sending emails to target specific news outlets, such as your industry's trade groups, publications and blogs. Make sure you include a video link in your press release to help online news sources link directly from their coverage to your video on YouTube.
5. Advertise on YouTube.
If you can afford it, you can advertise your videos on YouTube, using parent company Google's AdWords for Video program. Called TrueView ads, they appear on the YouTube site, targeting potential viewers and linking back to the selected video or your YouTube channel page. TrueView ads are pay-per-click (PPC) ads, just like traditional AdWords text ads. So, you pay only when someone clicks your ad.
Start by logging into your Google AdWords account and linking it to your YouTube account. Set a daily budget for the maximum you're willing to spend. Then, select a video to display in your ad and choose the type of ad you want to run.
Google offers four types of TrueView ads. In-search ads appear at the top of the search results page when users search for the keywords you select. In-display ads appear in the related videos section on the viewing pages for similar videos. In-stream ads are short video messages that play at the beginning or end of other videos. And in-slate ads are commercials that play before or in the middle of longer videos.
In-search ads are the best choice for many companies because most YouTube videos are found through searches. So, just like your website, you want your video showing up on search results pages.
The next step requires you to set a maximum cost per view (CPV). This is the maximum amount you're willing to pay for each click. You can start with just $1 per day but what you spend is really dependent on your budget. You then choose how to target your ad -- through demographics and interests or via keywords. Keyword targeting is often best for in-search ads.
Once your campaign is up and running, you can use the AdWords Dashboard to measure the performance of your ads -- including but not limited to number of views. Depending on the results, you may need to tweak your strategy and possibly create new ads.
Social feeds from across the country are chock-full of videos and photos of celebrities, inventors, CEOs, athletes and politicians all taking part in the most recent viral sensation: the Ice Bucket Challenge.
Whether you've laughed at your friend’s reaction to the ice cold water or taken the challenge yourself, postings about it are everywhere. This initiative has achieved something that's every marketer’s dream: goingviral and capturing wide attention across the nation in a month or two.
The Ice Bucket Challenge benefits the ALS Association, which is dedicated to raising funds to research a cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis as well as caring for those with the disease. It gained steam with the participation of Beverly, Mass.-based Pete Frates, who since 2012 has had the illness (also called Lou Gehrig's disease).
Startups, established firms and marketers of all types can learn from the success of the Ice Bucket Challenge. Those trying to develop a viral campaign can take the following steps:
1. Identify the goal or cause.
The goal of the Ice Bucket Challenge has been to spread awareness and raise funds for ALS research and its success has exceeded initial expectations. The objective is simple and clear and the challenge doesn’t require much effort from participants: going online to donate or pouring a bucket of ice water over the head, or both.
Today’s consumers like simplicity and direct messaging. They typically won’t take the time to read through an entire article, newsletter or web page to understand a message. Marketers, simplicity is your friend.
2. Make it fun and easy.
Few things are funnier than seeing people have ice poured all over them and watching them cringe, scream or freeze in place. The web has been flooded with comical videos and images of those who have accepted the challenge.
People like to laugh, so keep members of your audience entertained with a video or photo that they would enjoy viewing. Keeping things lighthearted lets people connect with an organization on a human level and can encourage further engagement in an authentic way.
3. Add immediacy.
Those asked to take the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge have only 24 hours to do so.
If you want an idea to flourish, keep the window of time brief to propel the process forward rapidly. By giving your audience a deadline, the initiative will become a greater priority.
The ALS challenge calls on participants to encourage three additional people to participate, thus creating a multiplier effect.
When possible, let consumers involved in an initiative have a chance to engage with their network so as to experience the joy of others joining in. The bonus for a marketer is bringing increased exposure to a company's brand.
5. Share on many platforms.
News of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is being shared on many social-media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
If you’re hoping for an idea or campaign to go viral, make it easy for others to share updates across multiple platforms. Don’t give people a reason to not become involved.
6. Give participants a chance to feel good.
Everyone loves to feel a little better about himself (or herself). The Ice Bucket Challenge raises funds for a medical cause, and no matter the size of a donation, participants can feel good because they're helping others in need.
Plus, the challenge gives participants a sense of unity: They are sharing positive feelings and a goal with the rich and famous.
Setting up an initiative like this lets participants also allows for an emotional connection with an organization and opens up an opportunity for conversation.
Contributor : GABRIELLE BOKO Executive Vice President of Marketing at Sage North America
I love YouTube. When it comes down to it, YouTube is still the most heavily trafficked video site online today. And with an estimated 72 hours of content being added every minute, it should certainly remain the cornerstone of any good video-based content marketing campaign.
But what if you want to take things further? Sayyou’ve already maximized your brand’s presence on YouTube and are looking for new opportunities to reach different consumers or experiment with alternative types of video content. Depending on your specific use case, any of the following three YouTube alternatives could give you the campaign growth you’re looking for:
1. Reach higher-quality audiences with Vimeo. Although Vimeo’s basic structure is similar to Youtube’s, it differs in a number of key ways. Not only was Vimeo the first to support consumers' uploading high-definition pieces, the video-sharing site prevents post-viewing “related videos” from displaying your competitors’ clips. And it's is totally ad-free. For these reasons, Vimeo tends to attract a smaller but what many advertisers consider a much higher-quality audience (meaning a viewership including lots of employed professionals).
Get started by creating some epic video content: Vimeo filters out most commercial, gaming and nonuser-generated content, so you’ll want to invest in creating quality videos before branching out onto this site.
Consider a paid account. As a paying producer (plans start at $59.95 a year), you’ll be able to customize your video player, add your logo to the top of your videos and take advantage of other premium features.
Focus on community building: Vimeo users are seriously loyal about their platform. So don’t look at the site as just another dumping ground for your video content. Instead, get to know the site’s users by interacting with them before sharing your work.
2. Use Vine when you want to experiment with more viral-style short-form video content. Vine isn’t a video-sharing site; it’s a mobile and desktop app associated with Twitter that allows users to share looping videos of 6 seconds or less in length. The videos' limited duration means that Vine isn’t right for every brand, but it’s definitely worth considering; Ogilvy vice president Heather Taylor estimates that “brand vines are shared four times more than other online videos.”
Think personality. Six seconds doesn’t give you enough time to do a full product demonstration or sales pitch, but it does give you an opportunity to showcase your brand’s personality. Have fun with your clips and leave people wanting more.
Post regularly.The number of Vines being created and shared means that regular posting to this network is a must. Don’t stop after releasing a single Vine video. Keep your channel full and your followers engaged with regular releases.
Learn from the big boys.The learning curve for Vine can be steep. Help your brand's Vine profile pick up traction (scoring followers and interaction) by checking out how big companies like GE and Lowes use the service.
3. Tap Wistia when you need more analytics data and features than YouTube provides. Unlike YouTube, Wistia is a paid video platform (the price for a plan starts at $25 a month) that delivers clips to websites and mobile devices. Where Wistia really shines is with its conversion and analytics features, which help users capture leads and learn more about how viewers are interacting with each video.
Amp up your production quality; if you’re going to invest in a video platform, you’ll want to use it to deliver quality content. Wistia’s video-production page offers tips on improving clip quality on a budget.
Think about your core audience; Wistia isn’t about driving view counts; it’s about the chance to engage with your brand’s ambassadors. Use analytics to be sure your videos are striking the right chord.
Pay attention: Having access to advanced analytics is only helpful if you use this data. Tap the information you generate to drive campaign changes across all your brand’s marketing channels.
These three Youtube alternatives should help you expand your video-marketing campaigns, but if you have another recommendation to share, leave a note in the comments section below.
Courtesy : SUJAN PATEL VP of Marketing at When I Work
Successful video marketing may seem overwhelming. Especially if you have the thought in your head that you have to hire a full video crew and have all the expensive equipment to go with it in order to produce videos.
The good news is that there are several affordably priced HD camcorders on the market, and your phone may even be able to shoot HD as well.
Combine that with affordable or free video editing tools, and you have what it takes to start promoting your business and its products or services on YouTube, Vimeo, and beyond. Below are actionable tips you can start implementing right away to get you started.
How to Perform Successful Video Marketing
Cross Post
Cross post on Vimeo, YouTube, Facebook, Google+. Google+ and YouTube are connected, but be sure to promote that you have a new video on all social networks as soon as it’s out.
Share Snippets
Share snippets of video on Instagram, Snapchat, and Vine, as you are recording your full-length video as teasers.
Embed Your Videos Into Blog Posts
Embed videos into blog posts with a quick explanation for more visibility and extra content (which can help drive more traffic to your website and blog).
Create Product Videos
Create product videos for products to show how big an item is compared to a person (this is especially good for clothing or accessories), or how easy it is to use.
Videotape Company Events
Take videos of company events with employees to increase familiarity and the feeling that users know you personally.
Create a Series of Videos
Let one person or team from each department in your company have a “Day in the Life” video that explains what they do all day. Splice different segments together from throughout the day.
Create Video Testimonials
Shoot video testimonials instead of having clients or customers write them down. It personalizes the testimonial and makes it more authentic.
Provide Incentives
Give incentives (products, gift cards, drawings) for user-generated videos that promote your products or services. Share these videos on your video channels.
Host a Contest
Hold a contest to create an infomercial for your company, product, or services for employees and/or your customers. Make it fun and promote cheesiness!
Use Google Adsense
Look into Google AdSense for your YouTube videos to make a little more income for your efforts.
Provide Employees With Cameras
Give employees GoPro cameras to record company events or their experiences during their work day.
Invest in an HD Camera
If you need a high quality camera anyway, consider buying one that shoots HD video as well. Superzoom cameras are in between point-and-shoots and DSLRs and are an affordable option.
Invest in Simple Accessories
Buy a portable tabletop tripod for interviews and testimonials. There’s several affordable options on Amazon or eBay that can fit in your camera bag.
Record Interviews
Conduct interviews with people from your industry at conferences and networking events. Have an interviewer with a wireless mic and someone to hold the camera (or a full-length tripod).
Display Product Durability
Make videos that show your product’s durability. “Will it Blend” from Blendtec and Otterbox’s community-generated YouTube videos are good examples:
Create Explainer Videos
If you specialize in accessories or complements to a main product (like iPad cases), buy the latest main product and do an explainer video about it with your review.
Poll People
Poll Twitter, Facebook, and your website for questions from your audience and create an Ask the Expert video series with their answers.
Create Video Podcasts
Create a podcast with audio and video versions so users can view or listen, however they’d prefer.
Create Playlists
Create Playlists on YouTube of related videos or series so they are easier to find.
Optimize Your Videos
Be sure to implement correct video SEO for your videos’ titles, descriptions, categories, and keywords. Be sure to always include a link to your home page or the most accurate interior page, as well as your phone number, in the description.
Answer Customer Questions in Video
If your customer service or support team keeps getting the same questions repeatedly, answer each one in a separate video, making the title the optimized version of the question they get asked.
Create Video Roundups
Include of roundup of that month’s new videos in a monthly newsletter or email blast, or as an addition to your existing scheduled emails.
Use Freelance Services
Use Fiverr or another freelance service to get a custom intro for all your videos to make them more professional.
Use Video Editing Software
Utilize free or affordable video editing software (such as Windows Movie Maker) and scale up according to your needs.
Record in Front of a Backdrop
Use a white sheet and PVC pipe to make an easy backdrop if you don’t have a blank wall to shoot your videos in front of.
In addition, before actually shooting your videos, it might help to do some reading on basic video principles and how to use your current technology to the best of your abilities. Things such as interviewers should always look at the camera occasionally when interviewing, and you should never shoot in front of a window where sunlight is coming it to reduce glare.
It’s easier than ever before to start creating video content for your business. And this can lead to more visibility, credibility, and easy-to-digest information for your audience.
