Monday, January 28, 2013

How Can Videos Save Your Website And Business?


Most small or large businesses who use videos don’t have the time or the tools to host their videos on their own server, so they choose Vimeo or YouTube and using the embed code. If you really don’t have any other options, it’s still better to have something on YouTube than nothing at all. So here’s a list of tips and tricks.

1. QUANITY. The more of this type of marketing videos you can accomplish, the better off you will be in placing your content where the search engines will find and display it.


2. GIVE YOUR VIDEO A GOOD TITLE. Use keywords. Make it compelling. No one will watch, nor will they search for “January 18_video.mp4” But they will watch “How I Saved Money and Solved My ——- Problem In Three Easy Steps.” Get the picture?


3. PAY ATTENTION TO THE DESCRIPTION FIELD. The very first thing should be http:// and your website. Not just your homepage, but a page that gets the viewer closer to doing business with you is what we all want.


4. UPLOAD A TRANSCRIPT / CREATE CAPTIONS This is a relatively new feature, but it is possible now to upload a transcript of your video to YouTube. There is also a feature that will let you create captions so the video can be watched, instead of heard. There is an entire list of best practices for these actions themselves, so ask for help, or search for tutorials. Big hint: don’t use WORD to create your files. Use WORDPAD so you can save them as .txt files without all the format encoding. Or, if you understand video time code, create a .srt file and you’re able to more precisely control your captions. The ability for the search engines to read videos due to transcripts is really a game changer.


5. CREATE A NEW PAGE FOR JUST THE VIDEO If you can whip up a single page on your site, and embed the video, surrounded by keywords and phrases that would be great. Then you can put THAT URL into the YouTube description field. If you have one video optimized for a key phrase, and a different video optimized for a different key phrase, you have increased your chances of being on top of a search and having that search lead back to you.


6. TELL EVERYONE. Put the YouTube Share code on every social network you can. Your promotion needs to run like a good ad campaign. Maybe not everywhere all at once, and maybe some places more than once. But get it out there and create some talk. Ask folks to share. Ask for comments. Ask for subscribers.


7. BRANDING. FYI, as part of it’s newly launched “In Video Programming”, you can upload an image that YouTube will use as a “bug” in the corner of your videos. You can also pick which corner of the video it appears in, and for how long. There is also a seldom used workaround for the YouTube embed code that removes YouTube branding.

Some folks don’t want to be associated with YouTube because of its “pedestrian” image. But
YouTube is the second largest search engine. It’s a great place to put your videos. And by following some simple steps, it can be another tool in your arsenal for getting noticed.
–Roar.

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