video-marketingVideo marketing is a killer way to get sales and traffic. There are a lot of different angles people are approaching with this form of marketing, so when I first entered into it I had some fun looking at the different ways people were using it.Let me give you a little bit of a background:

I’ve been on the internet a very, very long time. I had my first website when I was 19 and was monetizing it too (although I didn’t really understand it like I do now). No, I’m not amillionaire or even close, but the point of all this is to showcase my seniority when it comes to surfing the web…

That being said, for a lot of people YouTube was a huge, exciting and new thing. To”seasoned” surfers like myself, it really was nothing new…at all. There were many, many sites online like YouTube before it smashed the web 2.0 scene. This can be said for a lot of the “smaller” video sharing sites as well. Places like MySpace video, Vimmler, Vimeo, etc. I was surfing sites that were similar to YouTube up to 4 years (probably even further) before YouTube hit the main stream.

It still feels weird to think back on what a big deal it was to people. I’m pointing this out here because I want to bring up something: YouTube was a big deal to a lot of people-and it still is.

What’s so cool about YouTube? Let’s take a look at some of the things that make this site so “potent” when it comes to marketing:

- It’s the second most trafficked search engine (let that sink in for a second…)

- Anyone can upload content

- The content is always fresh and/or interesting

- Anyone can find something on YouTube that they’re interested in

- It’s a centralized location for uploading and viewing videos. *This is the main reason

YouTube was so popular when it first entered the main stream, in my opinion. All of the other things YouTube is doing were already being done, it just didn’t have the audience and it wasn’t as central as YouTube. People know if they want to host a video for free, view videos for free, or whatever-they can just visit YouTube. Everything is one, simple spot.

- The media adopted it. Every popular cable channel, every popular artist or company is involved SOMEHOW on YouTube. Even Obama has a YouTube channel…it’s a pop culture phenomena at this point. It has a built in viral, loyal following. It’s dead simple…

- The people who are surfing YouTube and looking for information have disposable income and are often times looking for a solution to a problem-and are willing to pay for it Now, that’s all well and good-but what does this have to do with making money and driving traffic? What I am about to tell you is incredibly simple and incredibly valuable: YouTube isyour own personal traffic river you can cast a reel (or a couple hundred reels) into and pick up buckets full of targeted and interested viewers. Don’t believe me? That’s fine, it really is.But I have built entire businesses and traffic streams around YouTube and video sharing sites.

You may be curious how I am doing this exactly, and it’s actually incredibly simple. If you have videos or content on YouTube or any video sharing sites right now, I can show you how to get more traffic and more views for those videos. If you have NO video, I can also show you how to take care of this too.

Contrary to what a lot of “gurus” in the video marketing industry are suggesting you do NOT:

  • Need an expensive camera (in fact, you don’t even NEED A CAMERA)
  • Need a high end, high end quality video (but if you do that DOES help)
  • Need expensive editing software

Now this may go against your idea of video marketing but let me explain, I’m not about making incredible videos and hoping they do well. I’m all about taking ANY video andMAKING it do well. This is done through “video search engine optimization” VSEO for short. This is about taking any video, be it poorly made (or even completely unrelated in some extreme cases) or incredibly well produced and valuable and making it get attention, get ranked, get indexed and get traffic. What is the sense in uploading a video and just crossing your fingers? It’s pointless.

Optimize your videos to do well and they will do well.

That being said, let’s assume you do NOT have a video and need to start from scratch. Let’s run through the steps you’ll need to get video up and driving traffic with YouTube.

  • Using a free software program like windows movie maker or something available via download at http://www.download.com (there are plenty of free video editing programs there) make a slide show using images, audio and text related to your niche.
  • Produce the video and save it as a .mpg or .avi file.
  • Upload the video file to YouTube or any other video sharing site you want. The more the merrier.
  • Use your main keywords in the title, description and tags. Here’s a trick I haven’t even shown my customers: if you have an article related to the topic, copy and paste it into your description. This will help with LSI, keywords and general relevance. It makes the video more valuable and it also adds “perceived value” for the spiders crawling these videos.

Here are a few more hints to get attention and attract viewers to your videos.

  • Build back links just like you do with normal search engine optimization.
  • Insert pictures to attract viewers to the thumbnail and to make it stand out.
  • Use clever headlines/titles/descriptions. Remember the description shows up in search

results as well so don’t forget to use this as a place to grab attention.

  • If it’s a good video and has even the remote possibility of going viral then try sending it out to co-workers and family members in a forward style email to see if it begins a chain reaction of mass email forwarding. This can boost views and also get you great exposure.
  • Having trouble finding video creation software? You can always make a cool slideshow at Animoto.com This site allows you to make a cool mash up of pictures, text and audio really easily then you can even upload directly to YouTube from the site.

So just to recap, I want to point out how valuable it is to optimize your video. You might have a great video on how to train your dog, or a video on how to do exercises at home-and that’s all well and good.

But you should know that just uploading those videos is not always enough to get views. A lot of people have experienced the pain and disappointment of uploading a video they thought was good (and in many cases is good) but it just doesn’t get the views it deserves. You need to get peoples’ attention, get them curious and get them to click. Getting your video in front of as many people as possible is 60% of being successful with video marketing. The other half is having a watchable video people want to see and trust. If they trust your video, they’ll click through to your link and visit your site-and make you money.

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