In the February VU newsletter I wrote about the importance of having a promotional video for your company on YouTube. YouTube is one of the most popular web sites in the world, ranking number five in a recent Neilson report. After Google, YouTube is the most active search engine!
Instead of a promotional video, this time let’s produce an information video. It can’t just be any information. If you have a web site, look at the most popular articles on your site. If you don’t have a web site, you’ll have to dig around to find the topic that is very important to your customers. When you have that topic, you’re going to write a short, pithy article about it. If you can’t write, hire a writer. Make it two to five minutes. The average reading speed is about 200 words a minute so you will want an article that is between 400 and 1000 words. Shorter is better. Make it very helpful without any fluff. Teach your audience, give them a tutorial, and/or make them laugh. You might end with a question which designed to bring comments or invite viewers to rate your video. Let them know you’ll post more videos.
You’re going to read this article on camera. One way to do that is to place your camera right above your computer monitor facing you so you can read from the screen. Be sure to use a lavaliere mic or a directional mic and test the quality of audio. Dress the background. Put a nice soft light on your face. This video does not have to have high production values, but it does have to provide valuable information for your target audience. Giving away helpful information is one of the most effective marketing strategies.
Practice reading your script. Record it several times till you have a good reading. Edit as needed. It’s easy to open a YouTube account and upload your video. It’s very important to give it the right name. If this is an article you had written for your web site, you could use the title of the article. The title needs to be clear and descriptive. Don’t try to be cute. Boil it down to a descriptive headline. Think what people would search for. Don’t use adjectives in the name of your video. In the YouTube descriptions be sure to include a link back to your web site. Enable comments on your video. Hopefully people will ask questions. Help them and invite them to your web site. Here’s some more help on how to promote using YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z3cQffv-CI
Get involved in the Youtube community and make lots of friends. This is a very important site for video producers. To make this marketing strategy work, you’ll want to produce several videos for the same audience. If you do, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the results.
Recent Comments