In the previous lesson we discussed Article Marketing, which can be a powerful long-term web traffic strategy.
Today we’re going to learn about another potent strategy that has been proven to work in virtually every niche.
(Watch this video…)
Main points:
1) Ranking the actual videos for your keywords
2) Direct click-through traffic from the links
3) Off Page SEO from the back links
4) Builds your authority/credibility as an expert in your niche
– Ranked #3 in the world on Alexa.
– Still growing like crazy.
– Google loves YouTube because they own it!
– (See video above for demo of how to upload to YouTube)
STEP #1: Do your keyword research
– Like we did in lesson #76
– Go broad and use the long tail strategy.
– Make videos for your most important keywords first, then gradually move broader.
Additional/supplemental strategy: Trending topics.
– For trending topics, the key is to be first.
– Make it fast, upload it fast, and promote it fast.
STEP #2: Make your video
– Talked about some low cost methods in lesson #41
– Quick and easy live action video using Flip camera (or similar)
– Or use a webcam
– You don’t have to be good looking or great speaker. Authenticity is key.
– If you don’t want to be on camera, do a screen capture video. I use Camtasia.
– Tutorial for making free screen capture videos: Screen Capture Videos for Free
– Another possibility is making a slideshow video using a tool like Animoto or Traffic Geyser‘s slide show maker.
– DON’T use copyrighted music, other than royalty-free.
– DON’T do a long intro on your videos.
– Tip: Use your articles and turn them into videos (or outsource for as cheap as $5/video)
– The production/video quality doesn’t need to be great; just good enough.
– If you can submit in HD, do it.
– Commonly accepted file formats include AVI, MP4, MOV, WMV
– Keep it short (1-2 minutes in most cases)
– Give a short pitch at the end to send traffic to your site (Squeeze page)
– Make 10-20 short videos in one sitting
STEP #3: Submit your video
– Tip: Rename your video files before uploading them. Rename to the keywords.
– Front-load your keyword in the title
– Compelling titles get more clicks
– Write a good description. Again front-load keywords, but do not be spammy.
– Put the URL first, using the full “http://”
– Ideally send to a squeeze page.
– IF you’re a “social” marketer, link to several of your social profiles from the description.
– Use applicable tags (keywords).
– Choose an appropriate category.
– Set your video to “Public”.
– Choose a thumbnail that will elicit the most clicks.
Some additional sites to consider submitting your video to (beyond YouTube):
5min.com (How-to videos)
Blip.tv (No ads allowed)
BoFunk.com
DailyMotion.com
eCorpTV.com (for business)
Esnips.com
Flickr.com
Graspr.com (How-to videos)
HowCast.com (How-to videos)
iViewTube.com
Kewego.com
LiveVideo.com
MegaVideo.com
Vids.Myspace.com
Photobucket.com
Sevenload.com
Spike.com
Ugoto.com
Veoh.com
VideoJug.com (How-to videos)
Viddler.com (Paid account required for commercial vids)
VidiLife.com
You could submit to all the sites manually, OR outsource it (build your own team), OR use an automatic submission tool.
Recommended tool: Click Here for Traffic Geyser
(I’ve recommended it ever since I first reviewed it in 2006!)
– See video for Traffic Geyser sneak peak.
– Alternatives to Traffic Geyser include TubeMogul (Great tool, but their free membership is for NON-commercial use only). Other stand-alone video submitters are often not kept up-to-date.
STEP #4: Promote your video
– Bookmark your video on social bookmarking sites. (Use Traffic Geyser tool)
– Embed your YouTube video on your social pages (like FaceBook, MySpace, Ning, etc)
– Share your video on video aggregator sites (Flixya.com, Myvidster.com, etc.), and specialty sites (Instructables.com, Wonderhowto.com, etc.)
Promote your video within YouTube:
– Be social (it’s a social site)
– Add your video as a video RESPONSE to a high-traffic video in your niche.
– Give comments, ask for comments.
– Subscribe to the YouTube channels of people in your niche, and ask them to subscribe to yours.
– Go through competitor’s subscriber lists and “Add as Friend” all their subscribers. Invite them to your channel.
– Many video marketers use “grey hat” tools such as TubeToolbox or TubeFool.
Create a good profile page for your YouTube channel:
– A good name that makes sense.
– Use a good profile picture.
– Autoplay the video.
– Feature your 6 best videos.
– Ask people to subscribe.
– Link to your site. (Squeeze page recommended)
– Again, IF you’re a “social” marketer, link to all your social profiles.
– Hide subscriber totals, etc. until you have decent #’s.
– Show activity.
Potential benefit of being successful on YouTube:
– Get AdSense added to your account.
– Become a YouTube partner. (top content providers on YouTube can make good money)
– Beware there is a lot of sleaze on many of the video sites, and aggregators.
– Beware the potential for wasting a lot of time on video sites.
– If you’re the type of person who easily gets off task, this could be destructive to your business.
– Traffic Geyser can help keep you OFF the video sites and focused on marketing 🙂
Action steps:
1) Decide if you want to pursue video marketing.
2) If yes, follow these steps:
-Keyword research
-Make your video
-Submit your video
-Promote your video
-REPEAT (consistency is key to long term success)
We’ll be delving deeper into social media in the next lesson.
As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below 🙂
Have a great day!
As always, clear delivery with comforting voice. You talked about partnership with you tube. I have one (28,000 video views), but the income is so small.
A video must be instructive,emotional and useful
Video is a highly effective way to generate traffic and reach out to new readers. But most people are reluctant to use it either because they don’t know how, are camera shy or hate to speak.
Hey Eric,
Do you think screenshot videos are useful for Youtube? Most of the time people on youtube are so used to seeing action, live people on video. Screenshot videos seem kinda out of place on youtube.
Anyway thanks for the great lesson. It’s so comprehensive!
As usual, this is an excellent post with SO MUCH details.
Eric, thanks for sharing your knowledge so generously with us!
Nice video Eric, like a lot of these tactics, they take time. I’d be interested to know from people the results they get from TubeFool. This seism to be a way to speed things up. Also, I think there is critical tipping point where a YouTube channel achieves a level of credibility.
Great lesson Eric, it’s mind blowing and I really appreciate you sharing this information.
I’m currently working on another traffic method (which you taught earlier), and as you stated “Consistency is key to long term success”, I will be on this for sometime before going to another.
However, U-Tube video marketing is something I will consider in future.
Thanks. Are you actually a YouTube partner? Or just AdSense on your account?
Yes I do think screen capture videos have a place on YouTube. I think live screen captures, and powerpoint slides can be a better teaching medium than a talking head video. So I guess the question to ask yourself is… is it helpful? If it is, then your audience will like it.
The other question to ask yourself is… who is in your market? If you’re marketing to teenagers, then you’re right, they probably won’t like it. Generally speaking, we’re marketing to information-seekers. So the key is to give them the kind of information they’re looking for.
Great AND informative video, Eric. One question, though, on filling out the Youtube options. Should we allow embedding of our videos, allowing others to embed our video on their sites? I lean towards yes if they are promoting our business, no if it’s personal. Your take?
Yes, allow embedding if it’s for your business. Those views count toward your totals, and also that’s a reason why you should put your URL in the video itself.
Thanks for this great lesson Eric.
eric as always you are a credit to internet marketing and your advice is second to none thanks.
A greate lesson as usual,for a newbee like me will you suggest to out sourse the entire vidio marketing ? Will this be as rewarding as doing it yourself which is too much for me to do
Yes it is a good idea to outsource it if you are able to do so. As I mentioned, the video quality doesn’t need to be great. The biggest concern with outsourcing it, is making sure the video CONTENT is good. So be sure to find someone who can create good content, or can turn your content into videos.
I am an actual partner (I think). They said they will send me the first $100. It’s been 6 month now. I wonder if I’m wrong and I’m not a partner.
Thanks Eric for excellent details concerning video marketing. I agree that the point is to create great content or to create an outstanding format for the video – and in the long run the excellent content will probably have a longer life than the smart video, unless you are a very well-known person. I can see a parallel with photography as a super sharp and technically perfect picture will not live as long as technically less perfect image with an outstanding object/situation.
This is a terrific video! Eric, you have a wonderful teaching style-always interesting, always full of content. Thank you..
Eric,
I have a question: Let’s say I produce a video and publish the same video to a large number of video hosting sites – will that not be considered as spam?
Nice lesson Eric. Im using youtube for my CPA offers and the views to conversions are going very well.
Of courses it depends on the offer but i seem to have found a good one so now i will scale up the video creation and get more out there.
Thank You & God Bless you.
Hi Eric
Fantastic post.
I think its quite easy to create a good marketing video. Even from your own home with the advancement of home computers and webcam software.
I was aware of video marketing before, but was never serious on trying it. Maybe be with this detailed info, I will have the motivation to do it this time :). Thanks anyway.
As you say, it involves work, but imagine how much work it would have been without the tools
I did a search for you on youtube, Eric but I didn’t find you. I found people promoting your and your products but not you. I see that you keep you videos in-house or am I mistaken.
I was really interested in this video tip, Eric. It is one of the more comprehensive videos that I’ve watched in a long time.
I’m more than impressed on the resources you gave and watched the entire video twice now. That’s not mentioning using the rewind button dozens of times and finally taking notes.
So far I’ve done very little in the way of video production and only put a few personal videos on youtube. I’ve done no marketing but I do intend to start.
Thanks
Hey Eric,
I have a question about traffic geyser. If you use the submission tool to submit videos, articles, and your sites to social media sites, will you get penalized by the search engines if they see that your submissions occurred automatically, or can they pick up on automation? I was told that it is a good idea that if you use automation tools, to make sure to submit to just a few sites at a time. Does it matter how many sites you submit your videos or articles to?
Also, how can you get adsense on your videos, or how do you become a youtube partner? Are there certain qualifications you must have? As always, thanks for this great info.
Hello Maartin,
No, because the video hosting sites want your content!
Hello Bret,
Because the search engines are constantly changing their algorithms, it’s difficult to determine what will penalize your ranking.
However, any video site that contains your video, can be found by users who search “AT” that website.
Unfortunately, the last time we checked, YouTube has to invite you to become a partner. If you consistently create videos that receive many views, you may be invited.
Because Eric’s Tips is a community, we’d rather keep the conversation at this website, than over at YouTube or another video site.
But, we do take advantage of those sites frequently for non Eric’s Tips promotions!
What if I just want to submit an article I wrote to article directories. If I have software that will submit to multiple directories at once, is it ok to do this, or should I spread the submissions out? I also want to submit my sites to various web directories, but am not sure if I should submit to all of them at once. I have a list of about 30 or so.
Also, when submitting your content to rss feeds, can you constantly add your site whenever new content is put onto your site? Is that ok for social bookmarking sites? I am not sure what is considered spam? Thanks for all of your help.
Hello Bret,
It shouldn’t matter if you submit to numerous directories at once, or if you spread out your submissions. Most sites are just happy to have your content.
Here’s a great way to automate your article submissions:
http://pushbuttonmarketer.com/massarticlebonus/
Be sure to watch until the end to see just how powerful this automation can be!
The search engines are clamping down on news feed aggregating sites. We recommend that you use as much of your own content as possible!
When submitting articles to article directories, can I submit the same article to multiple directories, or should I submit unique variations of that article to the various article directories? Does it matter? Thanks.
I wish there were a simple answer. In general, I do NOT recommend submitting “spun” articles to EzineArticles, or some of the major article directories. For EzineArticles I would submit your best unique articles. For the lesser directories, you could submit the same article to all of them. You can also submit spun articles to the lesser directories, although it has become a spammy practice.
This is really great and I will be trying it as soon as I have tried all the other things you have showed us, and get caught up on my lessons. Thanks, also, I have been gone for three weeks (Mexico) and I seem to have stopped getting these lessons at lesson 80, Did I do something wrong? press the wrong button?
Hello William,
Lesson 80 is the most current lesson!
Many thanks Eric for the lesson 80, looking forward to lesson 81. have a great day.
Thanks for the video and article, this is really helpful stuff! (as usual) 😀
Laurie
Hi Eric,
I found your videos very helpful… My question is what is the video hosting website do you personally use?
Just to share to you, I like the embedding code of youtube and I’m looking for other video hosting sites that has the same embedding code like youtube because I wan’t to record videos for like 20 minutes long or more for my video tutorials for my niche…^_^ I admire you so that’s why I’m also doing video marketing for my niche…
I’ll wait for your response…
Keep it up!
Hello Leo,
Eric uses Amazon S3 for his video hosting:
http://aws.amazon.com/s3/
Hey Eric,
Love your work mate, I am a Australian Youtube Partner and this video was extremely helpful. I also have a website which I am making money with and all these videos are great! Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge 🙂 Much appreciated. If you have a moment and have a look at our website, we would love to hear what you think! We are Magicians and we teach magic. Thats pretty much us in a nut shell! Would love to be able to see what you think and who knows maybe even a JV some day. Haha I wont push my luck!
Anyway mate wishing you and your beautiful family a Happy New Year!
Vinh
Alll the way from Australia
I’d like to thank you for the efforts you have put in writing this website. I really hope to view the same high-grade content from you later on as well. In fact, your creative writing abilities has encouraged me to get my very own site now 😉
Thanks for the deepness at the end, my friend. As usual, great training tips. Most appreciated!
Mark.
Hey Eric
Just wanted to know what video host do you use??
& on your video membership sites, how do you setup the video to (autoplay) & not click through to the video host 🙂
Thanks
Matt
Hello Matt,
Eric uses Camtasia. You can set up all of those options right within the software.
Sometimes Eric will host files on Amazon’s S3 service. He does that to keep his servers fast, when many customers need to download items during a product launch.
Eric,
Thank you for the tips on video marketing. I think video marketing is more entertaining if done properly and can get
the point across in a more upbeat way. I just think there are some important steps like you brought out in this lesson to creating a half way decent video that people will take the time to watch and comment on.
This video lesson really appeals to me because I am just now getting into video marketing. My question to you is how old is this video and are the links you give still hold true?
Hello James,
Some of the earliest lessons were created a few years ago, but Eric makes updates when needed!
Highly energetic post, I loved that bit. Will there
bbe a part 2?