Creating Content About Creating Content
Well played YouTube…April Fool’s indeed!
I came across this promotion for “The YouTube Collection” tonight. For fun, I ordered the “Sports Genre” on Betamax video tape. It came to over 25,000 videos that cost over $127,00. Shipping and Handling was over $59,000 for a total of $187,100. Then I hit order and it said:
“Your order has been placed. Due to heavy demand, your anticipated delivery date is: JUNE 16, 2045
Also, April Fools.”
Hilarious!”
See the video below…
Remember that LinkedIn profile you created and never went back to??? Well, last week I showed you a simple way to get connected to new targeted LinkedIn members. Today I want to show you how to spruce up your profile. You can make your profile stand out from the crowd by adding a YouTube video to your profile. Most LinkedIn profiles do not have videos (most LinkedIn users don’t even know you can have videos on your profile). Even if you do not have your own self-produced video on YouTube, you can find a video that relates to your industry to give people more information regarding what you’re all about.If you do have your own video on YouTube, LinkedIn will become one more avenue to bring exposure to your video, get your information out there, and grow your number of views.
Step 1: If you do not have your own YouTube account or gmail account sign-up for a new gmail account (it’s free, you can have all mail forwarded to your main email address, plus google is always coming out with interesting apps that you’ll be able to take advantage of). To sign up go here: https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount
Step 2: Once you’re signed in to your YouTube or gmail address go to: https://docs.google.com/
Step 3: From there go to “create a new presentation”:
Step 4: Under the “Insert” menu click on the “Video” option:
Step 5: Search for the the YouTube video you want and select it. Do a little re-sizing and save your document:
Step 6: Stay signed-in to your google account, open a new window, and sign-in to your LinkedIn account. Under the “More” drop-down menu go to “Get More Applications.” In the Applications menu select “Google Presentation” and add it to your profile. Now go back to the “More” drop-down menu and select “Google Presentation.”
Step 7: Your presentation should appear in the presentation list for you to select. Select your presentation and your done!
Your video will only appear to LinkedIn members who are sign-in to LinkedIn. I hope you found this post helpful. If you run into any snags or have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below…
As an internet marketer, people ask me all the time which forms of internet marketing/social media get the best results? I always answer the question with a disclaimer. The disclaimer is: what works best for one business may not work the best for you depending on what type of business you have and what type of results you’re looking to achieve.
As far as internet marketing is concerned, if you have very little time to put in and very little money, I would always recommend to start out with a bi-weekly or monthly electronic newsletter (aka email marketing). This yields an acceptable ROI when considering the small amount of time and money it takes to make it happen. If you have more than a little bit of time and money, you still want to make sure that you have an electronic newsletter.
If you want to do more than that, you begin to get into different forms of social media. There are now an endless amount of options when it comes to social media. If you would have asked me 2-3 weeks ago to prioritize the most effective forms of internet marketing/social media I would have shared the following:
1.Electronic Newsletter
2. Internet Forums
3. YouTube/Video Podcasting
4. LinkedIn
5. Twitter
6. Facebook
That usually surprises people because Facebook isn’t near the top of my list. Now, this list may change depending on what your business is and what kind of goals you have, but as a general answer, that is what I would share. Now, my answer is based purely on experience with my customers and where their customers tell them they’re coming from.
Well, a study was recently released where social media marketers revealed what platforms were giving them the best return. The image below is from the article, “Where Are Social Media Marketers Seeing the Most Success?“, on eMarketer.com.
Message/bulletin boards are also known as “Forums.” I can confirm that Forums can be a highly effective way of marketing. I have one customer on eight different forums and he gets most of his business from those communities. Not all industries have popular forums relevant to a specific context, but if there is one out there related to your niche, see what it takes to be a sponsor and start posting content and answering questions.
Podcasting can be audio content (for audio podcasts) or a close cousin to YouTube (video podcasts). If you’re already posting video content on YouTube, you might want to consider duplicating your content in the form of a video podcast on iTunes.
Blogging comes in third, which isn’t a surprise. I don’t really see blogging as a form of social media. Blogging, to me, should be your website that is an anchor for all of your social media. If you don’t have a website or are considering what kind of website to build for your business, build it with a blogging component.
Notice that “online video” (aka YouTube), comes ahead of Twitter and Facebook. I completely agree with this feedback. If you only have the capacity to post up one video a month, that’s more than enough reason to get started. There’s something about consistent video content that entices people to talk to the real person and/or experience the real product. After watching a number of your videos on a consistent basis, people will be compelled to take the next action step in your sales funnel.
If you’re looking for more web traffic for your site, than Twitter would probably be higher on this list. A growing Twitter page is a blog’s best friend in my opinion.
In regards to Facebook’s place on this list, I am not surprised. Facebook is good place to reinforce your message/brand and remind people you exist. The bottom line is, people still go on Facebook to socialize more than they do to spend money. This dynamic could change down the road though.
An interesting surprise on this list is the absence of LinkedIn and the presence of Foursquare. Was LinkedIn even a part of the survey? Is Foursquare the next Facebook? Who knows. What I do know is that LinkedIn has been very effective for my business as well as my customers.
This is a continuation from yesterday’s article on “Becoming A YouTube Partner.”
4. Channel Banners
As a YouTube partner, you can ad banners and custom images to your YouTube channel. The beauty of these options, is that you can make the images click-able to any URL you want. This feature combined with the branding box (see yesterday’s article), makes your YouTube channel a serious back-linking page for your online content.
5. Channel Link images
On each of your individual video pages, your YouTube channel is displayed as a text link in the upper left. As a YouTube partner, you can exchange the text link for a custom image that will link to your channel. This adds one more visual option to spice up your individual video pages.
6. Rent Streaming Videos
Another interesting feature is that you have the option to rent out your streaming videos for viewers. I wouldn’t recommend this is most instances because I think you’d get more exposure by making your content available for free, but if you think you got some really hot video content, you may consider this as an option.
I still feel video content is one of the most beneficial forms of social media for a business. It takes more effort than a Twitter or Facebook page, but if a business can do it, they definitely should. With that said, a business using YouTube should make it a goal to become a YouTube partner within their first 18 months of using YouTube.
Anyone can sign-up for their own YouTube channel and share video content. I recently lead one of my customers through the process of becoming a “YouTube Partner.” Before you apply, I recommend that you have 50-100 videos, non-copyrighted video content and a good solid following on YouTube. Not everyone who applies to be a partner gets accepted. If you meet those requirements, you can apply at http://www.YouTube.com/partners . Let me share with you “6 Benefits of Becoming A YouTube Partner.”
1. Google Ads on Video
Once you’re a YouTube partner, you can enable any video you upload for revenue sharing. This places a google ad within your video and on the individual video page in the upper right hand corner. Google Ads allows you to get paid for every click on an ad. Each ad’s value varies from .10 cents to $4 a click, depending on the ad.
2. Google Ads on YouTube Channel
Being a YouTube partner also allows you to place a Google Ad on your YouTube channel as well.
3. Channel Customization
A YouTube partner has more options for designing their channel than a normal user. One of the options I really like is the “Branding Box.” The branding box gives you more room to describe yourself as well as add multiple links. I think the branding box is a great place to share links to all of your different social media sites.
The last 3 benefits I will continue with tomorrow…
How fast can you see a return on investment (ROI) with video sharing?
It depends on three factors: How often are you going to produce your videos? How relevant is your video content towards your target audience? What are you going to do to drive traffic to your videos?
Video sharing has been one of the most effective forms of social media for my customers. My customers have gotten more sales that can be traced back to YouTube or an iTunes video podcast than any other social media platform. If a picture is worth a thousand words, than a video is worth a thousand pictures.
Frequency: A good goal would be two short videos (anywhere from 90 sec. to 5 min) a month. The least you want to do is once a month. The ideal would be once a week. Remember, online video is not about the quality of production. Just look up some popular YouTube videos and see for yourself. It’s about volume (number of videos, not length of videos) and content.
Content: Listen to the most common questions/comments you get and watch other videos in your niche for ideas. Some of the most popular videos are “How To” instructional videos and brand new products to the market (first one in, wins).
Driving Traffic: Social media, email lists, and your website are mandatory if your videos are going to be seen at all. Place the link to your videos on your Facebook page, Twitter, LinkedIn, an electronic newsletter, and of course your website. Did you know that every time you or somebody else embeds your video into another website you still get credit from YouTube for all of the views? If you can find some popular forums (aka message boards) that allow you to post links or embed the videos it is also another great way to get exposure. If you can afford to set up an iTunes podcast (in addition to a YouTube channel) it can be very effective.
If you’re consistent you can start to get some traction in 6 months to a year. By traction, I mean that more people are following and watching your videos, your video views climb faster and faster, and viewers slowly start to turn into customers.
I was reminded of the origins of video sharing when I got an email from Yahoo! last week stating that they are removing all user-uploaded video from Yahoo! Video. This is a pretty amazing announcement.
Yahoo! video was created way back in May of 2005. At first, it was actually more popular than YouTube for a time. Eventually YouTube overtook them in popularity and hasn’t looked back. This move by Yahoo! appears to be a temporary waving of the white flag.
Interestingly enough, the email does encourage users to upload video to Flickr instead. To Yahoo!’s credit, Flickr is one of the most popular photo sharing sites and, in my opinion, one of the best photo sharing sites. Maybe they’re hoping the popularity of their photo sharing site will overflow into video sharing by users and one day compete with YouTube again.
YouTube’s success can be traced back to early employees of PayPal Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. They activated the domain name YouTube.com on February 15, 2005 and developed their website over the next several months. When YouTube hit it’s official public release in December 2005, people were watching YouTube videos more than three million times daily. That month, someone posted to YouTube a skit from NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” dubbed “Lazy Sunday,” featuring two grown men rapping about cupcakes, red licorice candy and the movie “The Chronicles of Narnia.” Consumers viewed “Lazy Sunday” six million times before NBC on Feb. 3 contacted YouTube to request that it be removed, along with hundreds of other clips. By October of 2006, Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion and began operating as a subsidiary of Google.*
Since then, numerous video sharing sites have been created with different contexts or as simple alternatives to YouTube. Video sharing is one of the easiest and fastest ways to start building your social media portfolio.
*The Social Media Bible, Safko and Brake, 2009, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ
RockMelt is a brand new web browser that looks promising for those seeking Social Media Proficiency (or those who are just junkies). If it can do what the video claims it can do, it will marry the concepts the web browsing and social media in an unprecedented way. It will be interesting to see the first version once it comes out. Right now you can “Connect For An Invitation” via Facebook on RockMelt.com. Stay tuned…
The Sacramento Bee has the largest distribution of all Sacramento based newspapers. As a subscriber, you can also read the Sacramento Bee right on your home computer in an electronic format called the “e-edition.” Mason Media produced a short tutorial video for the Bee to explain how their electronic edition works. This video is beneficial to the Bee’s customers via visual demonstration along with a clear explanation. You can view the video below or see the Bee’s web page where this video is being used by clicking here.
A few years back I produced a series of short ads for a digital signage network in Elk Grove, CA. The video below was one of the produced ads. There was specific information the client gave me to communicate in the 15 second ad. I took their logo and branding concept and created a simple way to bring their static jpeg image to life with a few standard effects. The result was very effective and the customer was satisfied.
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