Just like you have to market every single blog post you create, every single product you create, and every service you provide, you must also market your videos with the same fervor. It’s just not true that if you create it, they’ll come. Don’t believe it? Count the video views on most Yellow Directory YouTube channels. It’s pretty sad. You’ll employ many of the exact same marketing channels and practices that you do now to market your videos.
- Remember SEO — Search engine optimization cannot ever be overlooked, not even for videos. In fact, it’s more important because the search engines will not know what your video is about if you don’t include keywords in your title.
- Use All Areas to The Max — Use the description area of your video to include even more keywords and information about your video, including a link to your website for more information. Don’t overlook any space that can be used to maximize keywords and information for viewers.
- Use the Right Tags — While some question the use of tags on blog posts today, using tags on videos is still important, because that is how the search engines, as well as humans, know what this video is about. Use both short tail and long tail keywords in the tags.
- Promote Across Social Media Accounts — Where appropriate share, embed, and Like your own videos across all social media that you use and that your audience uses.
- Add To a Playlist — Once you create multiple videos, there may be topics that you can group together into a playlist for different sets of videos. Playlists will increase viewership because then your video will appear in suggested video lists.
- Choose a Strong Thumbnail — You can choose the first view of your video or the thumbnail view for people to see. People do judge a book by its cover, so try to choose the best thumbnail that begs people to watch your video.
A final note about marketing your videos; remember when you create the video to end the video strongly with a call to action. Ask the viewers to “like”, “share”, “comment”, “vote” or whatever it is that you hope to achieve with the video. If you don’t tell them what to do, they may do nothing. If you can create a standard opening and standard ending to most of your videos, you’ll make this part a lot easier for yourself.
30 Video Ideas You Can Use for Just About Any Organization
One of the hardest things about making videos is not actually making the video; it’s coming up with the ideas for your videos. But in reality, that isn’t that hard either if you remember how to let go and open up your creative side. Use an app to help you, such as Evernote, to keep track of ideas as they flow to you. You’re probably going to come up with great ideas as you least expect it, so it’s important that you capture those ideas when they come to you so that you don’t forget.
To get you started here are 30 video ideas you can use for marketing your business. Maybe it’ll release some of your creative juices and get you started down the path of becoming a video marketing mogul.
- Repurpose & Reuse — If you have a blog, you have at least one, if not hundreds of pieces of material you can use for a video. Any one of your posts can be used to create a great video. Even if you read the blog post word-for-word, using creative illustrations, you’ve done it; you’ve created your first video.
- Branding — Using videos to brand your business is very important. You can create a set opening and closing for all your videos, as well as use a watermark on the videos that showcases your business so that no matter what the video is about, the viewer knows where to go to see more.
- Co-Branding — Why not ask for help from others? Sometimes it’s fun to work with others on small partnerships when it comes to videos. Be sure to create co-branding information for the videos that you do together.
- Products Descriptions — A really great way to use video for your business is to describe each product that you want to promote. Hold up the product, or show the product and how it works in a short video.
- Service Descriptions — Even if you’re a service provider, you can actually use a video to demonstrate how you do your job and what the services you do mean. If you create awesome Facebook Covers, video the process, speed it up, add music and brand the video. There you go. You’re welcome. 🙂
- Instructional Videos — Whether you have products or services, instructional videos are very popular ways to market your business. It doesn’t really matter what you want to teach someone; put it together.
- How To Videos — Some people worry about “giving away the farm”, but you can do how to videos that show people how to do what you do for pay, and they’ll still hire you because they don’t want to do it. Yes, a few will go on to do it themselves, but you can bet they’ll recommend you to others.
- Training Videos — With the success of Khan Academy, there can be no underestimating the power of training videos. No matter what your business, you can train others in what you’re the expert in doing.
- Transactional Videos — You can create videos that aren’t free to watch but you put a small part of it up for viewers to see, then have them go to your membership site to sign up to see the rest.
- Testimonial Videos — Nothing is more powerful than a testimonial video. You can both receive and give testimonial videos. Ask your customers to provide you with a testimonial video instead of a written video and be amazed. Do some for your business associates to get it started.
- Personal Video Messages — Sometimes, even if your point is business, it’s okay to get personal in your videos. People like to get to know you. Show yourself on vacation, or enjoying family time. Your clients will love it.
- Round Table Videos — On Google Hangouts you can do a Video Round Table with up to 10 people and record the entire thing.
- Talk About a Newsy Item — Pick something from your niche; that is related to what you do, affects your business and is in the news to talk about. You can set up a Google Alert to help you come up with these news items. You can tell your viewers what you think about the news bit.
- Question & Answers — This is always a very popular way to create a quick video. Anytime you get a client or potential customer question, turn it into a quick 2 minute video.
- Coaching Minute — This is kind of like the question & answer format, but instead you choose one thing to focus on for just one minute. Everyone can watch a video for one minute and you can teach a lot about your niche in one minute.
- Series of eCourses — You can create a series of eCourses that you will record and distribute either via membership site, email, or another method. Make each course no more than 10 minutes long. Put about 10 videos in the entire course.
- Record Webinars — If you’re in a webinar, or giving a webinar, make sure to record it so that you can repurpose it. A lot of times you can even cut down one webinar to a lot of small videos.
- Demonstration Videos — Want to demonstrate to your viewers how you do things in your business? They’ll love seeing it. Just get someone to record you, or you can record your desktop to show how to edit a video, how to create an eBook, or whatever it is that you do.
- Create a Book Trailer — Some business owners today try to publish a Kindle book or a Paper book as a calling card to their businesses. If you’ve done that, why not create a book trailer using video?
- Product Teasers — Are you in the process of creating new products or services? If so, create short thirty second teasers about the new product or service to whet the appetite of your customers.
- Do Interviews — You can both give interviews to other movers and shakers in your industry or you can be interviewed, either way; record it as a video, and there you have another video. If an interview is especially long, it can become more than one video.
- Get Personal — Is something really affecting you that you want to tell your audience about, that is both personal and somehow business related? Maybe you want to donate to a charity, or you’re going to run a marathon. Whatever it is, your viewers will want to know.
- Be Funny — Change the special effects for your video to look like a cartoon. This works really well during various holidays. You can do something really unexpected on April Fool’s day. Who knows; it could go viral.
- Make a Music Video — You probably have the equipment right on your computer to auto-tune your voice and make one of your videos a musical. Try it; again, this is a great way to teach something yet go viral and be memorable.
- Document a “Day in the Life” — No matter what your niche is, people are curious about what you do in a day for your business. Why not document it, speed it up, and put it to music. Your viewers will love it.
- Say Thank You — Everyone likes to hear “thank you”, including your viewers. Taking time out at least once in a while to tell them thank you will go far in them wanting to continue to watch you.
- 3 Tip Videos — You want your videos to be short and to the point, while getting a good message across. Three thing videos or three tips videos are perfect for any niche.
- Shout Out Video — Are you super impressed by someone in your niche, whether a competitor or a person who works in a complementary fashion to your audience, or maybe even an affiliate? Shout out to them and name them by name and let them know how you feel about them. You can also respond in the negative to another video you disagree with. Tread cautiously.
- Ask for Contributors — Always remember that everything doesn’t have to always be completed by you. You can ask for contributors to submit videos about various topics.You’ll add your branding, and put the video on your channel, while promoting them and yourself.
- Be Random — Sometimes not even having a plan and just letting nature take its course is a great idea. Start talking and see what happens. You may create your very best and most watched and most informative video yet. Throw a dart at your main subjects and talk off the cuff about it.
These thirty ideas should give you a start in helping you think about the videos you want to create. Remember that video marketing goes way beyond Google and YouTube, but in many cases they do start there. Get started, and your business may just explode like never before with some creative video marketing.
In Conclusion
If you’ve gotten anything out of this article series it’s that you need to get involved with Video Marketing and make it an integral part of your marketing plan. Don’t just think in terms of Youtube.com and Google; think outside the box and be creative. Just go for it. Don’t be afraid; you already have what it takes. You’re already an expert. You already have the software and the ability to do it. Nothing is stopping you but you.
If you like this sort of thing, stay tuned for Chamber sponsored webinars where we talk about social media, positioning, marketing, and other business topics all of the time. Past webinars are archived at http://chamberwebtraining.com
About the Author: Ken Ivey, affectionately dubbed ‘the Web Czar’ by peers – has been helping businesses embrace technology for 28 years. Contact him at ken@livingwaterdigital.com or call 920-645-2700
