Alright, Video Marketing, one strategy that can really contribute to you developing a presence on the Internet, if you are not leveraging video marketing in your own marketing strategy, then pay attention as you read this article so you can get started and down to business.
Okay, lets talk about your ease of setup for video marketing before we jump into it. Not necessarily as difficult to expect a learning curve, but expect a moderate difficulty, especially starting off, as you might never made a actual video before. Time wise, it should take you no longer than 1 hour per video, your cost will be free, and the great thing is, you can start seeing results quick. Also expect ongoing maintenance only because video marketing is a ongoing process, but once you complete a video, you wont have to ever go back and do anything to it.
Have you heard of YouTube, if you have not by now I would be surprised, but for those who do not know about this website, let me fill you in. YouTube came about in about February of 2005 by three former PayPal employees. Google actually bought YouTube LLC for $1.65 billion dollars in 2006, lucky three employees for PayPal.
Alright getting into it, right now the first thing you are going to want to do is, register with You-Tube. If you are not registered, you will not be able to upload your videos. There is no cost to you, it is a quick process, and you can upload a unlimited number of videos.
A couple things to remember if you are debating right now if you should start leveraging video marketing or not before we move into your action steps. Keep in mind that search engines love video content, it is the most perused commodity from search engines like Google, yahoo, Bing, etc, etc. Check this out, 30,000,000,000 videos are watched every month from just the United States alone. Check out these demographics about internet surfers that are looking for videos.
1. 71 percent are employed
2. 15% are students
3. Their Median Income is a nice $75,000
4. Almost 50% have spouses
5. 70% are college educated
I just thought I would share that with you so you can get a idea on how you will seriously be able to drive unlimited free traffic to you website, and business.
Your Basic Action Steps
1. Your Equipment
-We cannot make any videos without getting equipment first, so lets talk about that briefly. If you are considering using your web cam attached to your lab top or computer, you may also want to consider getting a smaller hand held video camera. That way you may shoot videos away from your office or desktop area with ease. One camera that is great to use is called the flip camera. Its great because it is small, inexpensive, will capture the great video quality you want, and is simple to use. You do not have to get this camera of course, and if you are on a tight budget like many starting entrepreneurs are, you can get a mount on camera to your laptop for about 35 bucks.
2. Personal Branding
– Personal branding is very important and will definitely affect how well your business will grow, especially in the long run. So what is personal branding? If you have done research on the number of people who are interested in working from home businesses or just running a business in general, the numbers are staggering now. There are two big factors that those kind of people are looking for when considering a business opportunity.
1. They are looking for someone they can know, like, and actually trust.
2. People love leaders, someone with authority, a top earner.
Looking at these two big factors, you start to understand why personal branding is a must for long term success and big profit. If you do your research on top earners like I did when I first started, you will find that the top earners are not calling anyone to get leads and sales. People are calling them, they have branded themselves in all entirety, and they have become a person of value, remember that phrase, a person of value.
When branding yourself, there a also two key things you should keep in mind about when positioning yourself online.
1. Always present yourself as a leader
2. Get your readers to trust you
These are your goals, some ways you can achieve this, is by adding videos to your website. Another great thing to add is a application process, what will this do? Adding a application process will again make you look like a leader, it will also create a perception of scarcity, and it will help you understand your applicants and their reasons for wanting to join your business. Last thing, because I can spend a whole article talking about personal branding, I will write that one soon to help those trying to brand themselves, but last thing is, hire a personal assistant. Hiring a assistant will really make you look like a leader, it is not like you are trying to deceive people, but everyone must start somewhere. Pretty soon when your business blows up, you really will be that leader, that authority figure. Everyone starts somewhere, just remember that.
3. Keyword Targeting
-Keyword research is always important, and will help your videos more search engine friendly. Think of a list of keywords pertaining to your business, home business, niche, etc, and make sure they are long tailed keywords. Long tailed keywords are very specific and have five words or more in them. I really did not want to share this secret but that would be selfish, so when writing your keywords, consider some of these:
1. Is “Your Biz” a scam?
2. Is “Your Biz” legitimate?
3. A review of “Your Biz”
4. Is “John Doe” a scam?
5. Is “John Doe” legitimate?
You see where this is going, this is a great way to get traffic to your landing page, and I am telling you that it works. If you need help with constructing keywords, consider using Google’s keyword tool, this tool can get you some great keywords you would never have thought about on your own.
4. Shooting Your Video
There are two types of videos you can create”
-Slide show videos
-videos of yourself
Benefits to making a Slide Show Video
-They are quick to make
-You do not have to be on camera
-Script something that relates to the keywords that you are targeting
If you are using the review long tailed keyword, always remember to be truthful about your business or company. You want to include pros and cons, you do not want it to come off as a sales pitch. Your overall intention is to, answer the viewers questions, educate the viewer, and to tell the viewer what they need to do next, do not forget that one.
Making A Video Of Yourself
The same concept really as the slide show, and you want to give answers to the same questions. Obviously the only difference will be that you will be the star of the video. Do not worry so much about how you sound or look, just let your personality do its thing. We are all not models and actors, but that does not matter, beauty resonates on the inside as well as the outside, so let your personality do what it does.
5. Name Your Video
6. Go Ahead And Distribute Your Video
-You know what to do, register with You-Tube, upload your video, repeat as necessary. If you want to see tutorials for both, all you need to do is Google it, I guarantee their will be a video on how to register and how to upload videos.
7. Promote Your Video
Now that you are creating your videos, go out and promote them by the following ways:
1. Add your videos to your landing page or thank you page
2. You can post it to your blogs, blogs are great way to get traffic, I will have a article about that soon as well.
3. Email a link containing your video to existing lists that you have if applicable to you, if you do not have a list right now than just disregard this until you get one.
4. You can use outsourcing software to get your stuff out there like Traffic Geyser
5. As many video sharing sites as possible
6. Social Media Sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc.
7. Podcast
8. Social Bookmarks
9. Even some article submission sites
Remember the beauty of video marketing, is that once you have put your video out there, it will always be there to drive traffic to your site. Put as many videos out there as possible, just make sure to be following the instructions, make sure you are putting out good stuff, value if possible, value is the key.
If you follow these basic action steps, you will be on your way to generating some serious traffic leveraging videos. I will probably do another article with some intermediate steps to help you become even more effective with your video marketing. Now that you have learned the basics of the skill, get out there and make it happen, also never get discouraged or overwhelmed for more than a day. Remember everyone has a starting point, do not be the one to quit because you put one video out and it did not get the traffic you wanted, be persistent like every other marketing tactic. The key to maximizing your time, is to figure out which marketing strategies are bringing you the biggest return on investment, the investment being time and very minimal money. Do not pay for leads, learn the science behind how to generate leads for free, it is a system to you must learn, and then copy it like a blue print.
