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Seven Ways to Instantly Make Your YouTube Videos Better!

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Seven Ways to Instantly Make Your YouTube Videos Better!

You should be on YouTube! It is a good addition to your search engine optimization strategy as well as your social media marketing effort. Videos are an engaging way to reach your audience. There is something for everyone on YouTube. The social channel appeals to all age ranges. YouTube has over a YouTube has over one billion users — almost one-third of all people on the Internet.

YouTube overall, and even YouTube on mobile alone, reaches more 18-34 and 18-49 year-olds than any cable network in the U.S.

If you are working on your YouTube channel, be patient. Remember how it was when you first built your website? It takes effort, consistency and patience as your start to build your website content. It is important to pay attention to viewers’ watch times, so you can where your users are dripping off, what is popular, and what appeals to them. This will help your channel gain popularity and build a following.

There are, however, some easy additions you use to enhance your videos to make them instantly more appealing to users. Below are Seven Ways to Instantly Make Your YouTube Videos Better. These are tasks you can start using right away!

Seven Ways to Instantly Make Your YouTube Videos Better

Branding

is the channel icon or messaging in the lower right corner of the screen. Viewers can click on it to go to the channel to see all of your videos. It is a good way to encourage users to subscribe.

Annotations

– YouTube annotations make YouTube videos video clickable. Viewers can click on the annotation and go to the associated website, a YouTube channel, fundraising platform, or other. The downside to annotations is only desktop users see them. So check you analytics and see what your viewership uses to watch your channel.

YouTube Cards

– YouTube Cards are the replacement for YouTube Annotations. For now, both annotations and cards function. YouTube Cards work for mobile viewers and have the same functions but only appear as an “information available” icon in the upper right corner of the screen. Many have reported increased click-thrus with Cards. Cards look much nicer than Annotations. Admins are able to choose their own artwork for each Card.

Featured Video

– A YouTube Featured Video is the one at the top of the channel, just below the cover art. A Featured Video can be used to announce a promotion, or better yet, to inform viewers what a channel is about. Featured videos are changed as often as desired. Subscriber and non-subscribers can be shown the same or different videos, depending on their status.

Playlists

– YouTube playlists are a good way to organize a YouTube channel. As you add more videos, it can become harder to find older videos should a viewer wish to refer back to older content. Playlists organize videos by topic, date, or however you wish to name them.

Cover photo / cover art

– Cover art, banner image, cover photo, however you want to name it is the large image at the top of a YouTube channel. Like a Featured Video, it conveys messaging. Don’t let your messaging be “I didn’t bother to customize any channel art!” Create an image that supports your branding message. There are no restrictions on text coverage, so be sure to include other ways for viewers to find you online!

Intro clip

– An introductory video clip at the beginning of each video is a way to grab viewers’ attention. Like the title screen, an intro clip tells the user in under ten seconds (preferably five seconds) what the video is about. With an intro clip, the user does not have to wait to see if your video is what they were looking for. It can grab attention and keep viewers engaged.

My YouTube metrony YouTube video on Seven Ways to Instantly Make Your YouTube Videos Better is available on YouTube.

How to Use YouTube Annotations to Drive Traffic to Your Website

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YouTube Annotations Drive Traffic to Your Website

For several years, I have been heralding the benefits of using YouTube in search engine optimization campaigns. YouTube is an easy way to compete for keywords. The channel is much less crowded and competitive for search terms that momma Google is. The production value users are willing to accept is lower than it was in the past. Five years ago when I encourage clients to establish a presence on YouTube, they would run out of fear of the production costs. Now vloggers can use their iPhones and DLSR cameras to shoot reasonable quality videos.

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Posting to YouTube videos is great and fun too, but in the end, we want to get clicks and conversions on your websites. This is where YouTube Annotations comes in. An annotation is a way to make portions of a YouTube video clickable so users may subscribe to your channel, visit a website or take other action. Some of the best annotations I have seen use the bottom or right side of the screen as navigation! (blog post and video on that coming soon!)

The types of YouTube annotation are:

  • Speech Bubble
  • Note
  • Title
  • Spotlight
  • Label

Check out my YouTube video on Pinterest pins. I have a few YouTube annotations on this video. The first is a “note” that appears in the upper right corner. It directs users to to to my website for more business tips. [Figure 1] and if a user clicks or taps it, it opens up a new window and leads back to my website

YouTube-Annotations-Tutorial

Figure 1

The second annotation I added is also a “note”, but a click here subscribes the viewer to my YouTube channel that covers social media tutorials. This image also shows where to add YouTube annotations using the YouTube video manager.[Figure 2]

YouTube-Annotations-Tutorial-2

Figure 2

Although it takes an extra step or more to add these annotations to your videos, it really worth it! Making the videos clickable makes it easy for your viewers to follow you and get to the conversion!

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel for more digital business tips and social media social media tutorials!

How-to-Use-YouTube-Annotations-Drive-Traffic- to- Website

How to get more traffic from YouTube videos

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How to get more traffic from YouTube videos

Social video is one of the biggest trends for digital marketing in 2016. Social media strategies should include uploading videos to social channels like Facebook and metrony YouTube. All major social channels like Twitter, SnapChat, Instagram, all allow native video except for Pinterest and LinkedIn. For the past two years, I have been encouraging businesses to use video as part of their search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. YouTube is far less competitive for keywords than google.com plus video is one of the best ways to engage your audience. TO use video for SEO, be sure to upload high def. videos that include our keywords or phrases.

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YouTube gives users the ability to send traffic from videos hosted on their site to websites, products, or encourage viewers to take an action, or watch more by setting up cards, annotations, and video descriptions. By encouraging users to take action, you can you can help boost your channel’s watch time and get more traffic to your website.

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The Rise of Short Form Video

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The Rise of Short Form Video

Last week I spoke at Affiliate Summit West 2016 on how to Optimize Images for Social Media Sharing. Part of what I weaved into the talk was the importance of video for marketers. Although the session primarily focused on image sizes, quality and content, I included video because it plays an important role in digital marketing this year.

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Shortform videos are defined as video content that is under ten minutes long. Anything else is called longform. I’ve stressed video to my clients for the past two years because video can be used as part of a search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. High definition videos are favored in searches on YouTube. Add a transcript to your video and upload it to your own YouTube channel. This custom content can rank high in YouTube searches, where there is less competition than there is for identical searches term conducted on Google. YouTube is simply less competitive.

Facebook has its sights on the video market too. . As of November 2015 Facebook sees 8 billion average daily video views from 500 million users. In September 2015, 1.5 million small and medium-sized businesses shared videos on Facebook. The average ad revenue per US Facebook increased 50% last year [1]. Note: that Facebook counts three seconds as a “view.”

Facebook is working on chipping away YouTube market share of video content. The social channel is doing this by:

  • testing dedicated video feeds
  • building an intellectual property tool that will let contributors monetize their videos uploaded by others
  • picture-in-picture viewing

The good news is the quality level a user expects from a YouTube video has decreased and with it the cost to produce a video.

Rise-Short-Form-Video

[1] Source: “Investor Relations.” Earnings. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2016. http://investor.fb.com/results.cfm

We’re now on Entrepreneur Network!

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I’m proud to announce I’m now a contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine’s YouTube channel, Entrepreneur Network video channel. We kicked off the series with a fun Halloween video describing one of our worst business nightmares. In Entrepreneur Network video I talk about dependency, a risky situation a business of any size can find itself in. It’s dependency on one or two large accounts.

EN-Dependence

I’ve made this mistake in the past and found my business in dire straits. Years ago, the revenue generated by my largest account far outweighed all the others put together. My largest client was dependent on private investors and was chasing government contracts. A few years into our relationship, they were hit with the perfect storm: a recession, a copyright infringement claim, and a shift in federal funding.

It hit them hard. They had to move out of their prestigious Park Avenue office, and back into a three story walk up – right where they started five years prior! My business and employees were hurt too. That this was our largest contract, plus the recent economic downturn, made it hard to find replacement clients. I had to reinvent my business. It was not the first turnaround I had endured, but it was the most stressful, and after a year of barely getting by, I enjoyed my best years ever!

The video about my worst business nightmare is on the Entrepreneur Network YouTube channel. My own video channel is now rolled up and featured so I will be posting videos in both areas! I can’t wait to share my business experiences, including how to incorporate video into your business strategy!

The New YouTube Trends Map

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Introducing the YouTube Trends Map
By Kevin Allocca | May 07, 2013 | Categories: Announcements
Are teens in the South watching the same videos as middle-aged folks in New England? Now with the YouTube Trends Map (youtube.com/trendsmap), you can see today’s most popular videos in major markets across the U.S. You can also see what’s popular with women or men, as well as by different age groups.