How To Use Video The Right Way
YouTube is the second largest search engine. To ignore YouTube is to ignore potential customers. Follow this checklist to drive massive amounts of traffic to your website.
The Title
- Don’t get clever, make video work for you, simply have your title begin with what the video is about (what people will search for) ex. Kindness Documentary.
- Put your most important keywords in the title, then a colon and if possible w/out looking spamy, put them in again. ex. Kindness Documentary: Kindness is Contagious a documentary all about the benefits of being nice.
The Description
- Repeat your title in the description
- Make the description LONG.
- Have lots of links to other videos and more information
- Put a transcript in the description
The Thumbnail
- Make your own thumbnails.
- Have a face looking at the camera.
- If a face is not appropriate, use a very focused image that is easy to understand.
- Use contrasting colors.
- Make it relevant to the first 30sec of the video.
- If you use text, make it bold and centered.
- Don’t put any information in the lower right corner (youtube uses this spot)
The Tags
- Make your title your first tag. ex. Kindness Documentary.
- Use multiple word phrases that people frequently search for.
- Use something that is in the news for a keyword phrase.
- VERY Important: only insert terms/words which are in your title and/or description, as to do otherwise is considered spamming by YouTube.
Work The Recommended Videos Section
- Make up a tag, that is unlikely to appear anywhere in youtube. ex. KindnessWinning101 – no spaces, long but looks like a real tag with a number at the end.
- Put it in all of the videos that you want to show up in the recommended section.
Always Make Playlists
- Make playlist title something people search for. ex. Kindness Documentaries.
- Create searchable description.
- Click done button (note this is NOT obvious)
Annotations
- Use annotations to link to your youtube homepage (to subscribe) or films, or channel or playlist, or website or merchandise (great at the end of a film)
- Click open link in new window
Channel Settings
- Create a trailer that advertises your channel (Fan Finder)
- Make the 1st 5 seconds interesting
- Use a subscribe button as a Branding watermark (In Video Programming)
- Save time by setting defaults in advance.
- Use vidiq.com analytics for your videos (and other peoples videos).
