Don’t have too many video marketing articles around here, and I know I should… so I decided to write this article to compensate you.
It is not going to be the next “optimize your title” post (if you know what I mean), but the only video optimization article you’ll ever need.
I’ll let you know what really matters when it comes to video marketing, if you don’t know how to optimize your titles, or where to put the keywords and tags though, you can go read How To Use You Tube To Become A Video Marketing Superstar, or Google’s guide to optimizing videos (it’s kinda dull, so you better read the article).
Alright, let’s begin
I want to ask you a question first:
What is video optimization, really?
And think about it while reading, will get to the answer in a few paragraphs.
People watch videos for fun, even when they seek education.
What do I mean?
When you search Google or You Tube, do you really want to find the next boring mumbling guy video where 4 out 40 minutes are worth watching? (which by the way is what most videos are)
No, you don’t.
You want to have fun, and if the video is fun, you will watch it even it is not that informational.
I have made videos worth thousands that get a few thousand views and videos worth nothing, but fun, that get ten times the views.
What does that say?
People want to be entertained. That’s it. That’s video optimization.
Sure, the keyword in the beginning of the title and sprinkled throughout the description, proper thumbnails and annotations are important, but they are basic… optimizing your videos for fun is everything.
When I shot my first video I wanted to learn everything about Video SEO and read everything I could get my hands on, I spent almost everything I had on courses (you already know I had just lost my offline company ) and all these tutorials were:
1 Find popular keywords
1 Optimize your title
2 Place keyword in the beginning of the title
3 write a nice description and have your keyword in it
4 Include proper tags
5 optimize the thumbnail
6 Use annotations
7 optimize your channel
8 build a community
…but none of them, even those that cost an arm and leg (got some of them for free from friends), mentioned anything about what truly matters – being entertaining.
They taught how to shoot the videos and copy others (which of course results in all the same videos with people using all the same words, making long pauses, telling stories the wrong way to fake authority and so on), yet there was nothing on being fun… and I had to spend a few months to learn from my own mistakes.
So let me tell you how to be fun and save you the trouble
It doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be a comedian to entertain… no, you just have to find your voice just like it is with blogging and your audience will come… well, if you talk about something extremely boring, it might never come, but you know that. 🙂
Here’s your action plan
1 Get a nice camera
Your iPhone won’t do it, people just don’t like watching low quality videos, though my home page video was shot with an iPhone 5 LOL (my home page is my blog posts page now, used to be a welcome page with a video)… but it’s not really the same, I have a huge blog.
2 start making videos right now
It’s normal to have to take 50 shots to make a 2 minute video LOL, don’t feel bad about it, just start making videos right now.
My first video went something like this:
“hey there my friends on the internet bbbdbjbdjsjfbjdbsfd” and I just couldn’t continue… and it was like that the first 50-60 shots.
I even thought I was dumb or anything, no, can’t lie to you, I’d never think that, but I thought something was wrong with me, until I found out the first few videos were just like that for most people.
Once you get used to it, you will start making them as if you were talking to a friend.
3 Be yourself
Everybody is fun in a different way, you are fun, show it, don’t copy others. There are millions of people willing to watch and follow you.
4 Write clickable titles even if they don’t have the proper keywords
It’s not all about keywords and tags, and I don’t think it has ever been.
All SEOs know is optimization, and all they teach is optimization, that’s why there are a million articles where to place your keywords, yet I haven’t seen one SEO popular on You Tube, they are all boring as hell.
Getting tons of views and comments is tied with how cool your video is, and not with how optimized your title and descriptions are. I’m telling you, optimization is not writing a blog post description, it’s about being interesting.
Make the video, upload it to You Tube with a clickable fun title (even if it doesn’t have the keyword in it), share it on Facebook and see what happens… if it is fun, it will get thousands of views on autopilot.
I don’t do that much video marketing, but I have pretty much tested everything… this one time I uploaded a hilarious video that was already going viral (copied it and uploaded it with a more interesting title), shared it on Facebook and talked about how funny that video was…
…and it got 10 000 views the first two hours, then I deleted it, cause it wasn’t mine and I just wanted to test and see what would happen.
Now I know and can tell you for sure fun titles get a lot of people to watch.
You might be like: “but if I don’t have the keyword in the beginning of the title, people won’t be able to find me”
I hear you, but when your video gets a lot of views and comments it will pop all over the place… YouTube will suggest it to people (when they search too), and there are thousands of sites that curate videos, so don’t worry, people will find you.
5 Read “5 Things Really Cool People Do”
This is possibly the only resource you need to shoot extraordinary videos, after you are done with this article you will feel awesome and ready to rock YouTube.
That’s about everything you need to know about video optimization, but if you want more cool stuff, use the form down below and I’ll send you a wealth of information for free.
Let me know if you liked this article and stay awesome.
