A non-real estate client recently contacted me and asked why her self-produced videos were not getting the high viewership numbers that that the video she hired me for were getting. First off, I totally encourage my clients to produce their own videos - this is a numbers game and, unless you totally embarrass yourself, producing lots of videos can only help. However, you must create professional-grade videos as bookcovers for these videos, lest prospects and clients think you run a second-rate business. Put another way, self-produced videos look great in the video library section of your website but not on the front page.
That said, I want you to be successful and help you improve your self-produced videos. The secret to some of my successful videos is:
1. People need to easily find your video. Here's how I do that:
a. It must have a wide and targeted distribution - this is the equivalent of net-fishing and fly-fishing at the same time. Net fishing gets you bigger numbers but doesn't necessarily catch the kind of fish you want. With fly-fishing, you basically know which fish you are going to catch with which fly.
b. It must have a keyword-rich title blended with some mysteriousness and a call to action. Titles are weighted pretty heavily in the search algorithm and just as important, if not more important, to the keyword tags. It is more important that your title attract the search engines than it is to attract viewers, but both are important.
c. It must have a thought-provoking thumbnail photo (which acts as the book cover). This is the first picture a viewer sees while they are deciding if they are going to hit the play button.
d. It must have a description that tells you what's in the video and why you will want to watch it. Again, why should I hit the play button?
e. It must have thoughtful keyword tags that intuit your customers search terms. Think about the keywords you use in the video and what keywords YOU might use to look for a video like this one.
2. People need to like your video. No news here but your search ranking also depends on star ratings, comments and length of visit. You want a video that hints at, and follows through with, the concept of 'thought leadership', as defined by The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing, and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly, by David Meerman Scott. The video is not about you or your business - it is about what you do, how you do it differently than everyone else and how that benefits the viewer. Your video should solve a problem, reveal a process or entertain the viewers. Maybe all three at the same time! The point is, there is no room for your ego. People can smell it in the first 8 seconds of the video, which incidentally, is the average viewership time for a video and, ironically, the minimum time needed to score points in bull riding.
Eric Robbins
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