So, you took the plunge and decided to join the video marketing revolution! But what do you do with your videos once they're delivered?
Last month, I offered some suggestions for where to post your videos. If you're not familiar with uploading video, however, the idea can be intimidating. Never fear – HouseLens is here!
We have created a series of videos to show you how to upload video to all the major social media sites—you can watch them on our website. For those of you who prefer to read instructions, I’m also going to be using my next several posts to walk you through the video-sharing process.
For all the sites I’m going to cover, you must have an account to share video, so make sure to set that up before you get started. And make sure you’ve downloaded your videos to your computer’s hard drive, since most sites require you to pull the videos from your computer.
We'll begin with home buyers' favorite video research destination: YouTube. Keep in mind that YouTube is now part of Google, so you'll use one account to log into both. If you're on Google+, anything you post to YouTube will also update to your Google+ circles.
To upload to YouTube, go to www.youtube.com and click the Upload button in the top right corner.
This will bring up the selection screen. Click the large arrow in the middle . . .
. . . and choose a video file from your computer.
Next you'll see the upload screen. This is where all the action happens!
The bar across the top shows you the progress of your video. First it will upload, then it will process. While your video uploads and processes, you can enter all the information you want people to see (we'll just deal with Basic Info, since that's what most people enter).
The first box is for the video title. Enter a keyword-rich title, one that contains the kinds of search terms people might use when searching for a video like yours. This will make your video more likely to appear in search results. E.g., for a listing video, use the full address (street, city, state, and ZIP) as the title.
The next box is for a description. Just a few keyword-rich lines are best – any more, and people probably won’t read it.
Tags are keywords that help YouTube categorize your video and match it to viewers' searches. Again, think of the terms people are likely to use when searching for a video like yours. For a listing video, for instance, consider tagging with the city and state, along with terms such as “home for sale,” “real estate,” and “video tour.”
At the bottom of the screen, choose the thumbnail photo you want to represent your video. YouTube will supply three options, which are usually pretty good. If you don't like them, you can upload a thumbnail of your own (e.g., a photo of the house) by clicking the Custom Thumbnail button.
Over to the right, you can choose whether to share your video on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter. I recommend leaving the Facebook and Twitter boxes unchecked and instead uploading separately to those sites. That will allow you to title and caption the video properly so it will be more likely to catch people's attention.
Underneath the sharing options, you can choose to add your video to one of your playlists, if you have any. Playlists are a very handy tool for organizing your videos. You might group by state, city, or property type.
Once you've entered all the necessary information, click Publish (at top right). Your video is now live!
Do you upload your listing videos to YouTube? If so, do you have any tips for other readers?
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