Nov 09
9
Book Review: YouTube for Business
The most overarching statement I can make about YouTube for Business, Online Video Marketing For Any Business (Copyright 2009, by Michael Miller), is that it is a simple book. And I mean that in a positive way.
Although, personally, I cannot say I derived much new knowledge from the book – since I’ve been creating videos for a few years now – I can say that it is a good overview of the subject. I recommend it to anyone who is getting started as a video producer for the Web.
In fact, since the above encapsulates my review of the book, and since I get asked questions about video production in general, and specifically for YouTube, I decided to write a few notes from the book so that this may serve as a resource to cover some rudimentary points.
Of course the following will not be a substitute for reading the book, and the points I selected are arbitrarily chosen for general interest. Further, I also included page numbers in case you want to learn more about a particular point. In other words, buy the book and go right to the page of interest.
Notes from the Book, YouTube for Business
The key to converting eyeballs to dollars is to generously highlight your company’s website address or 800-number within the body of the video. [p.15]
The biggest mistake that companies make is to communicate “what we do” instead of “what we do for you.” [p.23]
Be Entertaining
Some of the most popular videos on YouTube are humorous ones; the funnier the video, the likely it is to gain a large audience and go viral. It’s OK to make fun of your company, your product, or yourself, of just to treat the topic in an entertaining fashion. YouTubers like to be entertained, and they’ll tolerate a promotional message if it’s a funny one. [p.33]
Shoot For A Smaller Screen
The best YouTube videos are visually simple, with a single main subject filling up most of the small video window. [p.36]
Visual contrast is highly desirable with small footprint videos. Put a pale or white-clad subject in front of a black background, or a black-clad subject in front of a white one. And consider using brightly colored backgrounds, which pop in YouTube thumbnails. [p.37]
Be Entertaining and Informative
Being entertaining is essential, but so is being informative. [p.40]
The typical name for this combination of education and entertainment is edutainment.
People might come for the entertainment, but they stay for the information. [p.40-41]
Keep It Short
My recommendation is to keep your video no longer than two or three minutes – and the shorter, the better.
If you want to post a ten-minute speech, edit it into four segments of two to three minutes apiece. [p.41]
Avoid the Hard Sell
On YouTube, the soft sell works better than the hard sell. [p.42]
The key to marketing on YouTube is to lead viewers away from your video on the YouTube site to your company’s website – where you can then directly sell your products and services. [p.43]
Link From Your Profile
Although you can’t include a live link in your video or its accompanying text, you can include a direct link to your website in your YouTube profile. [p.45]
Technical Stuff: Compression, Encoding, Codecs and Video Files
If you want to know more about the technical aspects of digital video from this book, click Popular Digital Video File Formats for a separate post.
Professional Video Productions
The average YouTube video looks amateurish. Which is what you expect when amateurs are doing the shooting using consumer-grade equipment.
So, if you represent a big company with a big message and a big budget, going with a professionally produced video makes a lot of sense. [p.102]
Expect to pay in the range of $1,000 to $3,000 per minute of finished video. [p.103]
Video Editing
Even though Pinnacle Studio Ultimate [video editing software] costs a little more than the other second-tier programs, the quality and quantity of the special effects offered make it the program of choice for many budget-conscious video makers. [p.116]
The transition should go unnoticed by the viewer; what’s important is moving seamlessly from one scene to the next. [p.125]
Video Blogging
Because the goal of a video blog, just like a text-based blog, is fresh content, you get more points for frequent posts than you do for high production values. [p.185]
You can register your vlog posts with podcasting distribution and syndication services, such as Apple’s iTunes. [p.186]
If you have a WordPress blog, you can also embed a YouTube video into your blog using the following code: . [p.191]
You want to enable your blog/vlog for both RSS and Atom syndication.
Atom is a feed format similar to RSS, with a few extra features. [p.198]
Realize that a good video blog is just like a good text-based blog: It’s engaging, relevant, timely and personal. It’s a two-way communication between the people of your organization and your customers. It’s not an overt commercial. [p.201]
Video Promotion
If you upload videos to multiple video-sharing sites, several services can help you both upload your videos and track each site’s relative performance. The most popular of these video syndication/analysis services includes TubeMogul (www.tubemogul.com) and Vidmetrix (www.vidmetrix.com). [p.220]
You can drive a lot of traffic to a YouTube video by getting that video mentioned on relevant blogs.
In some instances, you might be able to pay bloggers to mention your videos. This pay per post (PPP) approach seems odious to some, but it’s increasingly common in the blogosphere. If you’re unfamiliar with the practice, you might want to check out Blogitive, (www.blogitive.com), a company that helps businesses build a buzz by placing paid posts with a large network of sympathetic bloggers. [p.231]
You should also promote your video on social news sites such as Digg (www.digg.com) and StumbleUpon (www.stumbleupon.com). [p.234]
If you video neither entertains, informs nor educates, people won’t watch it. That’s the bottom line. [p.240]
Create videos that offer unique value – that entertain, inform or educate. Viewers will flock to useful and entertaining videos, as long as there’s no hard sell involved. Offer value and sell subtly; that’s the key to YouTube business success!