What the heck is that man doing?

Like life, your content and marketing strategies are all about balance. You don’t want to put so much time into producing your videos that your written posts, interaction with your followers or other communication methods suffer. Video is a very important piece of the overall puzzle but in planning your video content strategy you must keep in mind all of the pieces.

[Sidebar: For more on leveraging web video on your site download my free 20 page report here.]

Creating video content can also seem a bit daunting at first, so the idea is to keep it simple until you get the hang of it. And you will get the hang of it. Start out with a simple introduction or product demo video and once you get the process down move up to a regular video post schedule. Ideally weekly or even bi-weekly, but if your schedule doesn’t permit make time at least once a month. Whatever works for you well enough and is not stressful. Making videos can be really fun to do but only if you are not forcing yourself to produce them on an unrealistic schedule.

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Lately search engines, like Google, have been becoming more video friendly. However unless you properly optimize your video content, it can be a challenge for search engine ’spiders’ to find them.

At first the complete video SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy may seem a bit overwhelming and time consuming. But you will find that most of the steps quickly become second nature and the increased traffic to your videos is well worth the work.

I’ve decided to break the ‘SEO Tips’ into bite size posts that I will release over the next few weeks. This way you can digest them one at a time and implement them organically into your workflow.

Naming Your Video Files:

This is a very often overlooked tactic; properly naming of your files is important as it is one of the first things search engines spiders look at to identify what it is.

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The first five to ten seconds of your web videos are the most important. If a viewer makes it past those first few seconds they are much more likely to finish watching the entire video. Therefore it’s critically important to engage your viewers as quickly as possible.

How do you do that? The first major factor is quality lighting, good audio and a clear visual image. I’ll cover those topics in several other posts, today I want to focus on video content that will peak interest and suck a viewer into watching the rest of your video. Below are a few ideas to help you get started.

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I’m sure you’ve seen videos with a person standing in a very fake looking location with the fuzzy green outline around them. It just looks bad. Even when it is lite correctly and there is no green outline- why do you want to look like you are floating through space, have a swirly blue wall behind you or worse yet riding a roller coaster. Cheesy! And the ‘gimmick’ factor has long passed.

Most of you are not trying to become a videographer or filmmaker- you are learning how to use video to connect with your followers and market to them in a professional manner, without taking too much of your valuable time.

Green screens are tricky to light properly, take some setup time and you have to learn ‘keying.’

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(excerpted from my free ‘Web Video Is Key‘ report)

Ultimately the content of your video is the most important ingredient in your web video strategy. Below are few video ideas you can steal or use as starting points for your own genius.

Customer Testimonials:

Time Length: 1 to 2 minutes.

Testimonials from current customers go a long way in convincing new people to purchase you product and service. On video, those testimonials become even more powerful. Contact customers that have already given you positive written feedback and ask if they would be comfortable doing one on video. Hopefully you can find at least few people with a webcam or the know-how to do a quick video. If they know how to digitize it they can send it to you through a service like yousendit.com or they can always mail you a tape. There is some leg work involved with this type of video, but the end result will be a very powerful marketing tool.

Quick Tips:

Time Length: 2 minutes.

People love tips! And tips they can get quickly are even better!  Shorter than a ‘how-to’ video this type of video focuses on some aspects of your topic that can be learned or improved upon quickly. Ex: 5 Quick Tips for Saving Money on Airline Flights, 7 Tips to Making Your Blog Posts More Interesting. Use text overlays to highlight key words or points.

(OK, you might have thought of those 2 but I have 3 chances left…)
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One of the main reasons more bloggers and internet marketers don’t take advantage of the marketing power of web video is that they are “camera shy” or don’t like how they look or sound on video.

It’s true that most people have a strong aversion to being on camera. This is a very normal reaction and is actually shared by some of the major actors you see on camera a lot. They may be good with a script, character and set but the minute you have them be themselves for an interview they get very nervous.

The good news is you can condition yourself to overcome this “fear” fairly easily.
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