Monday, October 21, 2013

Are You Viral Ready? - Succeeding on YouTube

By Kim Tarasiewicz

Anyone who has posted a video on YouTube would love to see their video go viral. Let’s face it, free advertising is good, and YouTube's 1 billion users make tempting targets.



But of course, in the world of marketing, there are no guarantees, and competition is fierce. About 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute - and only 1 percent of all videos posted will go viral. That means most of our videos will be seen only by those who are looking for them.

There are, however, ways to increase visibility for your videos. Here are a few:

Create high-quality videos that do not appear to be advertising. Great production value can increase the time your audience is willing to spend viewing your post. The video doesn't need to be long; in fact, 2 to 3 minutes should be the limit to increase viewership.

Support your video by using keywords in your titles and creating unique content. Be sure to include a high resolution thumbnail image that can be seen easily, as larger percentages of viewers are now searching on their smartphones.

Capture interest by writing content with defined keywords for best search results. Words, not necessarily videos, will show up in search results,  so it’s important that the text entices a viewer to click on your videos. Only the first 160 words will appear in the search results so use the first sentence as your “teaser.”

Google recently released a new search algorithm called Hummingbird which searches by the user’s intent rather than just keyword results. This will change the way results are listed for videos, requiring people adding keywords to use more conversational search words.

Promote yourself - and let others help along the way. Be sure to allow access to your video when posting on YouTube so it can be found. Use social media like Twitter and Facebook to promote your video and ask colleagues to comment and share it on their networks to increase viewers. Ask viewers to subscribe to your channel and then use that list to send new video links when you post them.

But even with all these tips, the best advice is to produce great content. Focus on creating stimulating videos that will attract your target audience. Make it interesting, and they will come. Provide viewers with content they need or will enjoy to keep them coming back to your channel.

Once you’ve got great content, paying attention to details and using social media to promote it will increase your chances of earning new views on your page, thereby increasing visibility for your brand.

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