Start-Ups and Self-Employed: Video for Success

Video

 

Consumers like video because it’s easy to watch on any device, entertaining and engaging, and marketers like it because it can give a potentially huge return on investment (ROI) through many channels.

Our appetite for video is at an all-time high.  YouTube alone is logging one billion hours of video watched per day.  The topics for videos can be anything related to your business:
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For example, as a health care professional, you can advise on nutrition, sport, well-being, or answer frequently asked questions from patients.  As an architect, you can explain to potential customers what to look for when acquiring a property, or which questions to ask the municipality before purchasing.  You can also teach viewers about the stages of building a home.

If you are a cook or a patisserie chef you can teach how to create a dinner for twelve, or how to bake a Black-Forest Cake.  Also, exciting for viewers are videos that deal with ‘behind the scene’ topics.  In one sentence: the possibilities are endless!  And so are the ways to promote your business via videos.

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Marketing specialist and author Larry Lubin wrote in Contently how video can help to drive leads: “You need high engagement to retain an audience.  Video content lays the foundation for product consideration, the step before the conversion phase.  At least forty-seven percent of buyers will view three and five pieces of content before they consider a purchase.
Consumers like to watch video content. It helps them form an educated and informed decision as to whether your product or service is the right choice. 1200% more shares are generated by social videos than text and images combined. Marketers who use video receive 41% more web traffic from search than non-users.”
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Several types of videos will persuade customers:

• Explainer videos (focused on industry topic)

• Live-streams/presentations

• Questions & Answer videos

• Video case study

• Video product tour

• Product demos

• Tutorials

• Expert interviews

• Customer Testimonials

• Behind the scenes

• Explainer animations

• Live webinars

Larry Lubin explained: “A study from Animoto found that four times as many customers would rather watch a video about a product than reading about it.  Additionally, prospects who watch product demos are 1.81 times more likely to purchase than non-viewers.  The video format can also be pretty powerful when utilized to boost sales.  And you can use video to promote up-sell opportunities once prospects become clients.”
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The internet is an ultimate short-attention-span arena.
This means a video is better suited than text to communicate
with (potential) customers and to get your message across.


YouTube is the second most popular search engine today.  So, use it to your advantage.  But how to achieve it on a tight budget and with little or no video experience?  Product demo videos, client testimonials, and how-to tutorials are efficient ways to expand your brand and increase sales.  Online videos shouldn’t be longer than two minutes.

Take advantage of the SEO benefits of online video.  Create an intriguing title, fill in the description (100 words or more).  Then add keywords (aim for 8 to 10), and geotag it for the business address.  Take the full URL of the website as the first item in the description for a live link.


Where to Share Videos

Videos have the potential to be an incredibly successful and valuable part of marketing campaigns.  However, only provided you share it everywhere: on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and other social media sites. Write a blog post (or several – every other week – for your website and mention the latest video in your email newsletter.  The wider the audience is, the more views the videos will receive.  Notify all friends, followers, and acquaintances about the new video you have uploaded.  Ask them to re-tweet or post video links to their friends and followers.

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Steve-Jobs .

Learn From Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs from Apple was a “master” of the “pre-launch.” The company is able to cause a massive buzz about their next “life-changing” and “revolutionary” tech gadgets.  They never wait until the product is on the shelves before they start to promote it heavily.  Pre launches are a fantastic way to stir up excitement and curiosity about both: you, your video and the company. 


Don’t just rely on others to promote your video (viral marketing) for you through their networks.  If there is one major mistake, it is to wait until a video is finished before promoting it. A nnounce the launch of the video as an event – especially announce it on all the industry forums, on LinkedIn, and other social media sites.

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Brainstorm even deeper into your assets and research how and where else you can promote:

• Relationships (personal, professional, familial, or otherwise)

• All the Media contacts

• Research information from past launches of similar products – what worked, what didn’t, what to do, and what not

• Pick a competitive product to yours, track all the places they got press, all the attempts they made

• Collect lots of back-links
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The quality and quantity of links pointing to your video will boost its rankings in the search engines.  This will also increase traffic and views.  Get backlinks by adding the video URL to forum and blog posts.
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Place Videos on Amazon and Goodreads

Published a book?  Place videos about the books’ content on your Amazon Author Page! Moreover, you can share video interviews of business launches, new products or services with the readers of your “how-to” books.  In Author Central, click the “Profile” tab.  You will discover sections for adding or changing the biography, photos, videos, a book trailer, speaking engagements, events and blog feeds.  You can add up to eight videos and choose the order in which they appear on your Author Page. 

My advice: Join the free book site Goodreads.com too, where you can also place your business and “how-to” books and add an author profile.  Now, how to attach a video to Goodreads’ author profiles?  You can add a video to an author profile as long as it’s hosted on YouTube.com or Livestream.com. To upload a video, follow these steps:

• Copy the video URL

• On Goodreads, navigate to the author profile 

• On the left side, you will find a “Videos” section.

• Click “add new” on the right side of that header

• Paste the code into the “Video URL” box

• Enter any extra information (title, description, etc) and save

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Mention your videos also on your LinkedIn page – and in all the professional articles you write on LinkedIn.  
Always include the video URL in the author resource box, when submitting guest blog posts or articles for e-Zines or directories.  Link from the website or email signature to new videos you upload to YouTube or other video websites.

 

Excerpt from:

111 Tips to Create Impressive Videos –
How to Plan, Create, Upload and Market Videos

https://www.books2read.com/u/3GYnpa

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BYDH41S/



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