Feb 18 2008
Web 2.0 Do It Yourself Viral Video Submissions
Here is a do it yourself guide to promote your video:
Make a Camtasia, Pro Show Gold, or Animoto (just $3.00!) “video”. These do not have to be works of art for rankings but should be nice as they are resumes of your work all over the net.
Upload to 5-6 major video sharing sites. I will have a list up at this blog later on this week.
When you upload - be sure to title your video with a relevant keyword title.
This way your name, your brand gets maximum exposure time and again on the net along with your specific keywords.
There usually is a “description” box to fill out. ***KEY*** Make your first entry “http://yourpage.com”. Not “www.yourpage.com”. Why? Because some sites will nor make that link hyper unless the full url is there. Always add the “http://” portion.
Now skip a space or two and write a brief sentence or two about you and the studio. Give them a reason to click over to you in 2 sentences max. Don’t write a story. Brevity is king here. And add some keywords, no more than 6, after your description. Don’t stuff this bow like some of you tried with your link descriptions!
Select appropriate category - sometimes there isn’t one so select “general” or what not.
Upload. In about 6-12 hours check for keyword rankings in Google. You may show up page one. If not give it a day or so.
The second part: Web 2.0 promotion. You are signed up at 6-10 social book marking sites by now, right?
OK - get the actual URLs of your video’s address at each website and put it in a Word document. You are going to promote one or two URLS at your book marking sites.
For instance, “www.youtube.com/your-video-string” will be the web “page”, “article”, or “story” you mark at your sites. Don’t do all of the video sites at a single bookmarking sites because you are kinda spamming at that point - just one or two and you are in good graces. Write nice descriptions - cut and paste a promo piece or something about yourself, family, studio what ever. Remember, Google will eventually crawl your words so keep that in mind. Concise, keyword included, not keyword stuffed is good.
If you have a blog, take all of your video URLS and make a post. Place them in the body of your post and then write a headline for the title that is your name + keywords in the form of a short sentence:
“Rob Oresteen - Chicago Wedding Photographer”
When you post to your blog, you activate the blog’s pinging mechanism which essentially contacts RSS pining services which “syndicate” your blog post to literally thousands if not millions of other potential RSS readers and blog aggregators like Technocrati and what not. This is why a good headline is key. You never know when someone finds your post and runs with it. See Steve Holby’s post about his “Laser Video” on YouTube. No a whole lot of action at first then all of a sudden it exploded to over 10,000 views. Just one good mention on a heavily trafficked site and your blog post or video submission can go viral.
Have your friends, family, and business associates take a minute or two and mark your video urls as well.
That’s it. Once your videos are posted, blog about them and post them at social book marking sites. Rinse repeat..
Other things to do…make multiple videos targeting multiple keywords and niches within your business. The possibilities are endless.
Oh one last cool thing..search at YouTube for a key term of yours. See what the #1 video is. Make a video in response to that and it will get included with that video’s traffic! Depending on how many other people have done responses to it, it may just come up right along side it. Heck, try responding to other things that are close in topic. It doesn’t hurt to have your video pop up as much as possible. I do not know if the other sites are doing this as well - I sure some are or will in the future.