Discover 12 key strategies you MUST know before uploading video online.

Before we come to the conclusion on how crazy you really are, or determine how crazy you should be about web video, let us briefly go 5 years in to the past before “The YouTube sensation” began. In those ancient times, the Internet was simply boring if we compare to the social media revolution that is taking place today. Dynamic content and accessibility to rich media was scarce and technologies that supported those initiatives were expensive.

A majority of these barriers were eliminated on Valentine’s day in 2005 when the affair of streaming video technology on the web began by an idea that three former Paypal employees had. YouTube.com was launched and at the time no one could have guessed the massive impact it would have on the web. Little did anyone expect that a year and a half later their venture would be gobbled up by Google for $1.65 billion. Not bad for less than two years worth of work.

An important point that I mentioned in the last Business View issue that I will reiterate in this article is that the amount of content posted on YouTube in 24 hours is more than 3 years worth of television broadcasting of CBC, CTV and Global combined. Web audiences today are so engaged with video online that we see in many jurisdictions people are spending more time watching videos on the web rather than on TV.

So what does all this mean and how can you as a user and a business owner take advantage of the opportunities that a streaming video tool such as YouTube can bring? Without a doubt there are many ways to take advantage of this potential and you can get started with 12 key strategies that will get you rolling in the world of web video:

Start with creating a catchy video about your business or service. It should rather be an informal approach where you want to engage your audience. Now it certainly takes some art to do this properly and no one is perfect. But the ultimate goal is that you want to provide a piece of valuable information to your audience.

For example, if you are a business consultant you might want to give away free business advice. To stand out from your competitors, the information or advice that you provide must be so valuable that it almost hurts you to give it away for free. That can be used as a measure for real value. Remember, the more exciting the video, the more it will be shared online. This is why unique and whacky content becomes viral very quickly.

Drive traffic to your website through the videos: When you post video online, make sure there is a link to your website. In addition you should also embed the videos on your website and link to your video channel. The key here is to engage your audience through your video and drive them to your website. Keep in mind that your website needs to do an amazing job in converting those prospects to customers, so make sure your website is as effective as it can be to meet your lead generation goals.

Optimize your video. Don’t just upload your video online, but make sure that the title, description and keywords tags of the video file are in place for maximizing views from your target audience.

Actively promote your video: If your video starts to gain traction online, you can choose to promote or feature your video in search results very much like bidding on keywords for website search results on Google Adwords.

Customize your Video channel: For branding purposes it would be a good idea to customize the design of your video channel by adding your logo, color scheme and other branding elements. Making your channel unique can make it more memorable to your target audience, especially if you start getting subscriptions.

Do not limit yourself to just YouTube. There are hundreds of other free video streaming portals that you can use to market your video.

Add subtitles to your video: In June I had the opportunity to attend the Search Engine Strategies conference and Google mentioned that for YouTube they are working on a technology that reads subtitles in English and other languages. Not sure when this will be incorporated, but when it does happen the subtitles will be one of the factors in their algorithm for search results. Better to start thinking about this now than later.

With that I am out of words once again for this article and if you wish to be notified of the remaining 5 strategies, please subscribe to our newsletter before Halloween.