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Justin Briggs

Pumping Up YouTube - SMX 2009

by Justin Briggs in Media on Oct 06, 2009

This is more of a recap than a live blog post. I’ve had a few technical problems blogging this week, so the posts are coming in a bit late.

Moderator: Christine Churchill, President, KeyRelevance.com

Speakers:

  • Matthew Liu, Product Manager, YouTube, Google Inc.
  • Ciarán Norris, Head of Social Media Marketing, Mindshare Worldwide
  • Manny Rivas, Associate SEO Account Manager, aimClear

Although I do SEO all day, I was pumped about this session on YouTube. YouTube has become one of the largest search engines on the net, so naturally I couldn’t miss out.

Manny Rivas

Manny from aimClear is the first up to share information about YouTube basics and aimClear’s findings.

YouTube Is Massive

  • The 2nd largest search engine
  • The 4th most visited web site
  • 20 hours of video are uploaded every minute
  • An average viewer in July of this year watched 8.3 hours of video online

(Basically, YouTube is way too big to ignore)

Reasons Businesses are Utilizing YouTube

  • Externalize resources
  • Focus group
  • Expert advice
  • Advertising
  • Video contests
  • Customer service

Ranking Factors for YouTube

  • Title
  • Description
  • Keyword tags
  • Annotations
  • Comments
  • .....

The list is too long to type out in time, but it’s not nearly as complicated as traditional SEO, which has over 200 factors.

(Once the slides go up, I’ll expand this list)

Steps for Taking Advantage of YouTube

  • Optimize Your Content
  • Engage the Community
  • Monitor Performance
  • Creator’s Corner

Optimize Your Content

Competitive Intelligence

You need to know who you’re up against.

  • Search your keyword phrase to see how many competing videos
  • Check the top ranking videos
  • Look at title, description, tags, views, and upload date
  • Look at statistics options in a tab below the video
  • Check referral information
  • Check demographic information

Keyword Research
Like traditional SEO, keyword research helps you identify what keywords to target in your title, description and text. There are a couple of great places to look for keyword information.

  • Suggestion Query Box
  • “Also try”
  • Wonder Wheel
  • Youtube Keyword Tool
  • Google Adwords Tool - for blended search results

Get More Eyeballs

Getting on the list of the most viewed videos will get you more views.

Tip: Use promoted video to increase views

You can also find more places to promote your video by looking at related content and by observing comment fields.

You can use your own network to push the video further. YouTube recently added “Find Your Friends”, which will pull in your contact list from GMail. In addition, you can push your video across your social media network to produce even more views.

Engage the Community

Why Engage the Community

  • Ranking correlation
  • Visibility within YouTube
  • Networking

Monitor Performance

Master YouTube Insight Analytics

To really monitor your video’s performance, you should master YouTube Insight analytics.

Information from YouTube Insight

  • Mobile phone usage
  • Comments
  • Rating
  • Play time
  • Rewinding
  • Exit points

Creator’s Corner

A great resource for creators of YouTube videos. Including advice on how to optimize your videos.

Matthew Liu

Matthew gives us some advice directly from YouTube.

Before using YouTube, it is important to define your objectives.

  • Views
  • Engagement
  • Conversions

Get a full picture.

The Basics of Improving Video Rankings

Title

Create an accurate and descriptive title

Description

Create accurate, unique, and complete descriptions. Use complete sentences.

Tags

  • Include descriptive tags
  • Avoid keyword stuffing

Community Options

  • Share video with members of the community
  • Experiment with annotations, video responses, and thumbnails
  • Avoid spamming users and rating your own videos

Embeds

  • Turn embeds on
  • Embed videos on websites to make your videos more discoverable and easier to find on the web
  • Embedding is almost always positive

Viral Videos Through “Free” Marketing

Guerilla Marketing

  • Use subtle branding and stealth marketing efforts
  • Seed to news, sites, blogs
  • Use YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook to fan the flames

Examples: Kobe jumps over car & Guys backflip into jeans

Explicit Marketing

  • Communicate directly with Youtube Community
  • Use Video responses, subscriptions, comments to engage in dialogue

Example: Tiger Woods 09 - Walk on Water

Paid Marketing

  • Use YouTube Promoted Video to seed discovery
  • Use YouTube home page ads for massive reach
  • Use other ad platforms to drive traffic to YouTube watch page
  • Organic traffic oftentimes exceeds paid traffic after initial burst

A paid campaign helps “put gasoline on the fire” when a video launches.

Use Insight analytics to better understand your audience. Use this detailed information to better understand discovery, demographics, and keywords. This data can be used to plan future actions.

Promoted Videos - Paid Discovery for YouTube

It is like Adwords for videos. These ads work on a CPC basis and include thumbnails and promotion text. Many advertisers have seen great results. Some promoters have even seen more success on YouTube than Adwords. For some products, visual ads are better. As a result, some have had lower CPA on YouTube than Google.

Let Users Engage Further

The JCPenny videos are used as an example of engaging users further.

  • Create many videos and messages
  • Use annotations, thought bubbles to cross promote videos
  • Call to Action Overlay - allows you to drive traffic back to your site

Use Channels for Deeper Engagement

  • Use a custom background
  • Have a personality
  • Turn on comments
  • Have featured videos
  • Create a playlist

Ciarán Norris

So, what is “Viral Marketing”?

Ciarán shares the massive quote for Wikipedia ...  it’s not very clear

His definition: “Cool s#*t that people like to share”

Content isn’t king, conversation is. Content is something to talk about.

YOU CAN’T MAKE VIRAL

You can have a strategy.

First things first:

  • People - does social make sense
  • Objectives - sales or brand
  • Strategy - strategy for engagement
  • Technologies - end with technology, only after you know you should be on YouTube

Ciarán shares the Forrester ladder of users, from most engaged to least engaged.

  • Creators
  • Critics
  • Collectors
  • Joiners
  • Spectators
  • Inactive

Great Viral

Two of greatest viral are YouTube and Hotmail. In both cases, sharing was built into the product.

Two Greatest Viral

  • YouTube
  • Hotmail

Sharing was built into the product.

Will It Blend? iPhone

A great social and viral campaign. They used YouTube, a mini-site, and the main site. Traffic spiked during the viral campaign on all sites. The result was a sales uplift of 650%.

Great Unbranded Videos

  • Guy Catches Glasses with Face
  • Test Your Awareness: Do the Test - Dancing bear video

Test Your Awareness: Do the Test

Two Actions From Test Your Awareness

  • Share with friend - to make sure they’re not the only stupid one
  • People would watch it again, so they doubled their views

Piggyback On Other Ads

You can create great viral videos by piggybacking on other popular viral videos.

  • Cadburry Gorilla Ad => Wonderbra Girl on Drums (“two cups full of joy”)
  • Tipping Pot (Guinness Spoof)

Wonderbra spoofed this… You can imagine. It did well.

YouTube Tips

  • Headline - make them exclusive!
  • Thumbnail - put it in the middle
  • Comments - let them roll
  • Referrers - refer them

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