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- Film Everything
- Vocals
- Natural
- Creativity
- Embed
- Monetized
The following is a guest post by Jason Miner. His bio is at the end of the article.
YouTube is more than just a location that allows anyone to make videos to share his or her experiences. Many businesses are seeing the usefulness of creating videos to promote products and/or services. But, can this be a worthwhile venture for your own needs? Absolutely.
Although there are many who will still read the content of your website, you are missing a large demographic of those who regularly watch videos on YouTube. You can generate a great deal of interest in your business and perhaps create an additional revenue stream.
Film Everything
Regardless of what your website or business focuses its attention on, video can be made of it. Videos of the actual service you provide can help make a sale if a customer were to see what it entails. There is only so much that a text description can accomplish for products and services. Demonstrating these items will allow customers to see the item in action. Even “how-to” videos can do exceptionally well, especially if they are highly detailed.
Any business can provide video content of some kind. Some of the more productive videos are those that show viewers how to accomplish a specific task. If your company specializes in landscaping, videos of grounds maintenance could be beneficial. If you are a freelance mechanic, videos on preventative maintenance for vehicles would supply you with a whole library of content. Any aspect of your career could be used to make an informative video. You could even go so far as taking a page from reality TV and filming yourself working on your specific job. Home improvement specialists such as Bob Vila have been doing this for years.
Vocals
Many people make the mistake of altering their voices for video or audio commentary. While you may need to speak up in order for the microphone to record your voice, changing your style and tone of natural speech is not necessary. Speak in a casual tone like you would a client or customer describing a product.
Sometimes, people get incredibly nervous when on camera and feel like they need to speak in a professional tone. Clear and concise language is all you really need when speaking to the camera. As long as your audience can understand what you’re saying, you don’t need to deepen, heighten, or otherwise speak any other way aside from what is natural to you. Imagine the camera as nothing more than a client or customer that you are helping with your product or service.
Natural
Some people will get nervous in front of the camera and try to become something they’re not. You don’t need to become Walter Cronkite. Just be yourself and all else will fall into place. As long as your message is clear and concise, you don’t need to emulate the behaviors of others. However, it is a good idea to face the camera with as much energy as you can. This doesn’t mean you have to be bouncing off the walls like a squirrel on crack, but you do need to face the camera with energy and a presence that you want to be there.
The most successful actors and talents are those who are excited to be in front of the camera. The more energy and excitement you can portray, the better off you’ll be. However, you don’t want to come off as a hyper-active nine-year-old with a bag of chocolate covered espresso beans in your hand. A good night’s rest the night before can help you greatly. You need to enjoy being in front of the camera or the videos will suffer. Talk about something you get excited about and others will get excited as well.
Creativity
If you are doing a video based on products and services that your business conducts, it doesn’t hurt to be creative. However, you don’t need Steven Spielberg to direct your video. As long as your content is easy to understand and follow, your videos will be accepted by those looking for information.
If you have someone in your staff that can add a little pizzazz to it, then all the better. Visual effects are nice to add to videos if you want to add that extra piece of entertainment. Take a look at news broadcasts. That scrolling graphic at the bottom could provide a professional look and may be easy to accomplish if you have the right software.
Develop new ways to film your specific service or product. How many people have videos of mowing the lawn from the mower’s point of view? Time-lapse videos are always fun to watch especially on large projects involving construction. Windows Movie Maker has that ability built into it which you can capitalized for free.
Embed
Creating a video for YouTube in regards to your business can be greatly beneficial to your website. The videos can be added to pages within your business site for additional exposure and content.
Provide a short 300-400 word synopsis of the video when embedding it and you just created another page for the search engines to index. When you click “Share” on a video in YouTube, you are able to add it to your website by using the “Embed” option. Take the code provided and put it into the coding of your website. With a simple copy and paste, you now have a video on your site for your visitors to watch.
Don’t forget to write a short synopsis of the video on the same page as it will add extra content to your site which is good for search engines to crawl.
Monetized
Once all is said and done and your video is uploaded to YouTube, it is time to monetize it. By becoming a YouTube partner, you are able to generate advertisement revenue from your videos. However, you need to make sure you aren’t infringing on copyrighted materials such as music and other imagery.
When you become a YouTube partner, the system will automatically include advertisements at the start, or possibly the end, of your videos. This will act the same way as Adsense does for your website. Each time a visitor clicks on the advertisement, you get a portion of the money spent to create that ad.
You don’t need the power of Universal Studios backing you in order to produce quality videos. You can be incredibly successful using nothing more than an ordinary webcam. Create 10 videos of your own using the suggestions above and see what kind of an impact you make.
Jason Miner plays a vital role for www.blogcarnival.com. He is helping the carnival team to grow and working on making this an even better place for bloggers.
