YouTube Tips and Tricks For Bloggers – Part 3

This is the final installment of my YouTube marketing tactics series. In part 1, we covered how to approach video marketing, as well as what to include in your recordings for maximum impact. In part 2, we discussed the importance of optimizing the Title, Description and Tags of your video, and I included a few cool tricks to help you “snipe” traffic from other popular videos.

In part 3, we're going to cover some tips and tricks that you can do with your video after it's uploaded. Much like with blogging (and iPhone apps), the work should not stop once your content is live. There are a few things you should do before you can just let YouTube and the Internet do it's thing and drive traffic to your videos and ultimately your blog automatically. Again, it's about putting in the hard work now, so you can continuously reap the benefits later.

Place the Video on Your Blog

An easy way to increase traffic to your video is to show it to an audience that you already have! In addition, if your post Title matches the title of the video (and tags and urls as well), then you're giving a nice boost in SEO to both your video and your blog post at the same time.

I used this technique in my keyword research experiment.

When you include a video on a blog post, be sure that you also include a link to the YouTube video as well.

Why?

Because many RSS feed readers will not play the video, but if you have the link in there as well (preferably with keyword anchor text), then you'll be all good to go.

Blast it Onto Social Media Platforms

This is a given.

If you're on Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere else on the web that has (targeted & relevant) people following you, then post links to your YouTube video.

Bonus Tip: Instead of just saying: “Check out my new YouTube video…”, why not post a tweet or a wall post that has a good reason for people to click on it to watch, for example:

• Whoa! Lots of controversy on my latest video—check it out! (insert link)
• I almost didn't publish this video. You can see why. (insert link)
• Doesn't my hair look awesome in my latest video?! (insert link)
• I need your opinion on my latest video. Too much powerpoint. What do you think? (insert link)
• This may be the only video you every need to watch about [niche]. (insert link)

You get the idea. Put your copywriting skills to the test, and get more clicks to your video!

Utilize the Video Responses Option

If you haven't noticed already, underneath most popular YouTube videos there is a section called Video Responses. These are videos that people have submitted as a response to the particular video that is loaded.

Many people strategically place their own videos as responses to popular, highly viewed videos so they can “ride the back” of the traffic of that particular video. It's another easy way for you to get a lot of exposure on YouTube.

To post a video response to another video:

1. Find a popular, highly viewed video. The more relevant to your response video, the better.

2. Click inside the comment field immediately below the video, and then click on Attacha Video.

3. Here, you can either record a video response using a camera for your computer, or choose a video that you've already uploaded to YouTube.

Please understand, however, that your video responses will not post automatically. If they did, there would be spam everywhere. Your video must first be approved by the person who uploaded the original video in order for yours to be shown with it. In many cases, if your video is somewhat related, it will indeed be approved by the owner. If not, no worries—just try it again on another video later.

Annotations

Annotations are severely underutilized in the “blogger gone YouTube” world. I'll admit that I don't use them as much as I should either.

If you don't know what an annotation is, it's an ugly, small little popup that shows up on top of the video that has some text inside. It reminds me of “Pop-Up Videos” on VH1 from way back in the day.

Here's how to make them for your uploaded video:

1. Go to your “videos” area to see all of the videos you've uploaded.

2. Find the video that you want to create annotations for, and click on Annotations at the bottom.

3. Use the timeline to create as many annotations as you want!

They are ugly, but that's good.

Why?

Because you can't miss 'em—as you can see below:

You can change the shape the the annotation and select from a few different colors too, but what's most important is what you put in them.

At the beginning and end of your videos, you should have an annotation that asks your viewers to either subscribe to your channel, leave a comment or a rating, or all of the above. You can add more in the middle if you think your video needs it.

Again, this is another simple way to provide a call to action to your viewers that may otherwise not be there.

The Video Thumbnail

The video thumbnail, or poster frame,  is the picture that shows up when ever your video is shown around YouTube. The thumbnail itself can have a huge impact on your traffic because an eye-catching picture will get clicks, and a dull one will get lost in the sea of other dull thumbnails.

Fortunately, we can choose our thumbail (yay!). Unfortunately, we only have three choices that we do not really have control over (boo!).

Or do we?

We can actually strategically “place” optimized pictures within our recorded videos at the perfect time for YouTube to capture them as one of our 3 options. There is some math involved though.

Here's how it works:

X = Video length (in sec.)
Y = X divided by 4 or X/4 (in sec.)

Y is the 1st thumbnail.

2 times Y or 2xY (in sec.) is the 2nd thumbnail (poster frame).
3 times Y or 3xY (in sec.) is the 3rd thumbnail.

For some, this may be too much. To be honest, I don't strategically place pictures in my videos. But, I do make sure to go into the “edit” section of my YouTube videos to select the most eye-catching option. Which of these three do you think I use for my video?

Well, I hope you've enjoyed my YouTube series for bloggers (and non-bloggers too!). Thanks for all of your support, and I wish you all the best! Please spread the word if you have the time by retweeting or sharing this article. Thank you!

Cheers!