DareDevil Marketing

Video marketing is nothing new and its here to stay. I know you’ve heard a million times before that you should be using video to market your products, your websites, and even affiliate products. But, if you’re like me, you have some barriers in your way.

For example, my video skills suck. They suck so bad that it really isn’t really right to describe them as “skills.” In addition to my videos skills being so horrible, they are not alone: my graphic design skills are atrocious and my programming skills are…well, non-existent.

Actually any kind of skill that demands that the outcome is aesthetically-pleasing has completely passed me by. Simply put: I lack all ability to make something look nice.

However, for all my shortcomings, I’m actually pretty good at figuring out what my target audience wants. And I’ve learned that if you give them that, they will forgive your lack of design skills.

So when I make a video for YouTube, it’s often nothing more than a series of still images or frames stuck together in – more often than not – Windows Movie Maker. Unless I’m severely mistaken, Movie Maker comes standard in all Windows editions from XP to the upcoming Windows 7. In case you happen to have lost yours, you can get a Beta version here.

Most of the slides I stick in my movies are of relevant images and text that I create in Adobe Fireworks. Of course, Photoshop can be used for this as well and if you happen not to have photo-editing software, you can grab a free copy of Gimp which will handle this simple task quite easily.

I use these videos for product reviews, general information, and even announcements of upcoming product/service releases that I’m promoting. Link your YouTube video to your squeeze page and make your target audience a great offer and its literally list-building on auto-pilot.

Windows Movie Maker also allows you to overlap sound as well, and I like to use the open-source software Audacity to tweak my intro/outro samples just right. As for what music to use, I typically use some upbeat music I find by searching the dozens of royalty-free, commercially-usable music depos out there. Techno-ish music typically works very well but make sure you match your music to your content appropriately.

Sometimes I don’t even use music and just record my voice over the slides using a microphone and Audacity.

Or I use Camtasia or other screen-capture software such as CaptureFox.

The point is that making YouTube videos is seriously simple stuff.

If I can do it and get great traffic then you can too. There’s really nothing to it and once you’ve done it a couple of times, you can bust out one or two videos and have them live in less than an hour.

Seriously.

In fact, in the time it takes for me to fumble my way through this post, I could have had two new videos live pointing traffic to one of my websites.

One way that I make my videos go the “extra mile” for me is by re-using them over and over in a non-spammy way.

Now, understand that YouTube is not a fan of this practice since, ideally, they’d like to limit the amount of identical videos they host as much as possible.

However, if people are searching for blue widgets they may totally miss out on a video related to all widgets, including blue widgets, if it’s not properly optimized for the term “blue widgets.” The same goes for people looking for yellow widgets, red widgets, green widgets, and son on. So it only makes sense to optimize the same video for each term you are targeting, thus helping more visitors find your relevant video (and thus, website). Hense, you will have a video titled “Red Widgets” and another titled, “Blue Widgets” – all using the same actual video.

Without getting caught, of course. And that has proven to be quite easy as long as you take minimal precautions.

First, you want to alter the file name of the actual video each time you upload it. For example, I want to use the video titled “Widgets.flv” that’s currently sitting on my desktop. Well, the first thing I have to do is open up Windows Movie Maker (or any other video editing program) and, after adding a watermark with my domain, I’ll make a final “splash page” that says something like “For more information on bargain Blue Widgets visit www.yourbluewidgetsite.com” or whatever you want. This screen is very important.

In the time editor, make the screen stay there for at LEAST 30 seconds after the actual video has ended. Why? Because most people will notice there is at least 30 seconds left in the video and will sit there and wait for what happens next…all while staring at your blue widget domain name.

I get soooo much type-in traffic this way it’s ridiculous.

After you’re done editing the video file, rename it to “BlueWidget.flv” or anything else that makes it unique from all the other versions of the video you’re going to be uploading.

Upload it to the YouTube account you’ve created solely for the purpose of promoting widgets and be sure to use your main keyword as the title of the video. You can add a few more words to make the video more compelling (ex: Blue Widget Secrets, Blue Widget Expert Explains How to Get 55 mpg on Your Blue Widget, etc.) just make sure that your keyword is at the beginning of the title.

Now, repeat this process for every one of your target keywords, taking great care to vary the length of time that the last screen plays after the video ends. This time difference will throw off YouTube’s surprisingly efficient video recognition software that is set up to detect duplicates. I’ve extended that last screen out to nearly 5 minutes more than a few times. Hey, whatever works, right?

As an added layer of protection against duplicate video flagging, you can use software to change the file format to make them unique. For example, you can upload “Blue Widgets” video in .flv and the “Red Widgets” video in mpeg-2.

Keep switching it up whenever and however you can. The less your pattern is detectable, the less likely your videos will be needlessly flagged and possibly deleted by YouTube’s overzealous software.

Remember, your *main* account should be the name of your website and/or your product.

If you choose to make multiple accounts, name them your target keywords. I typically do something like this:

Say you have 5 major keywords you want to target. We’ll call them kw1, kw2, kw3, kw4, and kw5.

So you’ll have your main account with 5 videos. Video 1 will be named kw1, Video 2 would be named kw2, and so on…

With your other accounts, you would name them as follows:

Account 1 named kw1 – two videos named kw5, kw4
Account 2 named kw2 – two videos named kw3, kw1
Account 3 named kw3 – two videos named kw2, kw1

and so on…

Do some keyword research on Google’s Keyword Tool and find variations of your target keywords that get good traffic, but not so much you can’t rank for it. Make your videos that exact keyword. Put plenty of keywords in the tags and write up keyword rich, unique descriptions. MAKE SURE YOU PUT YOUR WEBSITE LINK AT THE VERY TOP OF YOUR DESCRIPTION. Don’t make them go digging for it.

***IMPORTANT***

If you’re planning on using multiple accounts, be aware that YouTube is SEVERELY cracking down on this tactic. You have to use a fresh proxy for each account. There’s a whole art to doing this and I’ll try to answer questions as best as I can but I won’t give ANY GUARANTEE that you account won’t be banned. If you want to be safer than sorry, just stick to one account and upload videos titled with different keywords.

Lastly, YouTube is constantly chasing after the spammers and constantly updating their security measures and protocols with no warning. Remember, its owned by Google now so it should come as no shock at all that their disclosure policy on such issues are exactly the same: no disclosure.

Just keep pegging away and you’ll find what works for you.

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