Bottom line is, one of the most important trends in search is YouTube. So the importance of social media and marketing with video are critical to your success on the Internet. Home based business owners and Internet marketers alike would be mistaken to ignore the power of YouTube.

Unfortunately, there are many Home-based business owners that do not use it because of lack of knowledge and lack of confidence in front of the camera. I know from experience when I started marketing with video that it’s only natural to be shy and hard to find the right words to convey to your target market.  In this article, I will go over a few techniques that I’ve used to overcome all of the obstacles that may arise.

Now, let’s get into the basics of what it takes to create effective videos, no matter if you are marketing on YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo, Google, or any of the other video sharing websites.

The first thing you will need is a video camera. When choosing the perfect camera, be sure it’s a camera that is small, yet has quality picture and sound. I personally recommend the FLIP video. It’s light weight, very easy to use and uploads to YouTube directly from the camera once plugged into your computer.

When you first begin marketing with video, you should never blatantly promote your product or service. Instead, you should be providing value, information and/or training. When people see you as an expert in a certain area or industry, they tend to value your recommendations and will most likely buy from you when they are ready. Focusing on building trust and relationships is key and an important step you should take when marketing with video.

To get ideas on what to talk about in your video, do a Google search on a particular topic in your industry. For example, let’s say you promote a business opportunity that offers Internet Marketing training. There are several topics in the Internet Marketing industry. So, let’s assume that you wanted to make a video about SEO. You can simply go to Google and do a search on SEO, then read articles that others have posted about this topic and then write down the points that you want to cover in your video. Talk to the camera as if you were talking to a friend. Remember, people are attracted to REAL people. So, try to be as natural as possible.

Once you have completed your video, you may want to run it through a video editor such as Camstudio (which costs about $300 bucks) or you can use One True Media which is FREE to join but also has a premium membership which offers more options at a low costs of $3.99 a month. The reason why you want to edit your video and not just upload directly to the video sharing websites is because you want to make sure that your website URL and contact information is displayed on your video. In addition, always be sure to give a call to action by asking your viewers to subscribe to your channel and to rate and comment as well. When saving your video, be sure to give it the same name as your title, which should include your keyword or keyword phrase. This will give you great ranking. (We will talk more about this in just a few moments…keep reading).

Once you’ve finished editing your video, it’s now time to upload it. I would highly recommend using either Traffic Geyser ($99/month) or Tubemogul (Free) – (Note: the results that you get from using Traffic Geyser is worth the expense). Doing so will allow you to instantly upload your videos to the video sharing websites all at one time along with many other perks that they have. However, you will have to go to the video sharing websites to create an account first. This may be time consuming, but once that tedious part is done, you never have to worry about it again.

While your video is uploading, you will have to fill in your title, description and tags. This is the most important part because this is where you are going to optimize your video. But, first it is a must that you do keyword research. You can use Wordtracker Keyword Tool which is free to use. Or you can use Microniche Finder, which is the tool that I use and it is very good.

If you are going to use the free Wordtracker Keyword Tool, simply enter a word and hit the search button. The number to the left of the word indicates the amount of searches made on that particular keyword on a daily basis. You want to make sure that it’s no lower than 40. Then you want to copy and paste that keyword or keyword phrase into Google to see the results. When doing so, be sure to put the keyword or keyword phrase inside quotation marks. By doing so, you are telling Google to look for other websites that have been optimized for that particular keyword or keyword phrase. Be sure that the Google results are under 50,000. Anything over that will be very competitive and will take longer for you to appear on the the first or second page of the organic side (left side) of Google. Again, I would highly recommend that you invest $77 (one time) for the Micronich Finder.

Now that you have the keyword that you are going to use for your video, make a title for the video with the keywords in it. For example, the title of this article and the title of the video that I created to promote this article is “How to Generate Leads By Marketing with Video“. My keyword is “marketing with video“. Using titles that start with “How To” or “Tips” is a great way to catch attention because people want to learn “how to” do certain things. Think about it….isn’t that what attracted you to read this article? (smile).

You also want to add the keyword in the description and in the tags. Whatever your video is about, make sure you give as much detail and use the keyword in the description a few times as well. Also, be sure to include your website link (including http://) at the top in the description so that you can drive traffic back to your website. Doing so will potentially get you some targeted leads. Google has a way of reading tags and keywords, so be sure to include your keyword using these variations: (in this example, I will use the word “keyword” as my keyword)…

{Keyword}  [Keyword]  (Keyword)  “Keyword”

Using these simple techniques will rank your video very well in the search engines for the keyword that you optimized the video for.

Now that you have your video on various video sharing websites, you can now take the link to the YouTube video and start driving traffic to it by posting it on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Social Bookmarking sites, etc. Post it anywhere and everywhere that you can possibly think of which will result in lots of views, comments and ratings as well as targeted qualified leads to your website.

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