New Tools & Techniques for YouTube Success- SMX West 2011

Hello, readers! Hope you’re enjoying our live coverage of SMX and thanks for following. In this session, we’ll talk YouTube for marketers, with tips on how to best use the platform.

Moderator: Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land

Speakers:

Aparna Chennapragada, Product Manager for Google Video Search, Google
Grant Crowell, Senior Analyst, ReelSEO
Jeff Martin, Dir Search Marketing, TouchStorm
Eric Papczun, VP SEO & Feeds, Performics
Manny Rivas, Online Marketing Account Manager, aimClear

Chris introduces Eric Papczun. He says let’s talk about “winning.” And we are starting with an autotune video featuring Charlie Sheen. [OMG, hilarious. Looks like it’s the same people who did the Bed Intruder song. Yep, he just confirmed it. Well that was a nice little afternoon pick-me-up.]

He uses this video as an example of how something can go viral and the power of it. He doesn’t know if Sheen is winning in all this, but he knows that YouTube is. YouTube is No. 5 on the list for where users go for content consumption.

You have to do something that moves people.

He is showing another video by Arcade Fire. The video pulls images from your own hometown, your own house. It’s a compelling video that asks the users to participate in the way the video plays out. It’s interactive. It really struck a chord in viewers. It’s at the heart of creating something that moves audiences.

Optimize your videos and perform video SEO.

• Two minutes seem to be the right amount of time.
• Nail your titles.
• Enable sharing and social components.

[There was more but he is fast! You can learn more from recent articles in our SEO Newsletter on video optimization.]

More Tips and Facts

• YouTube ads are very targeted, very effective.
• Twenty-seven percent of YouTube sessions contain search queries.
• Create brand channels.
• Own the YouTube home page for 24 hours through advertising.
• YouTube is the No. 1 video site for mobile.

Audience Targeting

• Age
• Gender
• Geography
• Behavior
• Language

Content Targeting

• Connect ads to keywords, buzz (hot topics)
• Individual videos and channels
• Packaged content

You have to mingle with your consumers.

He says the best example is the Old Spice campaign. He is showing the response from the Old Spice guy to Kevin Rose (founder of Digg).

Then finally, measure.

He says to get into the analytics and find out how to measure your campaign.

Next up is Manny Rivas.

He is starting with a study that aimClear conducted on Universal Search and video. He is going over the integration of content into the SERPs like videos, images, Twitter streams and more. Video thumbnails have more than a 40 percent click-through rate than links.

The objective of the study aimClear did was to look at the videos that came back in a result, then find out what platforms they were coming from, what weight they held and a few other factors.

What they found was that YouTube wasn’t the only game in town. TubeMogul is one platform outside of YouTube.

They also found in the study that videos show up in Google in one of 11 “packs” in the SERPs — there’s horizontal, vertically and other ways they are returned. The most common is two-pack videos. Bing only brings back videos in packs of four typically.

The results of the study:

[The slide shows a woman with a pregnancy test, everyone laughs. He says “Yes, confirmation! Marty did not laugh at this slide.”].

Don’t optimize the video with “buy” terms. Using informational-type keywords brought back video in the SERPs. Ranking in the platforms help showing up in Universal SERPs; 100 percent of returned videos in the SERPs ranked on the first page of the monitored platform.

Next up is Jeff Martin. He is going to talk about maximizing views with YouTube tools and third-party tools. Remember, views beget views in YouTube.

Tactics using your existing videos:

• Annotations. Areas of text you create after you upload a video. Can make links to other content of yours.
• Call-to-action overlays. Quasi-ads that are yours. Drive viewers from the video to your site. Enter video into promoted video program.
• Video responses. Get more content in front of your viewers. Rotate your videos. It’s good for engagement because users can create videos in response to your content.
• Playlists. Good for getting content to the top section of the “related videos” list. Use more popular videos to drive newbies to more of your content. Playlists can appear in search results. It’s sporadic though. Playlists have a unique URL that you send people to.
• Captions. Captions are indexed by YouTube and Google and are used as signals; also good for the hearing impaired. Don’t force optimization in your captions, before you produce the video, do the keyword research first, then write your scripts.
• Activity feed. Mass communicate with your friends and subscribers.

Third-Party Tools

• Avoid features that automate liking or disliking, try to simulate video watching, that spam comments and users’ inboxes.
• Look for features that find users, related channels, visibility and engagement levels.

Grant Crowell is last. He is having us switch gears and talk about a topic that may have never been talked about before at a conference. It’s the legal side of video.

He found a lot of legal issues going on with YouTube and users. He said a lot of people’s accounts are being cancelled because they aren’t following the guidelines. No one really pays attention to it.

Consequences include video removal, account cancellation, loss of business, civil lawsuits, criminal charges. Anyone can complain about your videos, too. Your competition can be one of them.

He said someone is actually facing court time for a YouTube prank. His name is Evan Emory [you can Google it].

Check out YouTube legal resources. The terms of service is one place to explore.

Who owns the video – you or YouTube? YouTube doesn’t take away ownership. But, you have granted them all the rights to use it however you want. You can file online with the U.S. Copyright office if you’re concerned about copyright infringement.

If YouTube is an important part of your business, talk with an attorney in the media space. He is talking about a free legal video webinar by Saper Law Offices.

Questions and Answers

Aparna Chennapragada is from Google and she is going to participate in the Q&A session. First, she wants to share a couple thoughts.

She says video is very exciting, but very early and a lot of chaos still. It’s tricky, the hard part is that there is very little text Meta data. As a content provider, think carefully about the information you can provide about the video so that it can be presented for any given query.

Q: Chris is talking about some of the video sites being content farms and how the Google algo update recently hasn’t affected them, what are you seeing?
A: Aparna says Google factors in Universal Search in the quality algorithm.

Jessica Lee is the founder and chief creative for bizbuzzcontent Inc., a marketing boutique that focuses on digital content strategy and professional writing services for businesses.

See Jessica's author page for links to connect on social media.