Last month, we spent some time discussing five mistakes that kill your YouTube videos. This month, we are going to focus on some simple tips to keep in mind when making your videos to help increase their exposure and audience attention.
TIP #1 – Your Video Should Be a Continuation of the Link
The majority of people who view your videos will come through some form of referral. This could be a link you shared in an email or on social media, an ad you’ve run, or maybe through another YouTube video. Because of this, the content that people are expecting to see is very specific.
When you create your videos, you should keep this in mind. What is going to be the ad that draws people to the video? If you’re going to draw people in with an offer of information, then the video should get to that information right away. For example, if the link to the video said “Weekly market report,” then the video should begin with the weekly market report, or some information pertaining to it.
TIP #2 – Start With Information Before Your Introduction
One of the main reasons people create content for YouTube is to further their branding efforts. With this in mind, many YouTube videos start with a logo followed by an introduction of the host and often a little bit about them or their channel. As mentioned in my previous article, this opening (8-10 seconds) will lose you roughly 30 percent of your audience.
While I can appreciate the importance of branding, I would say to start with content and bring your branding in after your first point. For example, if you are doing a weekly market update, you might want to start with something along the lines of, “The market is trending way up this week. Homes are selling 28 percent better than this time last year and 34 percent better than the same time last month. I’m Michael Darmanin, and this is your weekly area report. We are seeing the most…” Start with something that gets their attention—something that they are looking for—and then introduce yourself.
TIP #3 – Views Do Not Mean Success
A misleading measure of how successful your YouTube videos are can be the number of views the video receives. Many people point out examples of “great” videos because they have several hundred or a few thousand views. While this may seem like an obvious measure of success, the thing to remember is that those views come directly from your marketing of your video. What the number of views does not tell you is how long people stayed with the video, or how much of the video was seen at all. A video that someone clicks on and then immediately closes is not a successful video. If anything, the number of views is a measure of how successful your marketing of the video was.
If you truly want to learn about how successful your video is, then you will need to look at the analytics that YouTube provides. Those analytics will allow you to deep-dive into the specifics of how the video is performing. While having a greater number of views is a good thing, do not allow yourself to assume that because of the number of views, that the videos do not need improving.
TIP #4 – Your Call to Action Must Always Be On-Screen
This was mentioned in my previous month’s article, but is worth repeating. Arguably the most important part of your video is the call to action, yet it is almost always left for the very end of the video. Keep in mind that the longer the video goes, the more the audience drops off. Necessarily, the least viewed part of the video is the very end. In fact, there are many times where people watch a video nearly all the way through, but once the wrap-up begins, they close out of the video.
Instead of saving it for the end, keep the call to action on the screen the entire time. I’ve seen many different ways to do this, the most common being to have it on the bottom of the video. If you have a couple of different calls to action, then consider rotating between the two.
Wrap Up
YouTube/video marketing can be a very effective way to market yourself and build your business. In order to capitalize on this, you must make sure that your videos are sharing your message and retaining your audience long enough for that message to get through. Keeping these tips in mind when creating your videos will go a long way towards reaching that goal.
Michael Darmanin is COO of Sellstate Realty Systems Network, Inc.,
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