YouTube Marketing
Video marketing is an extremely powerful medium to market your small business. They don’t charge you a fee to host your videos on their platform and they are very affordable in terms of marketing too. They have a feature that you can target your audience but did you know that if you use their platform properly, you can rank a video in your local marketing for FREE and quickly too!
Increase your Ranking with Video
SEO
Most people don’t think of YouTube when it comes to SEO but it is a very powerful platform that is owned by Google. Google recognized the trend of video watchers early on and they knew the trend was shifting from consumers reading to get their information to watching videos. There are several areas when posting a video that provide strong SEO opportunities, but the main two are the title and the description. While there are other powerful keyword and geo targeting areas that are available with setting up each area, neglecting the title and the description is a waste and will more than likely end with your video not being found.
Contact Us
Video Content
While we strongly recommend to create polished branding videos to brand your company (more on affordable methods later), we recommend the vast majority of your video library be “homemade style” videos that are packed with valuable content. EX: If you are a home theater installation company. Do videos on speaker placement, another on seating, lighting, etc… Oh and don’t forget product evaluations. Whatever your niche is, create content using a cellphone speaking on the topic from your level of expertise. This is extremely helpful for consumers to make buying decisions.
The Actual Video
As we discussed previously, today cellphones offer amazing video quality with little effort and not a lot of extra investment. Just keep in mind a few key elements, no one wants to watch a video that is excessively shaky. We recommend using a tripod or some sort of gimbals to stabilize your shots. Secondly, audio should be taken into account. Again, cellphones do have good quality mics built in but they have their limitations. One of them is distance, if you are going to be a few feet away from the camera, we would strongly recommend using an external mic. There are several types available but an affordable lapel mic will be ideal for most applications. Lastly, lighting. Natural light usually produces the best results but keep in mind that you can’t film into the light. Also, try to balance the light when possible. Having a shadow isn’t always ideal. Again, their are many styles of lights used for videography and many are affordable and work well at casting a warm even light on the subject.
Higher Video Quality Productions
There is no substitute for hiring a professional videographer that offers high quality post production editing. However, as we said before, there are some affordable options out there that work with iPhones and iPads to create really great looking videos that can look really professional with some effort. We recently shot a high school graduation because of the lock down restrictions using an online company called Switcher Studio. This program is truly impressive allowing you to use up to 9 iOS devices to capture video from different angles. It will allow you with a touch to change angles, add logos or graphics, zoom in on a certain camera, change things like shutter speed and aperture. It will also utilize the device’s light in various ways too. So, if you aren’t looking to invest thousands into having a professional video(s) created, we strongly recommend gathering up a few devices, spend a light money on the software and maybe invest in a quality microphone and additional lighting (if needed) and get to filming.