You’ve tried article marketing, blog marketing and almost every social media marketing opportunity out there, but perhaps you feel there’s still something missing? In many cases the one element that many internet marketers are missing is video marketing, which is surprising as it has proven to be incredibly successful for those few who have really invested the time and effort exploring this avenue.

Although the statistics for sites such as YouTube would suggest that the online world is already more than flooded by videos, the truth is that the overwhelming majority of these tend to feature teenage boys falling off bikes and skateboards, people tripping and falling over, or people’s attempts at karaoke and lip syncing. In other words, there’s still relatively little quality, informative content, especially when you compare it to blogs and article directories.

But what this really means is that if you create quality videos, and you market them correctly you can often find that the rewards are both rapid and sustained. All it takes is the same planning and effort that you invest in article marketing or blogging, but applied in a slightly different way.

One of the first questions people tend to ask is how to create a video themselves. Some people won’t because they’d hate having their face up close and personal with thousands of strangers, being assessed and criticised the world over. Others don’t feel confident with their speaking voice (I have a speech impediment!), and still others think you need high quality video camera equipment and editing software.

In fact none of this is necessarily true, and you don’t even need much of a budget. For the really camera shy there are several software products out there which will actually convert written text to speech, and even written text to a fully animated and narrated video. If you have a reasonable budget then you could always pay a friend or colleague to narrate or even star in your video. You could even pop down to your local amateur dramatics group and ask a member there if they’d record one or two videos for a fee. I recommended a friend do this a few months back and it turned out to be an incredibly successful partnership.

You don’t need high quality cameras or editing software either. Don’t forget that this video will be compressed anyway for speedy broadcast online. A modest home video camera will do, and a free video editing package such as Windows Movie Maker will be perfectly adequate for the majority of people.

What you put in your video is simple. You could take an article or blog post and read this out, or have your article writer create an article especially for the video. That’s all it really has to be – the same content as an article or longer blog post, and then used as a script.

But remember, once you’ve produced the video and uploaded it to somewhere such as YouTube your video marketing isn’t over – it’s just begun. The next step is to make sure that you apply good solid SEO techniques to your video. First of all, the title should be rock solid SEO proof. For example, if your keyword phrase is “SEO video marketing” then it’s best to include this, plus perhaps a call to action or promise. So your title could be “SEO Video Marketing – Insider Secrets Revealed”.

Don’t forget the description too. This should be written in much the same way as your SEO articles and blog posts. Make sure the keyword or keyphrase is in there, preferably near the beginning, Get plenty of semantically relevant vocabulary in there, BUT – make sure the whole thing sounds natural, and engaging. Don’t write the description purely for the bots. Make sure that you include your web address in the description, and at the end of your video too.

Next add the tags, just as you do with your blog posts, and then you’re ready to start marketing it. It’s a good idea to include a link to your video within your author resource at the foot of articles, and in the occasional blog post. Don’t spam it, but include it in blog comments and forum posts, and spread the word across social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. The video will not replace this sort of marketing, but will be a resource which can be marketed itself, and which will, once this has been done well, reward you with a great deal of sustained traffic and interest.

Have you used videos as a viral marketing tool? Let us know how you got on by leaving a comment below, and please feel free to add any points that you think I may have missed.

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