That’s right, The New York Times reports that YouTube has reached the 2 Billion Searches Per Day  mark!

People are looking for video content out there so, if not already, it’s a good time to jump into business marketing video! And with Google’s Universal Search, which is placing [SERP] result emphasis on video, the content raises your chances for achieving 1st page organic indexing status!

For beginners, you have to choose how you will create video. Once you do, you can easily upload the files to YouTube for free or to paid services.  TalkFusion or Veeple are paid, but they offer lots more control and a number of neat features. In each case, they will provide you with hosting, storage and what is called embed code. With embed code you can add your video to any site, anywhere! And by the way, blogsites are not onlyideal because they make that easy, but they provide a perfect platform to further describe the video content in text! And descriptive text is important for competitive indexing purposes because 1) text helps search spiders understand the video better and 2) the more places, the more views! Views are a search engine signal; a signal that brings higher search indexing in both YouTube and Google!

Warning: when you’re invited for FREE it’s a good bet your content will be used to drive the host’s revenue. Namely, YouTube can enter advertising of their choice on the front & back end of your video files. Remember YouTube is NOT your brand, just a great place to get visibility for it

Useful Business Marketing Information on YouTube:

How Do I Optimize My Video Content for Search Indexing?

Top 8 reasons to use YouTube… To 3 reasons to be concerned about it

Top 10 Reasons to add YouTube to your marketing mix, period!

Real Estate Video TV Blog

Leave it to top ReMax Los Angeles Real Estate Agent Connor MacIvor to jump in and adopt new advertising strategies. With Connor there’s never any hesitation. He’s fearless, with a clear vision for where he’s going. And now he’s perfecting the use of video content with his Real Estate Video TV Blog. With blogs already dedicated to local Santa Clarita CA Real Estate & Community, Santa Clarita Relocation and Santa Clarita REO we’re grateful to be able to ask him about his new strategy for your benefit below, but let’s look at video in general some first.

Video Content and Your Brand

Video content is something we’ve been looking at quite a bit lately. It’s become very cost-effective to create, host & work on video files with programs like Screencast, Camtasia, Eyejot, TalkFusion & Veeple; however, content and how you use it is never to be taken lightly. Content is your business asset and, ultimately, your brand! While YouTube and other FREE video platform sites are ultra valuable environments for their huge audiences, you have to understand both sides of the FREE coin. When you’re invited for FREE it’s a pretty good bet your content will be used to drive their revenue. Namely, Youtube can enter advertising of their choice on the front & back end of your video files. So while you can benefit from the vast YouTube audience, you have no influence in whether or not competitive or even compromising ads’ runs with it. Brings memories of my CBS days and Airline Execs’ moaning the horror stories of their ads’ accidentally running against morbid plane crash programming. Not good. Simply put, we think it’s important to create mobile video files easily used in different platforms. Some that you can control! Certainly branded blogsite platforms offer an ability to upload and also describe video with text, thereby, preparing it for Google and the other search engine indexes. Blogsites also offer a branded presentation of video direct to your audience and simultaneously to various social network audiences, via RSS feed. Our client demonstrates this with his completely dedicated Santa Clarita CA Real Estate Video TV Blog Site.

But enough, let’s ask Connor for his experienced view.Frerecks: “So Connor, you’ve created a complete Video TV Blog. Why?”MacIvor: “Well, it’s not just video but audio snippets & explanations as well. People like to watch TV – we ourselves are not much into any regular programming, but I have heard more and more people run their lives around television programming. We don’t think it changes when it comes to the Internet – people love to watch and see something more than just text. Search Engines love it as well, so it’s an attractive strategy for us.”Frerecks: “Has there been positive feedback or directly related new business?”MacIvor: “You know Chris, it’s not just one thing when it comes to our marketing plan and model. We hit from all different areas. Nothing as of yet can be correlated to new clients, but the video email that we utilize is certainly commented on. That has secured clients for us over our competition! And, in a short period of time, Google Analytics shows Santa Clarita Real Estate TV doing really nicely for us – very sticky, which is always a good thing.”Frerecks: “Are your video files mobile?”MacIvor: “Yes, we use a local cam & Eyejot to create & host them. I can store unlimited video files. It gives me some customization capability and embed code for loading into other platforms. For instance my blog, a website or the video aggregation sites. And that’s the trick, YouTube, Zipvo, ScreenToaster, Utterli all have my video and audio files too. The content is never viewed as duplicate either. It’s all fresh and just another way to dominate in the search engines. It’s another way to be the subject matter expert, in whatever industry you operate.”Frerecks: “Do you feel video is an effective compliment to text & image content?”MacIvor: “It’s not necessary to build a video/audio only platform. When it is incorporated into a regular blogsite – the ability to describe the files with text is very powerful. It certainly shows you’re different when it comes to the type of business you are operating. It’s also a highly personal presentation of us, not just text which in some cases might even be outsourced!”Frerecks: “As always, great stuff Connor and thanks for sharing with everyone!”

At Kinetic we recommend leveraging Youtube with your video content, where business positives seem to far outweigh the negatives.

 Top 8 Reasons to Leverage YouTube:

1. YouTube has unrivaled video search traffic & viewings
2. YouTube has virtually unrivaled overall traffic [No. 10 Overall Traffic Share 11/08]
3. What’s indexed by YouTube is automatically indexed by Google Video
4. Video has become a Google Universal Search priority [29% of all video discovered in search engines '08]
5. Google owns YouTube: it’s likely Google understands how to index Youtube video to their SERPS
6. Video uploaded to YouTube acquires media player embed coding, for usage on other sites
7. With ‘YouTube embed code’ viewings can be counted, regardless of where they occur
8. Total viewings, regardless of where they occur, count competitively toward the SEO of your video content in Google

3 Negative Reasons to be Semi-Concerned with YouTube:

1. Some loss of video quality, but if you want their traffic that may be acceptable
2. Possibly some competitive advertising, but highly unlikely for small to medium sized business
3. No dedicated Real Estate Channel, but either does Google… and you know you’ve got to be there:-)

There are several video aggregators, some dedicated to various vertical industries; however, it’s unlikely any can touch Youtube’s traffic potential for your business. Not that you shouldn’t use any relevant potential sources of traffic, you should!

Know that creating, editing & formatting footage isn’t necessarily required. Video can be created from picture images with the proper software, including rolling copy, music and/ or narration.

Overall, we feel a presence in YouTube is important for business.

Related Posts:

• Basics of Hosted Video SEO
• Low Cost Image-based Video Creation
• Marketing via YouTube

Universal Search

Google’s Universal Search, which now places emphasis on video and image content, is a dramatic shift from traditional text based search results. In effect it [slightly] reduces the chance your text-based, while raising that of all video & image- based, content will achieve 1st page search result status. After all, Google has officially announced it: they are adding video & image content where they can… and there are only so many slots available!

Forrester Video Study

A recent Forrester Research video study suggests you could be 50 times more likely to appear on the 1st page of Google’s search results with video content. In the study Forrester says Google blended non-standard content [i.e. video] into the keywords they researched [by searching] over 50% of the time. Now keep in mind, for most keywords there isn’t going to be any video! At least not yet and it’s unlikely the keywords Forrester researched are the ones that you target; however, any study suggesting a 50 times better chance should move you!

The Competition – Don’t Panic!

Now don’t be fooled, 1st page indexing is never easy!! Like with text-based content, you have to do it right to get to the top. Don’t panic if you haven’t produced any video because chances are the competition hasn’t either. And remember, as an advertorial business blogger  you’re never competing against the whole world of business… just those who share your target market. Even if they are producing video content, it certainly doesn’t mean they’re publishing it in an optimal or search optimized fashion. In fact by consideration alone, chances are you’re way ahead of the pack!

Basic Video Optimization Techniques

One thing you should know is, YouTube is the juggernaut of video and that makes it highly relevant here. Another is, the creation of video content from static images including music and/ or narration is very possible with software or hired help. In fact we do it for clients quite regularly, so you don’t necessarily have to go to the trouble or to incur the cost of creating, editing & formatting video footage. And then Forrester suggests under 20% of the marketers they surveyed optimize their video, so the good news is most of what already exists in the Youtube and/ or the Google index isn’t prepared for search competition.

Here are the top optimization techniques to increase your chances for success with online video:

1. Add targeted keywords to your video file names… change abc.jpeg to Red_Bank_NJ_Chiropracter.jpeg
2. Add targeted keywords in video titles & tags
3. Add targeted keywords in video captions & descriptions… *blog posts* go a long way here!
4. Create a video library on your advertorial business blog site
5. And because the Google algorithm counts & compares total video viewings,
 a. Create a video library in YouTube… this is where video search and consumption is happening folks!
 b. Embed those same YouTube Videos into relevant Blog Posts… this will increase Google’s understanding of the content [assuming you describe it] and potential viewings!

Reated Posts

• Tagging Your Images
• Advertising in YouTube
• Image Based Video Creation For YouTube

Need any help, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Why should YouTube be in your marketing mix? For starters, YouTube’s traffic has risen to the degree that it is one of the four most visited sites online. Plus, you don’t necessarily have to endure the headache or cost of creating & editing actual video to be there. You can use basic photo images to create video tours.

Top 10 Reasons to add YouTube to your marketing mix:

1. To date, there is very little competition for your YouTube indexed content! For instance, Google has 3,310,000 indexed pages competing for the search - san diego real estate , whereas YouTube has 331 indexed videos competing for the same search – san diego real estate

2. YouTube is the 4th most popular site for total traffic online

3.  In this chart Hitwise combined the share of 56 broadcast and cable network websites — not including news, weather, sports and shopping networks — and compared it with YouTube.

4.  Online users actively search for videos. In fact, Google Trends shows that more people are looking for videos than are interested in shopping or even news.

5.  YouTube now has 62 million U.S. monthly unique users

6.  53% of YouTube users have attended college

Here is a lite contrast of Social Networks, Blogs & Social Media

I. Social Networks

A Social Network’s architecture is comprised of a series of sites linked together around that Social Network’s identity. Active Rain, MySpace and FaceBook, for instance, are built around individual presentations of personal information inside that framework. Users can easily communicate with others in these environments using any number of applications, but those individual sites are NOT independent of the Social Network. Put in another way, it is a user’s place online… but it’s not really their own place. If free, the user helps to build a database of content for the Network, which may leverage the content outside the control of said user and in various other ways [i.e. Advertising Sales.]

II. Blogs

A Business Blog can offer its’ owner a way to communicate openly, to communicate directly and also to collect information, via comment oriented conversation, with an unlimited no. of people; however, it offers an independent presence or online brand that is entirely in the control of its’ owner. One may use it personally or for advertorial marketing purposes, but the Blog’s look, feel & ultimate destiny is completely in the control of its owner.

III. Social Media

A great example of Social Media might be YouTube. YouTube is built on individual presentations or independent pieces of content, which become available for all takers. Those pieces of content can be indexed for search, organized into category channels and commented on mostly within that framework, but they are not necessarily organized into sites and they are not independent of the Social Medium itself. Like Social Networks, YouTube offers a user a place to present content online, but it’s not really their own place. YouTube can also leverage content outside the control of its’ creator for things like advertising.

In each case, there is a potential audience… and value! In fact, a multi- layered approach to sharing content via Blogs, Social Networks & Social Media might be a great way for an individual or for a business to build its’ audience.

What is Web 2.0? Hmmm, lots of opinions out there, but I believe it has to do with the fact that Information can go where it is needed. It’s a time in the evolution of the web where information can be created & distributed without restraint. The delivery of content from creator to consumer has been … disinter-mediated.

Better late then never with this: MediaCultures has produced an invaluable view of an evolving web for people looking to leverage content. Enjoy

produced by MediaCultures.

At Kinetic Knowledge we offer a low cost, convenient, image- based Video Tour content creation service. In fact, we’ve recently submitted Real Estate Listing Tours to YouTube for folks in places like Tampa FL, Ann Arbor MI, Vail CO and Tucson AZ. This particular tour was uploaded recently and it’s seeing high rank for the most competitive searches it’s owner might target, including

• avon real estate No. 2 ,
• avon co real estate No. 1,
• vail real estate No. 1,
• vail co real estate No. 1,
• vail valley real estate No. 1,
• vail valley co real estate No. 1,
• vail realtor No. 1,
• vail co realtor No. 1,
• vail valley home No. 1,
• vail home No. 3,  
• vail co home No. 1 and who knows what else. What’s more, it’s already been downloaded well over 750 times for its’ Realtor. *One important note is the index positioning noted above is subject to change because indexing is a moving target.* 

The Google index houses massive content for virtually any search topic, whereas YouTube [which like Google sees a great deal of search traffic] hasn’t seen the competitive ‘content indexing push’ for specific search results. Seeing as how Google recently announced the YouTube video library will be a major part of their own search index, it’s an opportune time to consider creating Video Tours on products & services [i.e. Product How too Tours, Home Design Tours, Architectural Tours.]

Tours can be a terrific approach to marketing a product or a service and they can be used in Blogs, Websites, Product Aggregator sites and, particularly, YouTube [which will now push content to Google & Google Video.] For example, Real Estate Agents and Brokerage Firms, who have a myriad of dynamic content creation options at their disposal, can actually develop Listings’ Video Tour content simply with basic still images. These Product & Service Tours can then be optimized for search with tags and then posted to YouTube… where lead opportunities abound.

Pew Internet & American Life Project says that 57% of Internet users have watched videos online and most of them share what they find with others. They say 74% of those who enjoy high-speed connections download video online and that 19% do it daily. Recent Hitwise data showed visits to YouTube had increased 70% when comparing Jan ‘07 to May ‘07. In fact, Hitwise shows YouTube market share to be 50% greater than all 64 other ‘video aggregator’sites combined.

Let us know if we can help prepare your Products & services Image- based Video Tours including upload & optimization in YouTube for searching consumers today… for an incredibly reasonable price.