Ilove videos, and I love YouTube, because of all its videos. I also love YouTube because it is where I’ve had some of my biggest success stories while spreading the seeds in my dandelion puff around the world of social media. I’ve already told you about my bandana video, and now we’ll look at that in detail, using it as an example for what can happen when you use videos to spread your dandelion seeds. You’ll be amazed at the information you’ll be able to gather about your King Consumers, your products, and your social commerce strategies. First, let’s take a look at YouTube and how you can effectively use this platform to widen your sales funnel, increase your SEO rankings, gather UGC, build your brand awareness, and give your customers what they need, which is a big part of customer relationship management. Looks like a glove full of Five Fingers, don’t you agree?

YouTube is rich soil for you to explore as you scatter your dandelion seeds. According to the site itself, over 1 billion unique visitors land on YouTube each month. That’s not considering the ones who come back all throughout the day and use it instead of TV at night. Those aren’t unique viewers, but they are potential Kings with eyes on the platform you’re about to occupy. Don’t like what you now find on YouTube? Well, give it a second. Every day, seventy-two hours of new video is uploaded to the site, and every month the YouTube audience collectively spends 4 billion hours watching those videos. You can keep up with these ever-expanding numbers on YouTube.

If you’re not that into video, you still need to use YouTube as part of your social commerce plan. If you’re asking why, I’ll answer with a question of my own. What do you think the number two search engine on the web is? Bing … nah, wrong! Yahoo … they wish, but wrong again. It’s YouTube. If someone is searching online it’s likely they’re either searching on Google or YouTube. If you spend lots of energy optimizing your content for Google, it does not automatically rank on YouTube. But when you optimize content for YouTube, it automatically gets optimized and shown in Google searches, too. It’s worth a little extra effort, I’m sure you’ll agree.

So, just what is so captivating about YouTube and, even more importantly, video? It’s simply moving pictures with words and music, duh! Yep, and that is it! That is what is so intriguing to the masses. It is so not rocket science. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is one hundred times more intriguing to us than plain text. I’m going to show you how to take all that human interest in video and turn it toward your business. Our objective? Simply to create videos that will entice, attract, inform, and intrigue your King Consumers.

JOHN’S VIDEO SUCCESS STORY

You already know about my bandana-folding video and how much bang I got for the zero bucks and little bit of time I invested in it. I’ll use my bandana video throughout this chapter to share some techniques and tips for making successful videos of your own. I’ve had such a huge response to it that all the data it generated can be useful to you as you step off into creating your own videos.

It all began one Saturday afternoon when I decided to put my video camera on a stand, set up a table, and show my customers how to fold a bandana; I was getting so many questions about this, it seemed a quick and easy way to answer a bunch of people all at once. As I write this, that little video has had 275,269 views, which have directly generated 20,821 sales transactions. I traced this data through Google analytics. That’s a pretty respectable return for one video that took me less than thirty minutes to make! Not only that, but take a look at Figure 9-1. It’s a screenshot of a recent Google search for videos to help the searcher learn how to fold bandanas.

If you type these exact words into Google, “How to fold a bandana,” you should see results similar to these, only the numbers will be higher. When I did it today, here’s what I found: From 731,000 search results, my video falls on the first page, and it is above the fold. It’s right there where people will see it without having to scroll down! So anyone who types that phrase into Google’s search engine can see my quick and easy video instructions. You’d click that link if you were looking for this information, wouldn’t you? How much value would your business get by being listed first on the results page of a Google search? Is it better to be right there near the top? Of course it is. Well, you know I’m not all about hype, and no one can guarantee any one single act on social media will bring you social commerce success, but if you want to increase the chances your business will appear in a Google search result like mine did, your best chance, in many cases, is to use video.

Figure 9-1

Again, you cannot plan to make a viral video. It just doesn’t happen that way. The reality is that you don’t need a viral video. You need a video that your King Consumers and their friends will find interesting and useful. The spread of that video will then happen organically, without your having to be the one to spread it around.

As we begin this task together, I’d like you to keep two things in mind that I think both contribute to having success on YouTube:

 

1.  You need to know some of the questions people are asking on any given topic, so you need to keep listening with your social ears.

2.  When you answer the question in your video, use the exact words your Kings will most often search with in the video’s title.

 

I admit, I was a bit surprised by my video success, and I’m not promising yours will have the same result. But since I posted this video, I’ve learned a lot about what makes one video more successful for e-commerce than others, and it involves a lot of details that you can easily duplicate in your business.

YOUTUBE VIDEOS FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Identifying your audience is very important when making videos. Don’t be put off by having to create such an exceptional video that everyone will want to see it and share it. That’s too much pressure. Instead, focus on making things better for your existing customers. If you make a video that enhances the experience your current customers have with you, they will go out and bring you more customers. Here are a few examples of topics to help you get started. “Five Cool Ways You Can Use Product X” or “Three Ways Product X Makes Your Life Easier.” These are videos that will enhance your customer’s experience with your products or services, and that’s more likely than anything else to generate sharing among your Kings’ networks.

Since your content is 100 percent relevant to the people who are already buying from you, they’ll have reason to share it with others they know who like your stuff, too. And unless you sell something so obscure that only a few people would know about it, your Kings’ presence and yours on the Internet’s two most popular search engines will also expand your audience to new customers no matter what else you may do. When really, all you’re doing is talking to your own customers! Now that’s pretty powerful.

But What Should My Videos Be About?

If you’ve never made videos for your business before, it can seem a little intimidating. First, you want to reduce that anxiety by remembering that YouTube is the home of the amateur video. Nobody expects to see Hollywood production here people, so take a chill and keep some perspective. It’s actually pretty easy. Begin by taking a look, once again, at the five or ten most frequently asked questions about your business, and start there. Sit down in front of a camera and simply start answering those questions. If you begin simply, you can focus more on getting comfortable “talking” to the camera, and because you’ve answered these questions a gazillion times, you don’t even have to think too hard to do so. If, in the end, you’re just not comfortable in front the camera, find someone who is or do a slideshow using just your voice.

Here are some examples of video topics:

 

•  What types of payment do you accept?

•  How are my purchases packaged for shipping?

•  What shipping options and delivery times do you offer?

•  How can I combine orders to save shipping costs?

 

Now, will answering any of those questions result in your hitting it big on YouTube? Of course not, but each one you answer with a video could save you from ever personally having to answer it again, and that saves time and ultimately money.

Once you’ve created your videos, embed their links right into your FAQ pages. Because this content is so highly relevant to your Kings, the videos will get watched, and by the people you want to watch them. A confused customer buys nothing, but a customer who has a question that is quickly, easily, and professionally answered by a human is no longer confused. These videos are guaranteed to increase customer conversion, and you know I don’t make those kinds of promises unless I’m really very sure of them.

But that’s not all. We all have customers who ask the same questions no matter how well-produced, well-placed, and robust our FAQs pages are. Some people still just need to ask a person. Now, every time you get an e-mail asking about a topic you’ve got video for, you can respond with a brief but friendly e-mail that contains the link to your video. Not only does this save you time, but it gives your tentative customer a great impression and a personal look at how you treat your customers. You become real to them in ways no e-mail can make you real, and that’s great for converting a browser into a buyer. Plus, these videos pay off for infinity! You record a video, upload it once, and it just stays on YouTube without you having to do anything else. The return on investment is astronomical, because the initial investment is just an hour or so of your time.

Educational videos are also fantastic ways to start building your YouTube presence. You know so much about your products that you are an insider when it comes to using them, maintaining them, troubleshooting them, and everything else related to them. Your Kings don’t know as much as you do about what you sell, but they know they like it. So, if you can help educate them by teaching them something new about the products they buy, you’ve got a great source of video content.

Have you ever tried to teach someone something through print? It’s hard! It’s also very challenging to end up with interesting text someone wants to read. Video works much better for any question with the word “how” in it. Now, all you have to do is turn your camera on and create a video in which you show your customer what he or she wants to know. I think these are some of the easiest videos to make. You can easily demonstrate step-by-step instructions to show your Kings what they need to see. Focus on the task, so the camera disappears a little. The result will be more natural, as though you really were simply showing someone what to do, because that is what you’re doing.

So, to answer your question about the content of your videos, make them educational, informational, and relevant to the people who have already proven themselves interested in your work. That’s a great place to start your YouTube adventures, and the more videos you make and post, the more ideas will come to you, and the more videos you’ll want to make and post!

Make It Easy for Your Kings to Find Your Videos

Once you’re ready to go with your videos, you’ll need to make sure your King Consumers will find them. Before you set the cameras rolling, think about how you’ll optimize these videos in search results. There are basically three main areas you can focus on to make your videos as easy to find as possible.

First, think carefully about the title. Use the keyword you are targeting in the first few words and the last few words of your title. You’ll notice if you look back at Figure 9-1 that “bandana” is one of the first words I used when I named my video. (By the way, spelling my keyword “bandana” came from my keyword research. I found that more people used the variant spelling, with only one n, instead of using its main spelling with two. I would never have known this if I hadn’t taken my time to do my keyword research.)

Your most important keyword should be no more than three words into the title. If you cannot do this, simply use the keyword first, like I did, and follow it with a colon or dash, then add the title. So if your keyword is “camping,” but you’re demonstrating a hunting knife, then you might title the video, “Camping: How to Clean a Fish with a Hunting Knife.”

Remember, not all search results include videos, but you can bet that 90 percent of searches that include “how” in them do. People love using YouTube for the how-to videos. Wouldn’t you rather let someone show you how to do something instead of just telling you? So if you search for a how-to video related to your products and don’t find one, it’s just because no one was smart enough to think of putting one up there. You are, so go for it. Just be sure to put the words “how-to” in the title.

Next, consider your video’s description, which appears on YouTube underneath its title. Begin it with the URL of your items landing page, not your home page, but the actual page where people can press the Buy button! Look you’ve already sold them on the product at this point, so don’t make them search around your site to buy it. Let’s get this party started on the first click!

After your URL, be sure to pepper the description with your keywords, not overstuffing them, but including all those that will likely occur to your Kings as they search for information about what you sell. But don’t sacrifice good solid product description for keywords. We’ve got tags for that!

Finally, your tags. Okay, here you can stuff keywords as much as you’d like to. Be sure to include all the other related keywords and key phrases in this area. You don’t have to repeat the ones you used in your title or description, so go ahead and add all the relevant ones you can think of.

HOW TO MAKE GREAT VIDEOS

Let’s turn our attention to some of the ways you can be sure to offer your King Consumers the best possible videos. Understand that this is fun and creative, not stressful and anxiety producing. You don’t have to feel intimidated or self-conscious when you begin, because you’re the content expert here. You can do this even if you’ve never posted a video to YouTube let alone edited a piece of video. Plus, YouTube lends itself to all types of videos, and there’s a place for the ones you’ll create there, too.

Amateur or Professional?

In my opinion, amateur is the way to go. If you make your video too polished, you run the risk of turning your Kings away, because the result will not feel genuine but more like a sales pitch or commercial instead. YouTube’s culture is built on ordinary people uploading things they think are fun or interesting. If you go overboard with production, this savvy crowd of video viewers will spot your pitch in a heartbeat, and then you’ve lost them. So, that’s great news for you! You can stop worrying so much about the final product, because what you can do easily and simply is good enough, and in this case, good enough really is good enough.

I’m not recommending you make really sloppy looking videos. I’m only saying content trumps production on YouTube every single time. Focusing too much on your production will actually defeat your purpose here, so don’t go renting special cameras or hiring people who know how to use them, and no special sound equipment, either. You got a camera on your iPad? Use it. You got a camera on the phone in your pocket? Use it. The video you produce will fit right in. If you’re not satisfied with the video you get at first, you can always go back and tweak it or reshoot it. Right now, getting your videos done and creating your YouTube channel is way more important.

You Will Need Some Equipment

Okay, so we’ve got the camera part covered, but that’s not the only thing to consider. What you may need to buy is some lighting. When making videos about products, you want your viewer to be able to clearly see what you’re doing, and properly lighting your set and products will help. Maybe you already have lights that you use when taking photos for your listings, but the ones I like are so inexpensive that you can easily keep them just for video-making. My first video lights were simple clamp lights I bought at Home Depot. I think my total investment was $16.94 for the pair. If you already have a couple of clamp lights hanging around the house, you can save yourself a trip.

I put my two lamps in the room and point them up at the ceiling to brighten the space. The key is that you want to add light to the area you are shooting in. You don’t want to shine the lights directly onto the products you are displaying, because then you wash out their details with glare. If your set is well-lit, your video will look great, and your products will be shown in their best light.

How Long Should My Videos Be?

There is a great deal of disagreement about how long your videos should be. Many “experts”—and I use that term lightly—will tell you never post a video longer than five minutes. One of the most powerful and viral videos of 2012 was the thirty-minute piece about Joseph Kony, the brutal rebel leader from Uganda. So, who is right? No one is.

The point of your video is to get right to the point. Don’t bother with introductions, product background, blabbity, blah, blah. If you want to demonstrate something about using your product, get started right away. They came for answers to the question “how-to” so get to the meat and show them. If it ends up taking you seven minutes to complete your demonstration, but all seven of them are actually usable and relevant, then your video will be seven minutes. We’ll be looking into analytics soon, and we’ll revisit this subject of length then, but for now, make your videos clean, to the point, and relevant. We’ll worry about timing soon enough.

Edit Your Videos for Clean Results

To get those clean results and keep your videos tight, you’re going to need to use some editing software, which can be intimidating to someone who has never worked in video, but it shouldn’t be. You’ll find some editing tools right on YouTube. As the site has matured, the people at YouTube have recognized the need and answered it with embedded editing features. You can do everything from trimming, to overlays, to adding action items right on the site. That covers the basics. If you find you want more functionality, you do have some commercial choices. I especially like iMovie and Final Cut Pro from Apple. (We’ll talk more about them soon.) I use one of these for the more robust stuff I want to do. That doesn’t mean you should go right now and buy either one of these. You just don’t need the big guns to accomplish simple edits and get professional results. That’s possible with the free tools.

I think the iPad camera is superb and it has such an easy interface. I bought an iPad tripod mount for about $30, and now my beloved iPad has become my video camera, and I use it to make almost all my videos. The real value of using it though, is the video apps you can buy in the Apple app store. Apps are a fraction of the cost of the desktop software, and they are much easier to learn and use. With these, my iPad has become my portable photo/video studio. I can take video with it, edit the video, and then upload it to YouTube, Facebook, or wherever I want it to go, right from this one single device. The results are professional and quick. As you know, I like to get to it, get it done, and move on as simply and inexpensively as possible.

Video Meme-Jacking

In the early part of 2013, a little thing called the “Harlem Shake” took off and revived a tired old piece of music, taking it to heights the original song never saw. Before this phenomenon ran its course, the song had reached the top of the charts, knocking down established artists like Bruno Mars, Rihanna, and Drake. All the buzz didn’t even start with the original recording artist. What this means is that it became a meme.

A meme is simply anything that goes viral on the Internet. Don’t feel too bad if you haven’t tapped into the power of memes yet, or even if you don’t know how to pronounce the word. I was at a networking event recently when a well-known “Internet Guru” kept referring to it as a “meemay,” kind of like something you’d do with the kids on a Saturday morning arts-and-crafts project! It’s actually pronounced mm (rhymes with beam). You’ve seen them lots of times.

A meme can be a video or a photo or even an expression that has caught on in popular culture. Today the meme gets passed around in various forms on the web. By definition, memes are viral. They’re all over the place, sometimes crossing over from online to off-line print and TV ads. They become part of the cultural mix we share with everyone else on the web, and you can use them to your best advantage.

When the Harlem Shake meme took hold, it suddenly seemed everyone—individuals and organizations both—started posting versions of their own dance interpretations of the song. The meme’s momentum began to build on February 10, 2013, when the upload rate of versions of the “Harlem Shake” to YouTube was about four thousand a day. On February 11, about twelve thousand versions appeared, garnering more than 44 million unique views. By February 15, about forty thousand videos of the “Harlem Shake” had appeared, totaling 175 million views, in less than a week!

The song went straight to the top of the charts, both domestically in the United States and internationally. That was great news for the artist, Baauer, and his label, Mad Decent records. And instead of worrying about copyright infringement, Baauer and his label made the most of the wild ride. They issued one takedown notice to established artist Azealia Banks when she tried to upload her own version, but they turned everyone else’s use of it to their own advantage. They used YouTube’s Content ID database to assert copyright over the fan-made videos and claimed a portion of advertising revenue from the site for themselves. That’s social commerce at its best!

Now we call the grassroots, bottom-up spread of the Harlem Shake phenomenon a symbiotic viral meme, meaning that culture and business came together. Because a meme is so fleeting, traditional advertising agencies or brands can’t respond quickly enough to use it. But you, with your quick-and-ready video creation, can. Tie your product to a meme, and you’ll be on the way to big SEO benefits.

THE WELL-EXAMINED LIFE OF A YOUTUBE VIDEO

Analyzing data … I’m not going to lie. I love this part of social commerce. Yes, creating videos is fun, and I love the engagement with my customers, but analyzing the data I get is the best part to me. That’s where I can figure out how to make more money. You can, too! Happily, YouTube offers you a robust set of analytic tools built right into the site. These easy-to-use measures give you some very, very powerful information. Look over my shoulder now, and I’ll show you what I learned from analyzing the more than one-quarter million views I’ve gotten from my bandana video. All of these figures represent a period of ninety days of viewership prior to the reports.

The first thing I want you to notice is where people are watching my video. That’s where Figure 9-2 helps, because it shows you what devices people were using to see it. I noticed that 49.9 percent of viewers used the regular YouTube page from a PC or Mac. Another 43 percent viewed the video on a mobile device. This is fascinating and valuable information, because now that I know mobile viewers are very important, I’ll know how important it is to design my videos for the mobile experience, such as making the text on my videos larger than it would have been back when I was formatting it just for the desktop computer.

Shorter videos are probably more likely to get viewed if your King Consumers use a mobile device. I’ve also noticed from running these analytics routinely that mobile-viewer share is growing monthly. These are signals I need to pay attention to.

Figure 9-2

Now let’s look at the analytic metric that identifies where my Kings are coming from when they view my video. Figure 9-3 shows that 1,969 viewers came from a YouTube search, but an additional 1,213 came from external sites and Google searches. You can see that the YouTube content you create can be indexed in many different places. Below the box in Figure 9-3 you’ll see the number 457. Those visits come from having my video embedded in other sites. This is very fascinating to me, because I never embedded this video anywhere else. Nope, wasn’t me. Nearly 8 percent of my traffic came from the social sharing of others, the ones who are embedding my video on their sites. Some of them are my competitors. Yes, you read that right. My competitors are embedding my video on their sites. Do you think I should make them take it down? Hell no! This is the best thing in the world. Now I’m on their sites and stealing their customers and becoming an authority on this topic. Thanks guys!

Figure 9-3

Figure 9-4

Finally, I want to show you how YouTube analytics break down my viewer demographics. I’m only using US viewers for this example. You can see in Figure 9-4 that 64.7 percent of the viewers are male and 58.2 percent are between the ages of thirty-five to sixty-four. Even though I originally made this video intending to reach the younger hip-hop crowd, I see now that more mature viewers are also wearing bandanas and trying to figure out how to fold them. This led me to try and figure out more about this age group and learn what they use bandanas for.

I did a short three-question survey and saw that many of my older viewers were bikers, campers, and scout troop leaders. Now I can tweak my messaging and target this surprising demographic tidbit with my advertising. This type of actionable information is very important when trying to convert the video viewer into a customer!

YOUR YOUTUBE TOOL KIT

To make it simple, I’ve divided these tools into software that can be used with Mac, PC, and an iPad. You decide which is right for you.

Tools for Mac Users

•   iMovie for Mac: This is Apple’s popular video authoring tool. With it, you can import video clips from external devices or from anywhere else. Then you can arrange them on a time-line, shuffle them around, and preview the results. When you’re happy, you can create a final video file suitable for burning to DVD or uploading to share with others.

•   Final Cut Pro: This nonlinear video editing software was developed by Macromedia Inc., and later Apple Inc. The most recent version, Final Cut Pro X, runs on Intel-based Mac OS computers powered by OS version 10.6.8 or later.

A Tool for Windows

•   PowerDirector Deluxe: This software offered by CyberLink provides the easiest and fastest way to create and share your videos. With hundreds of editing tools and more than one hundred built-in effects, you can easily turn your videos into something special in no time.

Tools for iPad

•   iMovie for iPad: You can make beautiful high-definition movies anywhere with this fast and fun moviemaking app. It puts together everything you need to tell your story, and all that is right at your fingertips.

•   Pinnacle Studio: Here’s big-screen moviemaking for the touch screen on iPad. This one offers you a great amount of editing technology in an easy-to-use app that will let you quickly edit video, audio, and photos “at the speed of your creativity.” You’ll find it at PinnacleSys.com.

SUMO LESSON

For this Sumo Lesson, I’m going to let my coauthor, Deb, take the lead.

Okay, John. Hi everyone, I’ve been here all along, but I wanted to pipe up now with my little YouTube story.

I live in a tiny agricultural town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In town, we have maybe two thousand people, but I wouldn’t bet on it being quite that many. The town has been here since before the Revolutionary War, and it’s still farming, all the way. Nestled in a pretty little valley, it has been a great place to live for hundreds of years, and people tend to stay here for generations. Having lived here almost twenty years, we figure our family will be natives in another hundred years or so. Anyway, living here is a little like stepping back in time.

Every September, as the harvest season is passing, we have Heritage Day. The county deputies close Main Street, blocking both of our traffic lights! Everyone spills into the street for a parade and party. The parade is a trip! The high-school band plays. We have the entire high-school homecoming court moving in convertibles down the street. There’s the coronet band, which has been entertaining since 1892, probably with some of the same members. The local churches all have floats. The scout troops march, the 4-H Club brings animals, and every politician in the county makes an appearance. Everyone throws candy, and the party lasts all day.

One year, my husband decided to post a couple of short videos of the parade on YouTube. I laughed at him. Who on earth would care about our hokey little parade? Well, shhh, don’t tell him I said so, but he was right! His little clips have more than one thousand views. Plus, there are a couple of dozen other videos posted now, too!

So, what is the business lesson here? Well, there is pretty much an audience for any niche. If you have the content and a good story, you can capture people’s attention with a video. I never thought anyone would care about our little parade, but clearly, some do. The lesson I learned was that I need to give more thought to where I can find a deep little market niche that I can fill with my story.