Ten Ways to Maximize Your YouTube Experience

So you’ve got a video, and you’re ready to upload your creation onto YouTube. What’s next?

1. Create a short and entertaining summary in the ‘info’ section, and ask people to comment and rate your video. Always provide an additional incentive to click through to your website. For example, “Get the recipe for the cake seen in the video HERE!”
2. Tags are important. As you watch the finished video, write down keywords that come to your head. In addition, if you know there is a link between your video and a popular search word, add this to your list of tags.
3. Take advantage of the Statistics & Data page and the Insight function by tracking ratings, # of times your video was favorited, where people are coming from, and how people are finding you.
4. Pay particular attention to the Hot Spot functionality to learn where people are leaving your video and where people are re-watching your video for next time.
5. Remember how social media = relationships? Be an active participant in the YouTube community. When someone takes the time to comment on your video, reply back. Comment on other videos that relate to your books or authors but don’t be SPAMMY about it. 
6. If you notice that there is one particular site bringing in tons of viewers, take this opportunity to promote your book by offering that site giveaway copies or author interviews.
7. Do you have a YouTube channel? Create one. Now.
8. Create a playlist to collect videos from all over YouTube on a topic of your choice.
9. Invite people to be your friends and to subscribe. Likewise, develop a community by adding videos that mention your books to your favorite list and by subscribing to authors who also create videos for their books.
10. Turn on Active Sharing and watch related videos created by others.

Photo Credit: iJustine in the YouTube Booth at MacWorld. Taken by adamjackson1984 on Flickr under Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic

Ten Tips to Make Your Book Video Great!

 Here are ten quick and dirty tips on making your book video shine:

1. Make it entertaining. Whether you’re promoting a book, an author, or your company brand, make full use of this visual medium by capturing viewer’s attention. Create a video that your intended audience will want to see NOT what you think it should be about.
2. Make it viral. Be different. Be quirky. Be the odd duck out. Stand out from the rest of the other online videos.
3. Be prepared. Create a storyboard and plan out everything. Envision the video in your mind and have all materials on hand before you begin filming. This will save you oodles of time.
4. Speaking of time. Give yourself more than you think you will need. Odds are, you’ll need to reshoot certain scenes to make things work. 
5. Prep authors ahead of time! A YouTube video may not be an interview with NBC’s Katie Couric, but most of the rules still apply: Don’t wear red or blue, act natural, make eye contact, sit on the edge of your seat so you don’t appear frumpy, etc. etc.
6. Promote! Promote! Promote! Just because you’ve uploaded your video online doesn’t mean people will come automatically. 
7. You don’t need a lot of money. These days, a simple camera and an iMovie program will produce a great video.
8. Pay attention to lighting! Grab an extra lamp, use flashlights, open the blinds, whatever you can do so your video isn’t drab and dark.
9. And in addition to lighting, make sure the sound is loud and clear.
10. Keep it short. No one wants to watch a 20 minute video of an author talking about his book (unless if the author is J.K. Rowling)

More tips specifically for YouTube will be coming next!

YouTube Roundup!

Web Videos are the hip new thing these days in the publishing industry so I went onto YouTube to see what I could find. Check out my next post on tips on creating great web videos. Meanwhile, here are a couple that caught my eye:

 

VIDEOS PROMOTING BOOKS

The story of The Castaway Pirates by Ray Marshall.

 

A film demonstrating one of the joint rolling techniques in Spliffigami by Chris Stone.

 

Animated video based on More Than Money by Mark Albion.

 
VIDEOS PROMOTING PUBLISHING HOUSES

A film for 4th Estate Publishers’ 25th Anniversary.

 

Bertelsmann created a channel called BertelsmannCareers with a whole host of interviews with their staff about their jobs.