Why Redirect to a Squeeze Page?

The idea behind video marketing is to ensure that your target prospects (or viewers) get the maximum information to the prospect so that they turn into a successful buyer of the product or a service. With video marketing and with a compelling video as a marketing medium, you must ensure that you complete the sale or atleast make sure the customer is presented with the opportunity to buy the product or service when the impression about the product or service is fresh in the mind of customer.

Quick Steps

Below are quick steps that shows how you could enable the option to activate redirection. Note that this option would work only when you publish your video to your website using the embed HTML code. Refer the steps below that shows how you could do this:

1) Open your flash movie in the Full Article to Video Editor and click the Next button until you reach the Select Your Movie Background page

2) Click on the Edit Player Settings button

3) Click the Redirect my webpage once the movie is complete

4) Enter the URL that you wish to redirect to in the Redirection URL textbox

Hope this tip was useful. Though it is a very basic feature that goes unnoticed it can definitely help you improve your sales which gives you more reasons why you should consider using it.

Use Your Own Voice

Trust me, lending your own voice to the video adds the personal touch that can certainly deliver better results. The key to promoting a product via videos is to bring across the message on how your product or services could help make things easier or better for your customers. With your own voice-over on the video, share your personal experience of how the product or service helped you. Crack a joke if possible!

If Possible, Be On the Video:

If you could spare a good quality video camera, turn it on and be onthe video yourself. It couldn’t get any better to be on the video yourself. If you can do a live demo of your product or service, then don’t hesitate to dedicate most part of the video to the product demo. You can be rest assured the viewers will be glued to see how your product works. If you’re promoting a website, or a sofware or a web application, one could also use free online screen capture softwares like Screen Toaster, Screencast-o-Matic to instantly capture your screen and create a video out of it on the fly! Adding a few seconds of real customer experiences at the end of the video is a perfect way to wrap up a great quality video!

Email, Tweet and Digg

Once you have your video uploaded to YouTube, you can tickle the initial traffic from people who you already know. Just send out an email to your friend’s list – it shouldn’t take any time at all if you’re the kind that saves your contacts into groups. With just a single email, you could take your YouTube video to far many people you could possibly ever reach. With email sent, you should head straight to Tweeter and Tweet your YouTube video. Not to forget adding the YouTube video to your Facebook, MySpace and your Orkut profiles. Using social networking sites to market your videos could be termed push marketing where you latest updates are pushed to your viewers rather than you have to reach out. Finally, bookmark your video using powerful bookmarking tools such as Digg, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us. They hardly take any time but the results can be overwhelming and many times could well generate quality traffic and lots of backlinks!

Its all in the Video Title - Get it Right!

The YouTube Video Title is the first and the key factor that gets a user to view a video from the scores of videos that gets listed from his/her search. Let’s say I search for “How to Lose Weight” in YouTube. I get atleast 5000 videos listed and of the top videos that gets listed, you’ll very often that the Video Title always almost has the keywords “How to Lose Weight Fast” (yep, who doesn’t want to lose those pounds fast?). So what are we getting at? Let me put it this way – which video would I click from the list? I would click on a video that has the most descriptive Video Title. The Video Title that provides the most information wins.

Look at the following screenshot for an example. The Video Title of the third YouTube video (“How To Lose Weight Fast – Like 20 pounds in 3 weeks!”) is precise and provides a concise idea of the video content and what to expect from the video. Just the right dose of information to get the user to watch the video. The video views stands testimony to its success.

The bottomline – Word your YouTube Video Title such that it has a key fact or your most important tip/success mantra on the title  itself.  Its the deciding factor between your Youtube video being watched or being given a miss . Get the Video Title absolutely perfect – even if it takes a few hours, sweat it out. Think as to what is that you’re selling that others don’t and put this fact in your YouTube video title.

Video Description – The Double Bill

Having a perfect video title is just half the race won. You’ve almost dragged the user to read your video title, well done, however as your user reads the video title from the search results, the user eventually or probably would glance at the Video Description. Note that YouTube displays only the first 25-30 characters from the Video Description in the video search results so its vital that your Video Description starts with your most important information/tip that you’re sharing in the video. Below are quick tips for a sure-shot formula you should incorporate in your first few sentences in the Video Description.

1. The first sentence is your sales pitch – describe as you would to a customer who is likely to give you a sale.
2. The first sentence should reflect the central idea of your video so be generous to share a tip!
3. Put as much facts as possible instead of writing long sentences. This helps avoid using conjunctions  such as and, not, or, etc
4. Avoid your website address or your Company Name in the beginning – you are wasting space for valuable words that otherwise can make a sale

YouTube Related Searches – Use it Well

Related Searches is YouTube way of telling us what are the popular search terms that users are searching for. How do you use it? Make sure that your Video Title and your Video Description has the right mix of the maximum terms from those returned in the Related Searches.

Remember, though you incorporate most of keywords from those from Related Searches, your trump card to getting your videos viewed is to provide maximum information in the Video Title and Description so be generous to share a tip or two.

What is the ArticleReel SideBar?

The ArticleReel SideBar is the panel that is displayed on the right of all ArticleReel pages. Being a SideBar, it naturally suits Flash vertical banner ads,  Google AdSense ads, custom tracking code or even have a list of hyperlinks that you wish to have displayed in your ArticleReel video blog all time. Very quickly, below are quick steps on how to configure your ArticleReel SideBar:

1) Make sure you’re logged into your ArticleVideoRobot account.

2) Navigate to the URL http://www.articlevideorobot.com/videomarketing/articlereel.html?step=8.
This will launch the Configure Advanced Features page.

3) Now, click the SideBar / AdSense Settings button. The Configure AdSense Settings window opens.

4) Enter the AdSense HTML code and click Update SideBar Content

Thats it, you’ve configured your SideBar. The content that is updated in the Sidebar, i.e. Google AdSense code  or your custom HTML code will start to show up within 24-48 hours in the SideBar.

Rebuilding your ArticleReel

Just to give you some background, when you host ArticleReel on your own server, ArticleReel creates a temporary cache folder called ar_cache. The first time ArticleReel is launched from your domain, ArticleReel stores a copy of all the videos, images in the ar_cache folder. Next time on, ArticleReel will load the flash videos, images and the associated HTML/CSS files from the cache (hosted locally on your server) rather than having to load the data from ArticleVideoRobot servers. However, when you update your flash movie or make changes to your SideBar and when you do not see the changes in your ArticleReel website, you would need to refresh your cache, i.e. delete all existing files and have ArticleReel load the videos from our server. This process is called rebuilding ArticleReel.

To rebuild ArticleReel, one has to simply pass on the rebuild parameter to the ArticleReel URL. For example, if your website address is http://www.yourwebsitename.com/videoblog/ then the you would use the following URL to rebuild:

http://www.yourwebsitename.com/videoblog/?rebuild

It might take a couple of minutes to rebuild and your ArticleReel would then load your latest ArticleReel website.

When to use different video accounts?

1. Use separate YouTube accounts for your top product or service. A separate video account means a separate YouTube Video Channel. People generally search for the product or the service name when they lookup information in YouTube, hence creating a separate video YouTube Video Channel ensures very high targetted traffic
2. You’re an internet marketer who promotes many disparate products or services.
3. The video site banned your video account. Create a new account in such case. Though the ban might be temporary, its no good if you’re backlisted even once. However, make sure you cut down the marketing message in your videos when you create the new account

When NOT to use different video accounts?

1. You’re confined to a single product or service but find less video hits or traffic and decide to create a new account. Hold it! with proper promotion of your YouTube Channel (via your blog, Twitter,  and social networking sites) you could certainly bring in great traffic.

So what is the big benefit of using different video accounts? Its targeted traffic  – your chances of sales are higher through your video marketing rather distract subscribers to your channel with publishing videos that might not be necessary to them.  If you have a winner product or service , then go for separate video accounts and see your internet video marketing drive more traffic and some good sales!

What is ArticleReel?

If you’re maintaining a blog of your videos yourself, you would know the mundane tasks of putting the HTML code for each and every video and tweaking them to make sure that it fit your posts. If you’re that type that uses the New One Click Ezine Wizard,  which takes only seconds to create a video out of your article and thus end up creating hundreds of video articles, then it is a daunting task if you plan to put all those videos in your website or blog. ArticleReel is a real game changer. ArticleReel is your ready-to-use video blog  that is generated automatically from your ArticleVideoRobot videos. You no longer have to put the HTML code of each video, ArticleReel takes care of it. As soon as you create a new video in your ArticleVideoRobot account, a new video blog entry is created in ArticleReel.  Very quickly, here is a live demo of how an ArticleReel video blog looks like http://articlereel.com/?go=85. ArticleReel is a full-featured video blog equipped with interactive features such as comments, direct publishing to social bookmarking/networking sites using the Gigya widget while offering an easy to navigate gallery of your ArticleVideoRobot videos. ArticleReel video blog provides RSS feeds as well as is fully compliant with Google Sitemaps ensuring that all your updates are picked up by Google which is valuable if you are serious about SEO and search rankings.
Why ArticleReel?

Why do you do need a video blog such as ArticleReel? For one, its saves huge amount of time (if you’re used to maintaining your own video blog) and makes all your ArticleVideoRobot videos organized and easy to access from anywhere. You don’t have to remember the entire URL of your video article; simply open your ArticleReel site and naviagate to your desired video.  Second, ArticleReel is a full-featured video blog – blog equals content, content which is latest and thus keep your website updated and current. Video blog is a double scorer – its your interactive ArticleVideoRobot video + your content delivered as a rich interactive blog-style website. Third and the most important of all, ArticleReel is a real SEO goldmine as it could seriously generate traffic to your website and improve the   search engine rankings.

Creating your ArticleReel

To create your ArticleReel video blog, follow the steps below

1. Login to your ArticleVideoRobot account
2. In the Members Area, click on the ArticleReel logo  (under the New Members Bonus section) on the left panel. Alternatively, navigate to the following URL:http://www.articlevideorobot.com/videomarketing/articlereel.html
3. The ArticleReel wizard starts up. It would prompt you for basic information. Complete it and click Next until you get to the page which says Your ArticleReel is getting ready!. When you reach this page, please be patient as the wizard starts creating your video blog from the videos in your ArticleVideoRobot account.  You will also notice a message that says Updating and Converting Existing Projects. Hang on till the wizard finishes. You would need to do this one time only so have a coffee break and leave the wizard to complete.
4. Once the wizard completes converting all your video articles, your ArticleReel is pretty much ready.

Accessing your ArticleReel site

Once your ArticleReel is created, you should see a button that says Launch my ArticleReel Preview!. Clickcould also  this button to open your ArticleReel video blog. You also acccess your ArticleReel video blog anytime by simply navigating to the below URL:

http://www.articlereel.com/?go=<your_AVR_User_ID> (e.g.) http://www.articlereel.com/?go=85 (thats mine!)

Remember to note down your  AVR user ID when you click the  Launch my ArticleReel Preview! as clicking the button actually launches your ArticleReel URL with your user ID. If you missed out to note your AVR User ID, open the URL http://www.articlevideorobot.com/videomarketing/articlereel.html?step=6 and then click on the FAQ  that reads What is the URL for my current ArticleReel? to find out your ArticleReel URL

Uploading ArticleReel to your website

All ArticleReel websites are hosted on our servers by default, however, ArticleReel is most effective when you upload it your main website that you’re targetting to increase traffic. Once you upload ArticleReel to your primary website, ArticleReel any videos that you create in your ArticleVideoRobot account is automatically updated in your ArticleReel video blog hosted on your website.  To upload ArticleReel to your website, follow the steps below:

1. Login to your ArticleVideoRobot account
2. Once logged in, open the URL http://www.articlevideorobot.com/videomarketing/articlereel_ftp_setup.htmlThis launches the Publishing via FTP window that directly FTPs the ArticleReel files to your website.
3. Follow the on-screen instructions in the Publishing via FTP window and you should be pretty much done. Remember to create the ArticleReel folder in your web server as ArticleReel does not create this automatically.

Ready, Set and Go

That is all. What next step do you do to increase backlinks and traffic to your website? Nothing. ArticleReel takes on from your here and starts working to generate traffic and backlinks to your website. If you wonder how ArticleReel does this, check out this article that discusses in detail how ArticleReel can be a great SEO tool for your website.

More to come…

ArticleReel is a big tool in itself and a single blog post is just not enough . In my next post, I will cover how to configure ArticleReel settings, how to customize the SideBar, instances when to rebuild and/or regenerate your ArticleReel, etc. So folks, get ready and get going with ArticleReel if you already haven’t checked it out.

Myth – Shorter videos rank better

How many times have you come across video marketing sites and forums recommend that the ideal length of the video is 2 or 3 minutes. With a two-minute YouTube video, one could hardly provide the viewer any useful information. When people look for informative videos on YouTube, it is natural for a person to prefer a video that has a longer playing time as it is obvious that the video would have more information. As a YouTube user myself,  if I am looking for a video on say “Tips for effective Video Marketing”, I would generally look for videos that run atleast for 5-6 minutes (many times I prefer YouTube videos that run 10 minutes) as I know I am getting a better idea on the subject than a 2-minute quick pick.

Use Pictures

In a recent study, it has been found that the video thumbnail is very critical and is a major driver behind video hit rates as viewers are more likely to click on a video whose thumbnail looks intriguing and appeal to the viewers based on the content they’re searching for. So how could you make your ArticleVideoRobot videos more engaging? Use Pictures. ArticleVideoRobot provides you the option to add picture to every slide. When we say pictures, we don’t only limit to images of your product, but also charts (to represent data), symbols or flow diagrams or decision trees that consume the content that is being displayed. YouTube automatically generates thumbnail of the video taken from the frame that is at the mid-point if the video, so if your video is 5mins long, then the thumbnail is the frame that is displayed at 02:30mins. ArticleVideoRobot provides the Headin with One Picture and the Heading wwith Two Picture paragraph styles.

Focus on Content, use Watermarked Backgrounds

We’ve seen many users drive many marketing messages into their videos thus translating to additional frames when the article is converted to video. This increases the video length sans providing any useful information. When you publish a video about your product or service in YouTube, it is understood that it is video marketing so it is recommend to focus on content than devote extra “marketing” sentences about your company on the video itself. Well, hang on, you still have quite a few unused area in the video – how do you leverage it? Use watermarked backgrounds, i.e., engloss your company or product logo on the right-hand corner of your flash video. This is very effective as the watermarked logo or tagline would constantly remind viewers about your product or service. Just in case you’re looking for me, ArticleVideoRobot provides the option to show a business logo on the initial screen which should more than suffice.

The constants are:

a) Your website URL
b) Your primary keywords

The variables are:

a) Your video – you may have multiple videos generated for the same content, product, service or campaign
b) Your video title with subtle changes
c) Your video description that includes your “constant” website URL and “constant” keywords in “variable” description in various videos.
d) Your secondary keywords – that complement your “constant” primary keywords

Now, when you have a constant link (website URL) associated it with many videos targeted at similar keywords then search engines add more weightage to your URL. You use Dynasubmit to achieve this, i.e. post the same video to video sites, with a different title/description pair for each site. Not that the video content is the same. So let’s say for example, you have a video that says “How to increase traffic using ArticleVideoRobot”. You could post this to YouTube as a single video. However, what you could alter the title slightly and say “How to drive traffic using video marketing” or “Tips ans secrets to increase website ranking” and post the alerted titles to YouTube again. Now you would have 3 videos in YouTube, that would have the same URL (in the video description), a combination of constant primary keywords and variable secondary keywords (secondary keywords broaden your search scope). Now assume you post the same video to 15 videos sites, each with 3 variations, you would end up with 45 videos (15 x 3) out of a single video. With more combination of title and keywords, you could treble the scope of your video. So even if you have hundreds or thousands of videos on YouTube and other video sites that targets the same keywords that you’re targeting you might easily end up with more videos that have the link to your URL than any other video that on YouTube targeting the same niche. THis completes only one half of the video marketing.

The second half of the video marketing is to promote the video URL in popular blogs, forums and social networking sites. For example, you may have someone at a forum or a blog looking for a specific information that your video might actually have the answer or was targeted for. You could reply to the forum post and send him to your video URL. You could also tag your video URL in popular bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, Twitter, etc. Infact, posting the URL to Twitter could itself increase the traffic to your video overnight. ArticleVideoRobot has built in support that publishes your video to bookmarking sites as well (note that no credits are charged for this).

To show you a working example, search for “the phrase video article marketing” in YouTube. If you would notice carefully the first video that is returned in the video search results, the Video Title has all the keywords that you searched for in YouTube and in a combination that matches the pattern of your search phrase, i.e. the full title of the topmost video is Article Marketing Meets Video Marketing: Turn Articles into Videos Part 2). Observe the concentration of the keywords in the video title (Article Marketing Meets Video Marketing: Turn Articles into Videos Part 2) of the topmost video in the YouTube search results. Also note that the video title has alternating patterns of the search keywords but in the same order as the search phrase, i.e. three matching patterns (article marketing, video marketing, and articles videos) for the search prhase “article video marketing”. Though the video has only very few hits (132 views), it still tops the search results.  Notice the last video (Nuesion: HowTo YouTube & Web Video Marketing Part 1) in the below screenshot has 170,864 but still isn’t the top rated.

If you check out Metacafe for the same search phrase (“article video marketing”) you would notice a similar pattern.

What is imperative is the fact that video sites return search results by Relevance which is the default option. What it means to you is that when you post your videos using ArticleVideoRobot’s video submission wizard you could still garner higher traffic and possibly the highest visibility on YouTube. Even though your videos might be relatively new, have very low views (i.e. hit rates), you could still have your video article listed in the top of the video search results by careful construction of the video title with the right concentration (in terms of the various combination) of your target keywords as well as the logical placement (i.e. order) of the keyword phrases.

That is not all. With ArticleVideoRobot’s Dynasubmit feature, you could publish many versions of the same video but with different video titles and each video title optimized with the target keywords. All it takes is simple planning and you could not only top the video search results but could get many of your video listed in the top 10 search results for any given search phrase.

I hope this article helps you in improving your video traffic. We hope it does and we could be happier to see you succeed with your video marketing efforts.

Firstly, you get to help Google have a lot of keywords that it could associate your video with. Because you have your entire article right there on the video description, you make matters easy for Google to associate search keywords/patterns to your YouTube, Metacafe or DailyMotion video (or any of the15 video sites supported by our VideoSubmitRobot). Remember that people are using more long-keyword searches which means that users are not simply entering  just keywords to search in Google but instead searching entire sentences. For example, it is very common now to find people search Google using sentences like  How to improve website traffic using  video marketing (this definitely isn’t two or three keywords but an entire sentence!). Also remember that Google gives weigthage to repeated occurances of the search phrase (or keyword or sentence, however you’d like to call) on the same page when compared to a single occurance. What this means is that posting the entire article in your video description results firstly in a rich set of keywords that Google could use to associate your video but most importantly, Google finds far many sentences(because its the entire article and not just a simple description)  that is related in context to the search keyword or phrase which results in very high rankings in Google search results. Ideally, this translates to high visibility for your videos and naturally increased viewership. This directly translates into increased views for your video which inversely increases YouTube own internal association of your video (since your video enjoys high viewership and is thus ranked popular by YouTube) with a number of related keywords and phrases.

I can hear your abuses already and you have valid questions – why on earth would you use ArticleVideoRobot’s automated video submission service only to end up editing the description field manually? Excellent question, but I wish the video submission API allowed us more space (the number of characters/words that is). Considering the double-effect of Google and YouTube rankings, keyword search associations and viewerships that one could leverage by simply pasting your article content in the video description, I guess its worth a deal to edit it manually. But we are not trying to escape the fact that our Description field is far limited in the amount of words it can hold at the moment. You can be sure we are trying to get this improved!