Getting the Most from Your Video Productions

Getting the Most from Your Video Productions
Copyright © 2008 Paul Smithson
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If you're producing videos for the purpose of getting traffic to your website, you're not alone. Thousands upon thousands of people are doing the same thing, so it's easy to get lost in the millions of videos that are available on the various video sharing websites.

Often it's hard to get a lot of views to your videos, because it's the videos with the most views and comments that typically show up first in the search results on the video sharing sites, and those are also the videos that get promoted in the related results when someone watches a video. So how do they get those views in the first place?

The most common way videos get a large number of views is through word of mouth. Viral marketing is alive and well in the video sharing world. When people see a video they like a lot, they tend to tell their friends about it. If the video is really good, it gets passed around and around and it goes viral.

Unfortunately this viral feeding frenzy usually only happens to videos that are really off-the-wall. A celebrity doing something shocking, someone being humiliated in public, or a really stupid criminal could have their videos go viral pretty easily. A video about trout fishing or making money online has a lot less chance of going viral.

In this case, you have to find a way to inflate the views yourself. No, I'm not saying you should use some kind of bot to artificially inflate your views! That's a good way to get banned. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to get views to your videos without being dishonest.

First of all, you should get everyone you know to visit your videos. Post a link to every video you create on your blog. Send a link to your email list. Put a link in your forum signature. Use social bookmarking to drive traffic.

On most networks, like YouTube, you can post video responses. If you find a video in your niche that is already popular, you can post your video as a response to their video. This will get you a link from their video's page. Just keep in mind that some networks require these responses to be approved by the original poster.

In the description of every video you post, you should ask viewers to subscribe to your channel if they enjoyed your video. Most video sharing sites have a way for people to subscribe to see more of your videos so don't forget to ask people to sign up. The more people you have subscribed to your channel, the more people you'll potentially have visit every video you make later.

Comments are also vital to popularity on many sites. Comments are especially important on YouTube, for example. Always ask people to comment in your description, and at the end of the video itself, if possible.

The wonderful thing is that the effort you put in will be rewarded many times over. As the number of views of your video increases the more likely it will be to appear in the search results and other listings, which in turn means yet more people will stumble upon it, and that will give another boost to the number of views and who knows, before you know it, your trout fishing video might just end up going viral.

Paul Smithson is the founder of Intellimon and the driving force behind the best-selling XSitePro web site development tool (http://www.xsitepro.com). Paul has set up five multi-million dollar companies, one of which is now owned by the BBC. His areas of expertise include business strategy, e-commerce, on-line and off-line marketing, software development, and maximizing the potential of on-line businesses.

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