Speaker 1: So today we're going to walk through our basic workflow on how we upload and use a marketing video. We'll start with a video and show you the step-by-step process of writing a description, a title, doing research on tags, embedding it on your website, and then uploading it to your social media platforms. Now following a workflow like this is crucial because if you're not, you're severely limiting the maximum impact your video could have for your business. So stay tuned. Now the most common video format you're going to deal with is an mp4. There's some other formats that you may be uploading from, especially if you record it on your phone. Just make sure whatever file you're using is the highest quality possible and then has all your edits in there because once you upload it, you're not going to be able to make any changes. So before you upload it, make sure you do a little bit of research on the title, description, and then the tagging of the video. Search several terms into YouTube that are very common, Search several terms into YouTube that are very close or similar to what your video is about. See which videos have the most views and see what's working. You can use a tool like TubeBuddy to look at the search competition and volume of specific terms. It's important that the title accurately describe what the video is about, but it also needs to be easy to read and catchy. So if your video is year-specific, include the year in the title. If your business serves a local or regional business, it might be a good idea to include that city in the title. If not, make sure to include any relevant information in the description. So for most videos, we follow this basic format for a description. Two to three sentences briefly describing what the video is about, a link back to your website or product page, and then we followed up with two or three paragraphs with more detail or information about the product or service. And then at the end, we'll include links to your social media, back to the website, and then also maybe just a quick summary of what your business does as a whole. So we found this format works really good for most videos. It gives the viewer enough information if they would need to click through and learn more about it, and also gets enough information to YouTube or the video hosting platform to really know what the video is about and help it rank in their search algorithm. So the next is tags. Tags is very similar to titles, and you want to do a little bit of research on this before. So for most social platforms, using phrases as opposed to single words works best. For example, you'll want to type in wood pellet grill as a tag instead of wood pellet and grill as a tag. Try to think about what your viewer is typing in the search box and use those as tags. Depending on your market, how many videos are uploaded in your competition, you may need to target more niche keywords to get some tractions on your videos initially. So when you're doing all this research and prep work, we recommend creating a Google Doc listing out all this information so you can easily copy and paste into each video platform that you upload it to. All right, so next is thumbnail. A thumbnail is the image that is displayed on the video before it is clicked and played. It's important that the thumbnail be eye-catching and accurately describe what the video is about. Now, if you're making your own thumbnails, there's a few different ways you can go about them. If you have Photoshop, Photoshop is probably your best bet in making a thumbnail. There's some other free alternatives like GIMP, which is very similar to Photoshop that lets you really customize your image. For most videos, we recommend some sort of text to act as a second title. You can add a logo or some branding elements. Once you have the thumbnail made, save it the same size of your video and you'll be ready to start uploading the videos. Our captions are really important because it allows people to view the video without sound. They're going to be able to watch the video in the newsfeed and read along with the text. Now, we use Rev.com for our captions. It's super easy and they're very affordable. So an SRT file is going to be the most common caption file. Almost all platforms take this, with Facebook just being a notable difference. Facebook requires you to add an extension to the SRT file to indicate the language. So now that we have all our research done and the video file and thumbnail are ready for upload, it's time to do that. The first thing you want to do is upload it to your primary video hosting platform. In most cases, it's going to be YouTube or Vimeo. So we've done another video comparing YouTube and Vimeo and what's right for a business. So if you need some more information on making a decision, go ahead and check out that video. But for our workflow, it's going to work the same regardless. So we'll take the MP4 file and upload it directly to YouTube. While it's uploading, you can fill out the descriptions, titles, tags, and other information we set up earlier. For now, you're going to want to set the video to unlisted for YouTube or hide this from Vimeo if you're using Vimeo. We have our metadata filled out. Check the appropriate boxes. So the video is pretty much ready to go at this point. But before we hit publish, let's put some thought into how we're going to market this. Because just because you upload a video doesn't mean people are actually going to see it. You have to have a plan so that people can see the video and then take action after. Our basic plan kind of goes like this. You have your video and it's uploaded to YouTube or Vimeo in this case. You're going to embed that video on your website being a product page, an about us page, or the homepage. Additionally, we're going to write a blog about the video and give some more information to the viewer. Thirdly, we can write up an email blast to go out at a later date and include links back to the website where they can learn more about the product or service. And on the other side, we have our social media channels, whatever your business is used. Now, it's important when you post on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn, you re-upload that video file directly to that platform instead of sharing your YouTube or Vimeo link. And the reason is social media platforms want you to stay on their platform. So if you're sharing a YouTube link on Facebook, people are going to end up clicking off on YouTube. So they really want you to stay on Facebook. So what's the next step after you've uploaded your video? The most obvious answer is going to be engaging with your audience. You're going to want to make sure you're responding to any comments they have, communicating with them, you know, getting a dialogue or a conversation going is really going to help build trust with your brand and hopefully encourage them to make a purchase down the line. Other ways you're going to be able to market this video is by using stories and posts or running paid ads that are targeted at specific people. So we found this workflow works extremely well for most businesses. And if you follow this, you're going to really see your video views and organic reach really explode. So as you post more and more videos and you follow this workflow and really adapt it to your business, we recommend going in and checking out the analytics on your videos. This is really going to help you dive deep into what's working for your business. You're going to be able to see which videos have high click-through rates, which videos have the best engagement, and then use that information to kind of tweak how you're making your videos and what they're about. Above all, consistency is going to be key here. So if you can upload a video once a month, as opposed to once every two or three months, that's just going to help you drive continuous organic growth in your videos and also in your business. So we hope you found this overview video helpful. There's a lot of videos out there just going over the technical details, and we wanted to get a little bit more in depth in how you market the video as a whole. If you do have any questions about our process, make sure you comment down below and we'll be glad to help you out. If your business needs help in creating videos or using video in their marketing strategy, please reach out to us. We're a creative marketing agency located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and we specialize in video marketing for businesses. Again, I'm Rob, and thanks for watching.