Did you know 24+ hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute? And there are over 2 billion views on YouTube each day. So how do you stand out? Just because you upload your video, it doesn’t mean people will find it. Even if you’re a big brand or company, don’t think there are people waiting for you to click the “upload” and “post” button. You must properly optimize your videos to be found through Google search and within YouTube. I call this the “YouTube Juice”

Here are basic best practices on how to optimize your video for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) / Social Media Optimization (SMO):

Video Title

There is a trade-off between keyword rich and compelling video titles. And given YouTube is currently the #2 Search Engine in the world, the relevancy of keywords in a title is critical. This is true for both in Google search and for intra-site search in YouTube. That said, a compelling video title is important for conversion for users seeing the result and clicking the video.

• Rule of Thumb: start and end your video titles with a primary keyword or phrase related to the video.

Description

Use this field to describe the video in 3 sentences. Similar to how Google search results function, this is what appears to the end user next to the thumbnail and on both the Google and YouTube search results page.

• Tip: always link to a URL with http:// at the end of the description text.
• Tip: make sure your description is crafted around using the primary keyword or phrase, meaning repeat the same primary keyword or phrase from the title in the description again.
• Tip: use supporting keywords to the primary keyword in your description. For example, if your video is about the movie “Homecoming”, the keywords “film”, “cast”, and the actor’s names are good supporting keywords/phrases.

Category

Make sure you choose the category relevant to the individual video and its targeted keywords or phrase. Do not use the same category for all videos that is based on your brand/company or your personal self (e.g. “People & Blogs”). Given this example I’m showing is about a movie premier, it’s appropriate to categorize it under “Film & Animation”.

Tags

Use this area to repeat your primary keyword or phrase again and supporting keywords.

• Tip: Stick to 10-15 phrases.
• Tip: Use double quotes for phrase with more than one word.
• Tip: For example: “film”, “kansas city”, “indie”, “movie”

Link Backs

The more links back to the video from other websites, the more relevant Google and YouTube will rank the video in searches. It’s encouraged you reach out to other website administrator’s and bloggers to ask and consider to link back or embed your video.

• Tip: “Google” the primary keyword(s) or phrases you’ve optimized the video for. If appropriate, reach out and ask the website administrator or blogger to consider linking back or embedding your video.
• Tip: if the website results that appear for your primary keyword(s) or phrases are blogs, consider leaving a comment on the post with a link back to the video.

Other Tips from Other People:

Here are other blogs and resources with more advice on how to properly optimize your YouTube videos for the best SEO/SMO results:

• YouTube SEO Tips
• YouTube Basics for SEO
• How to Optimize Your YouTube Videos
• 10 SEO Tips for YouTube
• How to Optimize YouTube Videos for SEO
• How to Boost your SEO with a YouTube Channel

My good friend Mike, who is kind-of-a-big-deal-but-won’t-admit-it (he lives in L.A. and works on movies/TV shows) …he recommended I see an indie movie that was directed by a friend of his. It’s called “Homecoming“.

Inspired, in part, by a true story, Homecoming tells the story of Estelle, an Army Medic who has not been to her Florida home in 2 years. Her 18 days leave journeys between pathos and humor as she attempts to reconnect with her lonely single mother and her directionless, yet noble friends.

So I went down to AMC Mainstreet to the KC Film Fest, not knowing what to expect. Turns out, I was pleasantly surprised. The director, Sean Hackett (who is a really nice guy, from KC) wrote, directed and was in the film. Sean is a loyal Kansascitian too, which is great. During the Q&A, he told the audience that he plans on making his next film, right here in KC.

The lead actress in the film is Brea Grant …you might recognize her from episodes of NBC’s Heros and Friday Night Lights!!!

I did a group video blog interview I did with the cast after the movie premier:

I wanted to be helpful and share with everyone all the great feedback I received to this question. Once a semester, I’m asked to go back to the Journalism school at the University of Kansas to speak (typically on digital strategy or writing for the web). So rather than just share my own opinion, you’ll see below some great advice from several people who are established journalists, PR pros or communication professionals. I shared all of these with the students at KU last night.

Thank you Derek, Sarah, Chris, Kate, James, Megan, Jarrod, Brian, Carolyn, Gina, Sarah, Justin, Jaie, Lauren, Kacie, Pat, Kerstin, and Juana!

**update**
Paul sent me a link-tip for a great blog post by Becky Johns; “Three Things Students Need to Know”.

One repeated question and concern I get from clients and friends is should you mix your personal vs. professional life when sharing on social networks like Twitter or Facebook? My typical anecdotal advice, is people want to interact and be friends with real people on Facebook and Twitter. We don’t want to be friends with robots. And we prefer to work and do business with people we like. So when you are using social media tools to just “publish and push”, you aren’t doing it right. Social media is all about having real interactions with real people.

You’re more credible if you Tweet what you ate for breakfast.

A recent study by professor Kirsten Johnson at Elizabethtown College, found students perceive professors who mixed their scholarly Tweets with personal Tweets, more credible than professors who only Tweet strictly about business.

“These results support previous research that shows revealing personal information can increase a professor’s perceived credibility,” says the paper. “[I]t was interesting to note that the scholarly tweets did not significantly raise competence ratings in the groups that saw the scholarly posts. This could be an indication that caring, not competence, is the most important dimension when it comes to assessing perceived credibility on social networking sites.”

So go ahead, Tweet your brains out. No one reads all your Tweets anyways. Tell people what you had for breakfast. You’ll be perceived as more credible for doing it
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Here is quick, simple inbox hack that I came up with. I wanted to share it to be helpful.
I segment my inbox into 3 parts:

1.) Inbox = I view this as the main “firehose” of incoming email. I view this as just the holding area for new messages. No email sits in here. I always keep it empty.

Using a keyboard shortcut (CTRL + shift + V), I then select messages in my inbox and quickly filter every message into 1 of 2 folders under my inbox:

2.) ATTENTION-NOW = things that need attention b/c they are important or time sensitive.
3.) DO-LATER = emails that aren’t time sensitive, or are less important.

It’s really easy to setup these folders. And this simple hack helps me focus on what needs my attention. Hopefully this will help you get to inbox zero. **update** Amber also shared some great gmail hack tips. She uses the Do, Delegate, Defer, Delete system.
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Do you know I have a favorite pen I use? Yeah, I’m that geeky. Do you have a favorite pen? Soooo I recorded a quick thank you v-blog to Whitney + Uni-ball, for the blogger feature profile they’ve asked me to do (it’s their corporate blog, called Vision). I’ll post the link to my blog post feature here .

Let me first start by saying I get it. It’s important to be aware of what your competitors are doing and what digital marketing campaigns are successful. However, this crutch and obsession with copying and emulating other companies has to stop. I’ve watched great ideas be presented to clients, that were well reasoned and structured, only then to see them be denied because no major brand or competitor had executed anything similar to it <– which why it was a great idea in the first place, b/c no one has done it before, it was original!

Reading-up on case studies and observing what your competitors are doing, is just simple industry education. The basic homework you should always do. It’s not how you come up with *new* ideas. And more importantly, it is not a good litmus method or guarantee to test your ideas. Sure, you can ask, “Who else has done this before?” But don’t discount the integrity of any idea just because it hasn’t been done before.

Don’t be a lazy digital marketer.

This space moves rapidly. It’s not print, billboards, or direct mail. It’s different than any other industry. You must try, learn, and refine.
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If you haven’t watched the MTV “Diary/inside Facebook” special. You should (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4). I thought there was a great quote during the show, Zucky shared:

My friends and I used to have this saying, that anything that was really good, you could build in 24-hours, because most of the really good ideas out there start off really simple. Facebook, the first version of it, I coded in a couple weeks.

- Mark Zuckerberg

He’s right. And this applies to more than just coding a website. Are you over-thinking it? You don’t have to be thinking about building the next Facebook to apply this advice to your life. Sometimes the best plan, is to not have a plan at all.
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