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Video Marketing is hot and I’ve got to tell you, I’m always amazed more photographers aren’t using this medium to drive targeted visitors to their websites. Just incase you haven’t really looked at it yet, here’s a few statisitcs to get you thinking …

• There are more people that watch YouTube videos than all of the 4 US News Networks put together!

• Over 40% of internet users watch online videos on at least a weekly basis; over 70% at least monthly.
• Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL are among the hundreds of Search Engines that give priory listings to websites that host video content.
• 4.7 billion videos were watched in the UK in April 2009 alone, up 47 percent compared to April 2008.
• 68% of people who watch online videos, will in turn, pass links for these videos onto their friends…turning them into viral traffic machines.

So what does all this mean to photographers?

Well for starters, we’re already working in a visual medium, and we already market our work to creative/visual people … so it’s a perfect match.

We have the content. We just need to format it for distribution and get it out there. Pretty simple really!

By now, I’m sure most of us have made a digital slideshow of some sort, and it’s not a big step to convert that to a video file. Add some background music, overlay some text captions, insert a few transitions and you’re ready to go.

You then ‘syndicate’ these videos via any of the video sharing websites, and suddenly you’re getting laser-targeted visitor traffic from those sites, PLUS you’ll usually find your videos ranking well in the search engines, PLUS the backlinks from the video sites will also improve the ranking of your website.

It’s a win-win-win situation and I think any serious photographer would do well to consider it.

The Video Marketing Strategy

Ideally I’d recommend a couple of short ‘slideshow videos’ for each of your Key Subjects.

For Search-Engine-Optimization purposes (SEO) … ie. ranking well in the search engines to generate maximum targeted visitor traffic … specific focus on a single subject for each video is the best approach.

A short slideshow of 12-15 images is plenty. The videos don’t need to be long. Keep it short and leave the viewer wanting more. That way they’ll be more likely to click through and visit your website.

OK, so once you have the video, you have to publish it.

Obviously YouTube is the best-known of the Video Sharing websites and gets the most traffic, so you should start there, but there are literally hundreds of other places to consider.

My preferred option is to use a Submission Service to automate the process.

TubeMogul will submit to 20-30 sites for you for free. After you set up a free acount, you need to register with each of the selected video sites and save your login details on TubeMogul. Once that’s done it only takes a couple of minutes each time you have a new video to broadcast.

Professional services such as Traffic Geyser will submit to 100+ sites for you at the push of a button. I personally prefer Traffic Geyser as it also includes submissions to various Blogs, RSS Aggregators, Social Bookmarking sites and even Podcast sites where appropriate, creating an instant network of content and backlinks.

The best part about these submissions services is, as the new content appears on the web, Google is quick to index it, and it’s quite possible to secure page one search listings within hours or even minutes of posting your videos.

There are a heap of ebooks available on all this but looking through them, most are all much more complicated than we need to market  photography. You’ll find some links below if you want to go all out on this — and it is good information — but most people don’t need to go that far.

I’m all for keeping it simple.

1. Pick Your Subject. The key for any SEO work is to focus on a specific keyword. For us that’s a subject. If you have a list of your key subjects, you can jsut work through it fro mthe top.

You then want to find a relevant keyword phrase that is actually being searched for. You can use the free Wordtracker Tool or the Google Keyword tool to see how many searches are performed each week for specific words and phrases.

2. Select Photos To Suit. 12-15 is more than enough. The key is variety. If you use images that are too similar, people will quickly lose interest. Each new image should reveal something new and intriguing about the subject.

3. Create a Slideshow Video. There are plenty of ways to do this …

You can use the free Open Office Impress to export a ‘PowerPoint’ presentation as a video file. You could use the free (PC) screen caputre software in the Members eLibrary to record any slideshow. Or Lightroom has a built-in video export function for Mac users (free for now!) I’m sure there are plenty of other programs available.

The Traffic Geyser service actually has a video maker built in to the platform  …  just upload your photos, add music and transitions, overlay text and save … click a button and it’s published as well. You can get a test drive of the Traffic Geyser service here. The full version isn’t cheap, but you can make and post a lot of videos in a one month trial!

There’s also a nifty bit of software I use that is designed to convert short articles to videos but works extremely well for this. I just insert my images as the background, paste my ‘captions in as the text overlay, set my transitions and add a background music track … and export it as a web-ready file.

4. Syndicate It! This is simple a matter of posting your video to the sharing sites so people can view it and pass it on. Again you have a few options here but I prefer to out-source as much as possible …

You can just post it to YouTube and you’ll get pretty good exposure. If you have one or two other Video Sharing sites you like, you can add to those as well, but as soon as you spend more than 5 minutes on this, I recommend using a submission service and going all out.

In that case, you can use the free TubeMogul submission option and instantly post your videos to 20-30 sites. There is a little bit of initial set up to do, but it’s we’ll worth the effort.

If you’re going to be doing a lot of this, I’d have to recommend Traffic Geyser. This is really a complete Social Marketing service. Register and look out for the free trial offer. Then go hard. You’ll need to set up all the account logins, so set aside some time for that … or ‘buy’ a set of pre-made logins.

If you research your Keyword/Subject carefully and do a full broadcast using the Traffic Geyser package, a top ranking in Google is a real possibility … for every one of your Key Subjects! (You can publish a lot of videos in a one month trial!)

A Few Additional Considerations:

Keywords: Again I can’t stress this enough … get specific. It is much easier to get a high ranking for a phrase than a single word. Don’t be afraid to go ‘long-tailed’ … a 3-5 word phrase … you’ll get a better ranking and more targeted traffic. Use this free Keyword Research tool for ideas, or take the 7 day trial to see how many people are searching for specific phrases every week.

Title: Make it interesting and catchy. Your video previews don’t always ‘sell’ your video well, so make sure your title works for you as well, building interest and curiosity, prompting people to stop and take a look. (Make sure you use your keywords in the title!)

Description: Always start your description with your website address. Then use your keyword immediately after that, built into a readable, interesting description. Keep it to 200 words or less.

Competition: What we’re doing here is fairly specialised, so this shouldn’t be a problem, but always do a search ion Google for your Keyword Phrase, and make sure there aren’t too many sites competing. Over 100,000 results and you need to get more specific with your phrase … less than 30,000 and you stand a good chance of taking out position one!

Length: Never forget the goal here is to get people to visit your website … so always leave your viewers wanting more! 10-15 images is plenty! Always finish up by letting the viewer know more images on this subject are available in your professional stock catalogue at www.yourdomain.com

Audience: Also remember you want to attract photo buyers, so make sure your presentation is totally professional and make sure your captions indicate that you are a professional and your work is for sale. When picking your keyword phrase, always chooseone more likely than be searched for by commercial photo buyers … ie “xyz stock images” rather than “xyz pictures”.

The Viral Effect:

The exception to the keep it specific rule is if you want to go for a viral effect so that viewers help you out by passing on your video (and link)

This means making a video that has some element in it that makes people feel compelled to pass it on. You don’t ask them and they probably don’t even realise that’s your goal … they just do it because the content is so good they know their friends and colleagues will appreciate it.

Often it’s humour, sometimes shock value can work, as can a feel good theme. Whatever route you choose, if you can create a video that people simple have to share with their friends, you can start to get some incredible exposure.

The added bonus here is, these sharing sites are ‘syndication’ services, so anyone can embed your video on their site, promoting your video (and your website) to an even larger audience, all with you ever doing any more with it.

Here are a couple of examples of videos that went viral …

This first is some interesting facts and figures in a short presentation … quite simple really, but it get’s people thinking, and they can’t help but pass it on …

My guess is, something like this, with your photos as a background and relevant ‘interesting’ facts, could work just as well if you geared it to a specific audience?

This second link is a listing of some of the most successful viral videos. The listing changes regularly so it’s worth looking from time to time to see what other people are up to. A lot of them are fairly predictable clips of idiots hurting themselves, but if you check it regularly you will find some real gems.

Additional Resources, Downloads & Links

Creating The Perfect YouTube Marketing Video: This is a comprehensive ebook packed full of useful information. Probably a bit more than most people need, but if you’re going invest some time and effort in this marketing strategy it could save you some time and headaches.

Articles To Video Software: Convert short targeted articles into powerful SEO videos in minutes. Check out the short video demonstration on this page.

Traffic Geyser: Register then look for the free trial offer tomake and publish as many videos as you can! If you’re using a lot of video, you cannot beat this service for convenience and exposure right across a mix of social media websites.

Tube Mogul: Free service submits to 20-30 video sharing sites. Small set up required but very effective marketing.

Word Tracker: Great for getting ideas of related keywords. Don’t pay too much attention to the ‘search count’ though as it’s a very restricted network.

Google Keyword Tool: This will give you a much better idea of search volume. Note that the first number is your local search volume … ie your country/region, your language, while the second is ‘everyone’ … so you can plan on the effective volume for any particular search phrase being somewhere in between!