That Weird Part of YouTube

My Journey to “That Weird Part of YouTube”

According to the accredited Urban Dictionary, The weird part of YouTube is “typically an area full of video irrelevant to what you were originally watching.” Usually, these blotches of video “would normally go untouched, but become popular when a significant amount of people follow” a chain of somewhat “related videos” into the area deemed “the weird part of YouTube.”

Today, I am going to take a trip down the yellow tube road into the land called, “Weird Part of YouTube” until I reach my destination with one of the top comments exclaiming how they unintentionally got to the weird part of YouTube. I start my journey on my YouTube home screen. I recently watched some boxing videos of Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather, so one of my recommended videos is titled, “Mayweather Jr. vs. Mayweather Sr. 24/7”. I click.

This video shows Mayweather Jr. and Mayweather Sr. in a verbal bout, which exhibits their unkindled relationship. Fortunately, it’s edited. Now, on the right side of the YouTube screen are suggested videos- seemingly related to the current one. On this particular Mayweather video, one of the more interesting suggested video links is titled, “When victims fight back.” Let’s watch.

In the middle of watching this video, I get the point, so I start scrolling along the right side of the suggested videos, and I see one that catches my eye- “douchebag bully bag gets taught a lesson”. That was fun.

Now, after this video, my procrastination instinct kicks in, and I start clicking and clicking. For the next video, I go to “Telling off a tailgater”, then “McDonalds refuses food or refund, police arrive, forces McD's to give food”, to “Cop Tricked Into Thinking Prison Escapee is a Jogger”, following “I Didn't Know She Was 16 (The Steve Wilkos Show)”, to “Quiet Kid Learns to Cope in Prison”, to “Pyscho Inmate on a Come Down”, and, finally to “Extraordinary People The Girl With A New Face part 1”. On this last video, I finally see one of the top comments read, “I went from Funny Videos to this! WTF?” Close enough.

So, there it is. I went from “Mayweather Jr. vs. Mayweather Sr. 24/7” to “Extraordinary People The Girl With A New Face part 1.” Although others have made their inadvertent journey to the “Weird Part of YouTube” via less videos, and in a shorter amount of time, my journey was undoubtedly no-less weird.

www.dietproductions.com
Stephen Benavides
Matt Topolski

Content is Key in Video Production and Video Marketing

Content is Key in creating a video

Every time I have a scheduled shoot one of the questions I'm asked is how long is the video going to be? I first ask what they mean so there isn't any confusion but when they explain the final length of the finished video, I get a little concerned of their expectations. It turns out as most business owners think, when they pay for a video they obviously want they're money to go a long way. Just like any one spending a large amount of money on anything, people don't want to feel like their money is going to waste. So when I have to produce a video for a client, they want to know how long the finished product will be so they can have as long as a video as they can get. And I have to explain to them and anyone who is reading this right now, that is the biggest mistake you can want when having a video produced for your company. Having a longer video crammed with as much information as possible is one of the biggest mistakes anyone can make for a video to market to your viewers. Why? Well think about it, when was the last time you wanted to sit through a 30 minute video to finally hear 5 minutes of information you were looking for? I can promise you, unless you really really really wanted to know that information and you knew you couldn't find the information anywhere else would probably be the only time you would consider it. But, you also wouldn't like having to wait for the information you were waiting to hear. But when you have a short video with brief information on only the topics you were looking for, you are more likely to go back to a place where you have a choice of multiple short videos clips to watch rather than one long video with tons of information crammed into it. So content is key! It's not the length of the video that makes the difference, it's the content the video has. A video that is short and to the point with one topic highlighted for the video will have more of an impact. Not only will this attract more viewers and keep them interested, but it also gives you the ability to break up information into multiple videos increasing your chances of reaching more viewers, thus helping brand your company. So, the next time you are looking to have a video made, think about what your content for the video is going to be rather than the length of the video.

www.dietproductions.com
Stephen Benavides
Matt Topolski

Mass Marketing with Online Video

The online video market is huge. How large is the video market? Well there's almost 1.2 billion unique users worldwide that watched more than 130 billion video during June in 2011 according to comScore. But this doesn't necessarily mean that you can expect to reach a large target audience for a specific video on video sites such as YouTube. YouTube rarely acts as a mass medium for the online video marketplace. But if it was a broadcast network, marketing on YouTube would be more simple. You would be able to apply the old mass marketing techniques our parents used and learned when they were in college. But times have obviously changed and the techniques they learned are not the best and only way to reach people nowadays. To define Mass Marketing means that a large number of viewers watch the same commercial or video on the same channel or station at the same time. But with YouTube being the way it is, viewers have the control of what video they want to watch instead of the video choosing the viewer. But, mass marketing is possible on YouTube during a special occasion such as the most recent wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton which was live-streamed on YouTube's Royal Channel to 188 countries around the world. So, before you make your video and upload it to a video site, it is a good idea to map out your video marketing strategy to make sure you effectively reach the right audiences.

www.dietproductions.com
Stephen Benavides
Matt Topolski

Beginning Web or Video Marketing / the first step

Everyone wants their video to be seen, but if you're a company and you're trying to stay ahead of your competitors; it is very important for your videos to be seen by the right people. We are going to talk about one of the steps to take if you're wanting to get more views on video sites such as YouTube.

Keywords
Having the right keywords can make all the difference from your video being seen and not being seen. Just like your website, there are keywords that you can embed into tags to help viewers find your video. So let's say you own a dog grooming company, and you make a simple video on how to bathe your dog; you will want to have keywords such as "dog" and "bathe" as some keywords. BUT.... it gets a little more complicated than that. You have to think about all the other Dog Grooming companies in the world that are posting videos just like yours. So, you will have to do a little bit of research to find out how you can set yourself apart. Because you will have to understand that if you're using keywords like "dog" and "bathe"; most likely so are the other dog grooming companies.

There are free resources you can go to on the Internet that can help you do this research. The two I always go to are Google/Adwords/KeywordTool and Google/Insight. These sights will give you a clearer idea of what keywords your competitors use and what keywords your audience is searching for. Having this information can really make a difference. First of all, the internet is so flooded with so many websites and content that singe string keywords don't really work anymore. You will have to start using two string or three string keywords to be more specific for your keywords. For example, the keywords "dog" and "bathe" are sings string keywords so you will have to be a little more specific and use "dog bathing". But even then you might find that you will have to be more specific than that because your competitors might be using the same keywords. And since you don't want to fall into large group of competitors, you may have to add more information to your keywords like your location or city so your keyword may be "Dallas Dog Bathing". But before you jump to using that as a keyword lets see if that particular keyword is even being searched by viewers and used by competitors. The one thing that most people need to get past is how simple most of these keywords will be, but you will find that some of the keywords may sound simple and easy but the order the words are in can make all the difference. For example, we chose "Dallas Dog Bathing" but you may find that people are searching "Dog Bathing Dallas". But we would have to do the research so let's get started.

You want to start by going to Google/Adwords: this will help you get an idea of what your competition is for the same keywords and not only that, but it will also give you more keyword options that you may not have thought of.

If you look at the picture above, this is what you should see when going to Google/Adwords. At the top is where you will add your keyword, to the left side is where you choose if you want the keyword to be exact with your keyword, a broad idea of other keywords, or in a phrase. I choose exact because I'm looking for more exact keywords that are used. But depending on what type of keyword you're looking for you can check the others. In the section below will show you the other keywords with the level of competition for that keyword giving you an idea of other websites using the same keyword. And to the right is how often they are clicked from a global standpoint and local standpoint, I look more at locally but having high numbers in both areas is good. So ideally you would want a keyword with a large amount of clicks with a low competition amount. It is always a good idea to take notes of the numbers associated with each keyword so you have a reference to go by for the next step. Try and get 20-30 keywords you want on a list to have a better chance of narrowing down to the top 10 you may want to use. After  you've gotten a list together with notes of the numbers for each keyword, it is time to look at Google/Insight.

This site is to help you get a more specific idea of the keywords you should use to target your specific area.

The highlighted sections in the picture above gives you the main sections to put your information. The highlighted area on the left shows you where to type in your keywords, and the area on the right is where you will put your specific location. After searching for keywords on the Adwords site, I found that "dog dallas" was a good keyword with low competition and high clicking rates. But let's see what happens when I look in the area of Dallas and how many people possibly search this particular keyword in the Dallas Area.

Take a look at the graph after putting in the keyword and location information. This graph actually shows us how often the people have searched "dog dallas" in the Dallas area from 2004 - present, showing us that this keyword is doing quite well. It's maintaining a level of searching throughout the years. And by knowing that the competition is low for Adword use, it gives us an idea that not many other sites are using the same keyword, making this a great keyword to use for us.

To stay in the competition you want to keep in mind that after doing this same process for other keywords you may want to use. You will find that some keywords that may have looked good in the Adwords site may not look as good in the Insight site so keep that in mind. Also keep in mind that it takes about a month or two for Google to put your site into their system so don't expect to be found on search engines the same or next day. Also, keywords are always changing so to do this same process every 2-3 months is a good idea to make sure know what you're viewers are looking for, keeping you connected with the thought process of your customers, only making your company having an advantage for future marketing.

These same strategies can be used for keywords for both websites and video marketing.

http://www.dietproductions.com/
Stephen Benavides
Matt Topolski

Online Marketing

Online Marketing

I've worked in the Video Production industry for almost a decade. But since it's the year 2012 I'm still surprised how companies are still hesitant to advertise online. The people I've noticed to more likely to advertise online are the younger generation who grew up with the technology that we live in today. The older generations that still own businesses are still holding back in their online presence. I've noticed this when working closely with companies in their Marketing Department. I've been hired by multiple companies to come into their business and figure out strategies to help them bring in more customers. I noticed immediately that it was the older generation that was still hesitant in branching out into focusing their advertising dollars into the Internet rather than Mass Media. Now that this has happened on more than one occasion I couldn't help but become fascinated with why the older generation still had the mindset of marketing this way. Somehow they still think that  Mass Media works better than online advertising or Social Media so they put all of their eggs in one basket and don't even spend money Online at all. Now this doesn't mean that Mass Media doesn't work at all, I just think that if you want your company to look more reliable you have to have a strong Internet presence whether it's through social media, video marketing, or SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I think this because what one of the first things someone does when you hear about a company? They google it!

I experience how important this was when I went to go do a shoot for a Gastric Bypass Surgeon in the area. Upon arriving to the shoot, I was told that I was going to do a series of interviews where I interviewed testimonials from the clients that they wanted featured on the video. I thought that this was fine. I actually was interested what they had to say, but I was unaware of how interested I was about to get. When I did my first interview I came into a room where they usually did informational speaking what what to expect during the surgery. I met a gentlemen who was in his mid to late 50's, and hispanic. I asked what he did for a living to try and make him comfortable with small talk and he told me that he was a doctor. The surprised me because he was about to do a testimonial for another doctor. Now they probably weren't the same kind of doctor and they didn't live in the same city so they weren't really competitors but it made me more intrigued on what he was going to say because it really showed how much trust he had put into the doctor he was about to do a testimonial for. Once I set up the camera equipment and fixed the lighting like usual, we were ready to go. Now this happened a while back so I don't remember all the questions he was asked but I remember one. A really important one at that! The question was,"What made you want to choose this doctor to do your procedure?" and his response amazed me. Not only did it amaze me but it really made me realize how important your online presence meant. He said,"Well, when I realized that I needed to do this surgery, I started doing some research online. I didn't want to use a doctor in my city so I thought I would look for one in Houston. And the more and more I looked and did my research his name kept appearing in the search engine. It got to where I even looked in other nearby cities and his name still appeared in the top searches as one of the most respected and trusted doctor for the procedure I needed." Now usually before this moment I didn't really give it much thought because it was so simple. It made me reflect on what made me trust someone for a product that I was searching for online and it all made sense. The more and more you see the same site or product reappearing during  your search, you immediately think that it must be good and worth it if you looked more into it. No matter what the company, person, product, etc.

So after I shot the video I went back home to do the editing and final production. Once I was done, I looked more into how I could make my company more visible to online viewers. Not only with my website but with everything such as videos, blogs, pictures, social media, etc. And over the years I've found ways to make it happen. The one thing that has gotten difficult is the amount of time that needs to be involved to make it happen in all aspects of online marketing. So I focused on what I knew best, which was Video Marketing. But can you imagine how it must be for the companies that hire a team of people to make sure they are at the top of the list for every aspect? It must be insane for those companies, in a good way that is.

So now I ask, why is it that some people are still hesitant in focusing their marketing online?

website:
www.dietproductions.com
Stephen Benavides
Matt Topolski