Video marketing is one of those things we should all be doing more of to get more website traffic, but few take the time to do enough of. It’s no wonder— in years past it was a matter of buying expensive equipment and taking pretty much all day long to do one video, complete with a lot of editing and processing time.
These days, we have it pretty easy— especially when it comes to using tools like YouTube and Google Hangouts. I’m not going to get into everything there is to know about video marketing. My goal is to give you a few options you can run with to record 20 awesome videos that will help earn you fans, customers, and search engine traffic.
Coming Up With Video Topics
It might seem impossible to create 20 videos to publish on YouTube in just a short time (you can even challenge yourself to do it in a day or two!), particularly if you’ve created videos in the past that took a while to create. There’s definitely something to be said for sticking to quality and making sure you’re putting out high quality videos people are actually going to want to watch. But, that doesn’t mean you need to spend hours and days on each video.
There are certainly going to be some videos you create in your business that are meant to be extra special. They will take longer to create but will do very special things for you, too. That’s not what this is about. This is about creating 20 YouTube videos that focus on 1 highly focused topic each and can help drive great traffic for you.
Which topics should you focus on? That’s completely up to you, of course, but I suggest you brainstorm the top 20 pressing questions your customers and readers tend to ask you. How can you help your audience? Use that line of thinking as a way to figure out which 20 topics you should tackle.
Conversely, think about what you want to promote. Do you want to drive people to a specific squeeze page? In that case, you’ll likely want to focus your 20 videos on that specific topic.
Or, maybe you want to promote a specific product. Brainstorm topics that will allow you to offer a lot of great content related to that product but that will also readily relate to the product you’d like to promote.
There are no “right” answers here. You’ll probably be surprised at which of your videos perform and really take off and drive a lot of traffic after these 20 videos have been released and have time to catch on in the search engines.
The point is that planning ahead is very important. It’s not as easy to just sit down and create 20 videos on a whim with no plan in mind as it is to create them after you’ve taken even just a few minutes to brainstorm and get yourself excited about what you’re doing.
Go ahead and get your list of 20 topics. Then, write that list of 20 topics in the form of titles for your upcoming YouTube videos. Think about what will make sense to the people who will be searching for your videos— you want to pay attention to keywords but also to titles that will be attractive for them to click on when the videos appear in the search engines.
Your Options for Creating Videos
There are a few different options for creating videos very quickly.
- You can record yourself on your phone or using a flip cam or video recorder or whatever you have. You can create talking head videos, take the camera with you to various locations, or whatever fits in with the content you’re creating. If this option fits you, you most likely know it.
- Screencast videos are an option for those who would like to video record something on their computer screen. This is great if you’re showing people how to do something technical. This can even be as simple as to type something on your computer screen and using screencast software to record yourself talking about it. com (free), Camtasia Studio, and other options are available to help you get up and running very quickly.
- You can create PowerPoint presentations or Keynote presentations and save them as videos. Before you save them off, you’ll use the software to record a voiceover, if appropriate. In some cases, you’ll just use music in the background, which YouTube gives you a catalog of royalty free options of.
- You can use Google Hangouts to make great videos these days. You don’t have to record to an audience, even using the Google Hangouts systems. You’ll simply record on your own and save as a YouTube video. This is a great, professional option with some good SEO implications.
- You can use a streaming video service such as Facebook Live, Periscope, Blab, etc. to record yourself, and then transfer the recording to YouTube.
The option you choose depends totally on your goals and what will work best for the list of topics you’re going to tackle. Don’t stew too long over this decision. Go with what’s easy right now.
Outline Your Videos
Now that you have your list of 20 topics, it’s time to outline what you’re going to talk about in each. Few things are scarier than starting to record a video, only to find you have no idea what you’re going to say.
Create an outline ahead of time. If you’re recording on a PowerPoint, your work will be done because that will serve as your outline. This is a very fast option.
You should create a short outline of talking points or ideas for each video for the other recording options. These outlines don’t have to be really extensive, by the way. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to sketch ideas for each.
How Long Should Each Video Be?
As you create your outline and plan your day, you should also roughly estimate how long each video will be. For simplicity’s sake, you might plan for each video to take roughly the same amount of time. That might be 10 minutes per video or it might be 5 minutes per video. In most cases, I recommend you stay at 5 minutes per video or a little shorter.
Are you surprised that it’s so short? People tend not to watch very long videos, unless in specialized cases. The videos you’re creating are on quick little topics and you’re creating 20 of them. You can offer a lot of value in just 5 minutes, so don’t worry about that.
Shortening the time of each video can also help you be more concise. You can say what you need to say in fewer words and often be more helpful than you would be if you rambled on forever, which is a problem many people have when they sit down to create videos. They think they won’t have anything to say but then the words start pouring out and just won’t stop.
Record
You’ve made your plan, so you now you need to follow through with it and succeed with this challenge. Push through and record your videos, one after the other.
You’ll probably find that this will go much more smoothly if you work in batches. You brainstorm topics at once, come up with your outlines at once, create your videos one after the other (with needed breaks, of course), and so on.
If each of your videos is 5 minutes long and you record 20 of them, you’ll be recording for a total of 100 minutes. That doesn’t mean that’s all the time you’ll be working today. It doesn’t seem that long when you look at it like this, really. Focus on 20 for today and maybe next time you can move your number up to 40 videos created in a day or something like that.
What If You’re Stuck?
If you’re stuck on any part of video creation, just search YouTube for your answer. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, you can’t figure out from a technical standpoint by just searching YouTube. Don’t let the fear of never having done this hold you back. Just find your answer, find your motivation, and move forward until you have your 20 videos.
Edit
You don’t have to get into a bunch of video editing, especially if video creation is somewhat of a new thing for you. If you do have experience or a need to edit your videos, go ahead and do that in a batch as well. If you do have a need to edit (say, adding your website link, cutting portions of your video, adding something to the video, and so on), get that all done today.
Not to fear, though, you can certainly make needed changes on a future day and reupload if you run out of time today, just as long as the needed edits aren’t that crucial. It’s absolutely better to have the video finished and published than it is to have it absolutely perfect. Money loves speed.
Publish
You’ve done it— you’ve created your 20 videos and now you’re ready to publish them. It might surprise you that this can take a while to do, but it should be pretty painless. YouTube has really improved over the years.
Don’t forget to pay attention to your titles and descriptions as you upload to YouTube. You’re building relationships in your descriptions and hoping people take whatever action it is you want them to take.
What to Do Next
Now that you have these 20 videos, it’s time to start thinking about the future. I know you might be exhausted by the end of this process, but I want to plant a seed about what you can do next to drive even more traffic.
Why not transcribe the videos (it’s easy if you’ve created a PowerPoint— just print off the text)? You can then use the content for articles, blog posts, and even as starters for ebooks.
Why not save the audio file and upload as a podcast or downloadable audio content? That way, people can listen to the content wherever they are and whenever they want to.
Why not create PDF files of the text or PowerPoint and upload to sites like Scribd? You can get additional exposure as well as SEO benefits.
Whenever possible, you want to use your content in more than one way. Don’t settle for doing the work over and over again— use the effort you’ve already put out there. Squeeze every last drop out of what you’ve done. You have videos that you can now turn into written and audio content.
You might have time left over today to do this, at least for some of the videos, or you might not. It’s at least something to think about for the future.
So today (or however much time you’ve set aside) you did 20 videos, and probably succeeded well beyond what you expected. Just think about this… what if you, on a regular basis, did smaller numbers of videos, like 5 per day, but also did what I suggested above, which was to transcribe them, use a couple for blog posts, 2 or 3 for submission to article sites, make podcasts out of them all, submit the podcasts to iTunes, etc.
Just think about all the backlinks (ones that Google will appreciate) and all the traffic that will bring you, if you do that at least once per week for a year, or once per day for a month!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download