AMY PORTERFIELD: So today we're talking about a topic that I have a love-hate relationship with and that is video marketing. Now, I love it because it's been one of the most important factors in how I built my brand. I use it a lot and it's always given me that extra exposure that I need to put myself on the map but I hate it at times because it doesn't come natural to me so I have to work at it for sure.
Now, since I'm not a video marketing expert, I've invited my good friend and YouTube expert James Wedmore to come on the show and dive into video with us.
Before I bring on James, I do want to share one thing that I know is very true when it comes to video marketing. Just like everything in life, practice makes perfect and you do get better with time.
Recently, someone did a write-up about my videos on their blog and he was paying me a huge compliment, saying my videos looked really professional and they were streamlined, but he also included a video from a few years back just to kind of show the contrast and when I saw the old video, I cringed, only because how I do videos today is very different than how I did videos years ago.
To be quite honest, I have a bigger budget to make things better now.
So I tell you this because I've had a few years to fine tune my process when it comes to videos and if you're just starting out, be patient. They will only get better with time but you've got to start somewhere and you've got to start with the resources, the time, energy and money that you have so don't think that you need to do this big production to do video work for you because a few years back, I was still getting traction with my videos even though the quality of the videos wasn't nearly as good as
they are today. So, again, just be patient with yourself and over time things will start to get better and better with your video.
As I mentioned, I've been doing this for a while now and along the way I've had a few really good teachers and one of those teachers has been James Wedmore. James and I have been
friends for a few years now and so much of what I know about video marketing and what I know really works has come from James. So I couldn't think of anyone better to bring on the show today to share with us some video how-to tips and strategies.
Now, my favorite part of this interview is that James is going to share with us a case study, his own case study of how he built a video around a list building strategy. This strategy is something you can actually model for your own business. Now, I don't want to give it all away so I'll let James jump in and tell you all about when we get in the interview but definitely pay attention to the list building strategy. I think you're going to find it really valuable so let's go ahead and get started.
So, James, thanks so much for being here.
James: Oh, thank you so much for having me, Amy. I'm excited.
Amy: Definitely. I want to jump in but before we get to all the good how-to content that you have for us today, I want you to tell us a little bit about how you got started with video marketing.
James: Cool. So I'll try and keep as abridged and short as possible. I've always grown up having a love for the camera and making videos as a little kid. I stole my mom's camcorder and was just making little stop animation videos when I was a kid so I ended up going to film school for it, thinking that that's what I wanted to do, the whole Hollywood route, and quickly realized that I did not want to be schlepping coffee around for some big ego producer my whole life.
What was paying the bills through college was bartending and I guess I just have always had that entrepreneurial side in me and did not even like bartending because I didn't like being told what to do, whether it was from a drunk customer or a rude manager. I was over that pretty quickly.
So to make even more money in college I quit the bartending job and started doing private party bartending and I was working events all throughout Southern California, doing weddings, corporate events, I would show up and bartend for them. That turned into the whole, “How do I put this up on the Internet? How do I leverage this even more?” and I created a course called “Bartend for Profit,” teaching other bartenders how to do what I was doing. I didn't really know what I was doing in terms of how to sell this or what to do and for a couple months, this product just sat up there and didn't make a single sale.
Then somewhere, I don't know where I remember hearing this, I just heard somewhere someone said, “Do YouTube. Put videos on the Internet,” and this was in the beginning of 2008 so this was a while ago. YouTube was still fairly young. Because I had the camera, I wasn't afraid of how to use it because I had the film background, I said, “Sure. No problem.
No-brainer,” and I made a couple of videos, I put them up on YouTube. They're still up there to this day, from 2008, and all of the sudden, on April 18th, 2008, I made my first sale on the Internet for a $200 product and it said, “How did you hear about us?” “YouTube.com.” That's when I knew something was working, like, “Ah, OK, I get it now.”
From there it was just game over, like how do I take it from there and really my passion's been how to teach, help and inspire others so video's where people get a lot of value from me.
Amy: Well, you've been my teacher from day one with video marketing so that's what it's such an honor to have you on the show today. I thought we'll just dive in and get right to it. Sound good?
James: Yeah, absolutely.
Amy: All right. Let's do it. So let's talk big picture first. So many people are freaked out about video. They maybe make a few videos now and then but it's rarely part of their overall marketing strategy. Why do you think it's so common to be freaked out about making videos?
James: Well, let me ask you. Are you freaked out about video?
Amy: No, but I have to say, it's not the easiest thing for me to do.
James: And what is it for you? I'm just curious because there's so many reasons that we could spend a whole hour talking about the excuses but what is it for you that has been the most challenging thing?
Amy: I think to be completely honest here, I don't love to see myself on video. I find a million things, like my mouth looks weird or I'm saying that weird, so I'm completely critical of every time I see a video so that's complete honesty there. Also remembering the scripts and making sure I say it just right, that is always a challenge for me as well.
James: Awesome. So what I want to do right now is I want to share two things. One I'm going to share in a second, a really cool trick for what you can do to make it look the illusion that we are memorizing a mile long script and doing it effortlessly and it doesn't include a teleprompter and even you, Amy, commented on one of Liz D'Alto's recent videos saying, “How did you memorize that whole thing?” and she's like, “What are you talking about? I didn't memorize a thing.”
I'll share that tip in a second but first I want to go back to this self-criticism thing because this is a big thing for a lot of people. The first thing I'll say is that to create a video I don't know where anybody got the notion that a video means you have to be in front of the camera. That's kind of
this really funny thing where it says, “Why aren't you using video in your business?” They go, “I don't want to be in front of a camera.” “Who said you had to be?” So we can go into this, Amy, if you want to, different options and ways.
Amy: Yeah.
James: This calls up to you as how to make videos and I do a ton of them, trust me. I'm a bigger introvert than you, Amy, and yes, Amy is an introvert, ladies and gentlemen. We both are and I don't like being in front of the camera. I made that decision because I want to be a personal brand and share my message and that works. So you don't have to be in front of the camera.
However, if you choose to, which we will give the benefits and the reasons why you can connect and engage with your audience on a deeper level, how do we overcome this self-criticism thing. I think you don't but you do start to understand that no one will be as harsh of a critic as yourself.
So, Amy, all the things that you hate about yourself looking on camera, that's 10 times worse than the worst other critic would ever see of you and you're beautiful and amazing on camera so other people don't see the things that you see because we are our harshest critic. It's just about understanding that and kind of getting used to it. I hate all of my videos. I hate watching myself. It's kind of a normal part of it. That's kind of what you're signing up for and you just kind of get used to it. You carry on and move on.
I saw your latest video, Amy, that you did and I read the comments. People are in my video commenting, “How did Amy's video look so good? How come Amy's videos look so professional? How do I do that?” so it's just really funny. The bottom line though is if you let these be the excuse and the reason you don't do video now that it's 2013, you're just committing suicide for your business.
Amy: No, I agree and as much as I don't necessarily love to watch myself on camera, I'm exactly like you. It's the best way for me to build my brand and to get the exposure, make that personal connection, so I do it anyway and I think that's just what you've got to do if you want to build this business online and get that exposure you're looking for. But I really want to go back to what you said, so people really don't want to be on camera. They don't want to be direct to camera. Give me some suggestions as to what they can do instead.
James: There's a million and one ways in which you can get creative with screen capture software where you're showing your screen. Even Amy has these videos where it's like, “OK, today I'm going to show you how to upload an image to Facebook,” or something and she's just walking you through on the camera. Simple software such as ScreenFlow if you're on a Mac, Camtasia if you're on a PC, ScreenFlow or Camtasia can do this for you. What I like to do,
especially when I get really lazy and I haven't shaved in a few days and my hair looks like a mess, is I'll take a Keynote or PowerPoint slide and I'll make just some text on a few slides and I'll just read the slides and record it and now I've got a simple video.
Amy: That's easy.
James: That's super easy and now, because I do this so much, my job is video, I've got to make videos and teach video, I actually have a video editor on staff and I'll just write out a script of what I'm saying. I'll record the audio just like this, like Amy has no idea
I'm still in my pajamas at 2:00 in the afternoon, but she'd never know because it's audio.
Well, I'll do that and record the audio, hand that over to my video editor, badda-bing, badda-boom, he turns that into a video with images and text and all that stuff. The most important thing you've got to get away from this is that there are a myriad of options in making videos without having to be in front of the camera.
There's another resource, write this down, called “Videoscribe.tv.”
Amy: I'll add it in the show notes.
James: Perfect. Videoscribe.tv is a really cool piece of software that allows you to make animated text videos. There's a ton of other stuff out there but that in itself could be a whole hour-long call but we want to talk about some other things.
Amy: Yeah, but those are great tips and really useful so thanks for sharing. Now, here's the deal. I've had the experience to work with you kind of behind the scenes of some things and one thing I never would have guessed about you but is really cool to see is that you plan your video marketing efforts.
Like you plan it out, you're prepared when you go and get ready to make a video and I think that changes the game completely. So what does that planning look like for you and what advantages does it give you?
James: I like to say, this is my newest cool little slogan, you know people say that the eyes are the window to your soul, I say that video is the window to your brand.
Amy: Nice.
James: And if that's the case, then we should always be doing stuff to raise the bar. Now, you can't raise the bar on the quality of your videos until you make your first video so step one is just get something out there. But when it comes to making a better video, most of us here listening to this call have at least made one video if we have a business on the Internet. This isn't like, “What's a video?” It should be a little bit more about like how do we get videos t-, “It's not working. I tried it. It's okay. Let me take it to the next level,” and that's where I want to come in and help all of you.
So what I have is a simple six-step process that I teach and share but I teach and share it because it's exactly what I do with all of my videos and it's so powerful
because the old me, and a lot of people, just kind of turn on the camera and wing it. It's great to have that skill and that ability but you're missing out on so much. Just your ability to sit down and do some of these steps, which I'll share with you in a half a second, will up the game for you so much. So the step one – and, Amy, I have a whole infographic so if you want, we can give your fans and followers this infographic and they can just follow step by step.
Amy: Cool.
James: So step one – and I don't have it in front of me so we're going to cross our fingers and hope I know it by heart – step one is to choose your intention. Every video needs to have an intention. We're not making videos to get our Girl Scout or Boy Scout badge to say, “I make videos.” We're not making a video so it sits on our desktop to collect dust. That doesn't make us any money. Every video is simply a tool to communicate a message and yield a result so we need to be clear from that before we even go to step two.
Step two is choosing the style of the video. Now, step three is to script the video and this is where we'll spend half a second because this is where we no longer just like press record and just start talking.
Because I've seen those talking head videos and what happens? People ramble and they just talk and talk and they're trying to like, you can see it, you can see their eyes are moving, they're looking up, they're trying to grab what they know is in their head, what you know you need to say but you're trying to say it as succinctly and clearly as possible and you're not doing that. So when you can actually script something out, you can say your message a lot shorter, a lot quicker and a lot more effectively so I'm a big fan of that.
Then step number – what are we on – four is to film your video. Step five is to edit it and step six is to broadcast it. It's really simple. But choosing an intention, choosing the style of your video and then taking the time to write a script, these three prep steps, most people never do and then wonder why they don't get results with their video. Taking that extra time there is highly beneficial so we'll definitely have that six- step checklist/cheat sheet for you guys.
Amy: You brought up a great point. You talked about the script and remember earlier I had seen one of Liz D'Alto, she's a mutual friend of ours, I saw her video and it just
looked like she read the entire thing from start to finish. So talk about your little tricks with . . .
James: She didn't look like she was reading.
Amy: No, not at all, it just really flowed together. Now, what I do is I actually have the script and I kind of memorize chunks of it but it still didn't look as smooth as what Liz did so talk a little bit about your tricks with scripts.
James: Well, it's very similar, it seems like, what you're doing. I just think we're able to edit it a little bit better perhaps.
Amy: Yeah.
James: We started with a script and we had it line per line. There was, down on a piece of paper or on a Google Doc and she literally would just, similar to what you're saying, she would memorize a line or two at a time. She memorized on the spot as much as she could at a time and usually that comes out to one or two sentences. Then we would just film that and due to a little movie magic and a little bit of work in the editing room, we can cut that all together so that it looks like one, fluid take.
One of the secrets there is we do something called the jump cut but all we basically do is change the angle slightly. Maybe we'll zoom in on her or we'll put her on the left side of the camera or the right. We do that all in post. We do that all in the editing and I show people how to do that. Obviously that's going to be more technical than what this call and what this podcast will allow for us but it's all possible.
Why I want to share this is that I want people, if they want to make better videos, they need to shy away from the rambling, one-minute, talking head video where they have no script or no preparation and I want them to shy away from using a teleprompter because a teleprompter, although its intentions are good, ends up doing more harm than people thought.
Have you ever, Amy, seen someone's video and you could tell just by seeing the video that were reading from a teleprompter?
Amy: Oh, yeah. I have videos where I have read from teleprompters a couple years ago and I look at those and not only do I have crazy eyes, it's very obvious I'm reading from a teleprompter.
James: It's just like if you were to go give a presentation today in front of 100 people in person, in real life, you wouldn't go up there with a piece of paper and read it line for line. You would have a complete disconnect with your audience. Every time I see one of those videos where someone's reading off a teleprompter, that's all I end up focusing on is, “Oh, look, they're reading. Oh my gosh, I can see their eyes.”
Once that happens, anything that they're saying is gone. You don't even pay attention to that. So there can be a huge disconnect and it's very dangerous. You have to be really, really good at reading out of a teleprompter and most of us are not, myself included, so I say don't even waste your time with that.
Amy: One tip you gave me that I never really thought of before, recently James came over my house, in my home office, and he helped me set up a big white screen and then I got a new camera and some light so I kind of upped my game a little bit and, James, you helped me set it up.
But one thing you said when you left, just kind of like under your breath, no big deal was, “Don't try to do this alone. Get someone to help you film the day you're going to film,” and I'm like, “Whoa, whoa, wait a second,” because I'm a one-woman show. Half the time I'm alone at the house in my home office, my husband's at work and I don't have anyone so when you said that I thought, “OK. I've got to change this up.”
So I actually had my husband, who knows nothing about video marketing, get behind the camera so I can make a few videos and you are right because what I didn't tell you when you left, I thought, “I don't need somebody else. I'm going to do this myself.” That was a disaster so I do think planning ahead, getting someone to come over, just turn the camera on and make sure it's focused for you, taking that stress out also kind of changes the game for your video making. Taking the stress out of it makes it so much more enjoyable. So I do agree, you should try to have someone with you.
James: Well, think about it this way, if you're filming those videos, you are the marketer and the business owner, you're the actor, you're the talent, you're the script writer, you're the director, you're the editor, you're everything. You're the stage hand, whatever. Then you have to try to make the video look great without sweating and stressing and freaking out. If you just have one person there, even to just look through the viewfinder to make sure everything looks good, maybe just to give you a little feedback or encouragement or a thumbs up, it's so simple but it really does take a lot of that stress off of you and just help you concentrate on making a great video.
Amy: I agree. So I think everybody who's making videos right now, think about just inviting someone over to help you out and another thing is batching. Do you batch, James?
James: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I sometimes do it so much where I like totally forget to change clothes or anything so you'll see that I batch it because there's like five videos and I'm wearing the exact same clothes and they come out over like a five- week period. But that's the way you do it because you get momentum.
You get the mess ups come less and less. You warm up. You get more comfortable. You get a little bit more at ease and that's that genius zone. That's where you want to be anyway so it's not only like, do I recommend that you do several videos, like you do a video day of shooting, it's a requirement. That's how it needs to be done.
Amy: Yeah, I definitely now do video days and it just makes things go so much more smoother and I always start with the least important video in the beginning and then save the really good ones for last because I always warm up.
James: Look at you!
Amy: Yeah, I'm getting good at this kind of stuff.
James: I love it. So we're going to go deeper with some stuff. We're going to talk strategy, right?
Amy: We are. We're going to talk strategy and specifically because this is a big topic for my audience, list building and you are a pro at using videos to grow your e-mail list. It kind of blows me away at times. Most of us don't even know where to start when it comes to list building with video marketing. I know I sure didn't until I started to follow some of your strategies so can you kind of break it down for us, like let's start from the top, the foundation, how does it work and where do you start?
James: Okay. What I'm going to do is I'm going to share with you first a case study that I use in my business that people could actually follow along with this and go through the whole process so it's like really there to be seen and proven. This is a video that I posted up in the end of October of 2012 and to this day, I don't know the exact number, but it brings in anywhere from 12 to 20 leads a day.
Amy: Nice.
James: I don't know what that total adds up to since October but it's anywhere from
12 to 20 new names and e-mail addresses, one video I'm building my list with. Obviously this is a rinse and repeat, scalable process and I do this with several videos but this is one of my favorite because it brings in some of the most leads.
The video is called “Royalty Free Music for YouTube” and that's what it's on the topic of. You can do a search. I'm sure Amy will provide links and all that stuff but you can do a search for this in YouTube and, hey, what do you know, when you type in “royalty free music,” my video shows up.
So the foundation of this is getting views to your videos and providing enough of a compelling call to action at the end of your video that people will leave YouTube, go to your website to opt in, subscribe, give you their contact info and then there's a little magic step I do at the end, which is really cool.
So, Amy, do you want me to just kind of break that down?
Amy: Yes, let's do it.
James: OK. I started with a keyword and this is hands down, if we're touching YouTube in any way, whether it's just list building or you just want to get more traffic or whatever you're doing with YouTube, it should always start with keyword first. So YouTube is a traffic source for our business. Traffic, that's what we want to think when we think YouTube. In order to do that, we need to start with a keyword. We need to figure out, we need to identify what our ideal customers are search for when they want to work with us.
I'm a little slow sometimes, Amy, but by the tenth webinar I've done, I keep seeing the same question: “James, can you tell us more about royalty free music for our YouTube videos?” It was finally after like the hundredth time someone asked me that question, I'm like, “Oh, maybe I should make a video about this.” So I went over to the Google Keyword tool and I did a searchy search for “royalty free music” and sure enough, if I can recall, it gets 201,000 searches a month.
Amy: Wow!
James: Yeah, that's a good keyword, that's what we're talking about. So you go to the Google Keyword tool and the first step is always find as many keywords as you can that are related to your business that you know your ideal customers are searching for. Amy would do stuff like “Facebook marketing,” “Facebook list building,” “setting up a Facebook fan page,” stuff like that. Those are what people are searching for and they want to go to YouTube to find a tutorial on how to do it.
So for me, I chose “royalty free music,” 201,000 searches every month, perfect, so what did I do? Step number one; let's go through our six step video creation process. Step number one, I chose an intention for this video. I said, “My intention is to build my list with this video.” Very simple. So how am I going to do that? I'm going to put it up on YouTube with a call to action at the end of the video.
Step number two was, “What's the style?” Well, I had an idea. It's just going to be me in front of the camera talking with a black background, not a white. I chose a black because it's easy to light and it works and it's just me talking, talking about royalty free music. Great.
So step three was all about the script so I sat down and I wrote a script about everything you need to know about royalty free music, what it is, where you can get it, all that good stuff. But at the end of the video, and this is the most important part, I had a call to action and the call to action was telling people what to do next. I told them everything about royalty free music, “So if you enjoyed this video, I have a very special gift for you.
Over on my website I have five free, royalty free music songs that I want to give you absolutely free. These are songs that I personally use in all of my YouTube videos and I have master resale rights to give them to you so you can use them in your videos. All you need to do to get these five free songs is click the link below this video.”
People click on that link and when they do, it takes them to a squeeze page, a lead capture page, etc. and they go and submit their name and e-mail address and you guys can do this. You can go and follow that. You can see the squeeze page that I created. They submit their name and e-mail address and on the next page is a download page where, hey, what do you know, they get their five songs.
So from what I've said so far, Amy, does that make sense? Do you have any questions on that?
Amy: No, it makes perfect sense. I guess one question I have is, on the screen, when you're saying, “Go to my website,” are you putting the URL? I've seen videos where you can click in the video and go somewhere. Did you do anything fancy like that?
James: So at the time when I made the video, the new feature, which I'll share it with you in a second, of external annotation linking was not available. So up until recently the way we had to get traffic from our videos was to tell people to click your link in the description box and you put the link in your description box and it's http in front of it http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com. People can click on that and go to your website.
Now, as of like just a few weeks ago, this is a very new update, very exciting update, YouTube has unleashed the ability to have clickable annotations in your videos that allow you to send people to your website. So I can literally be like, “Click this little annotation here in my video,” so people click in the video now and they go to your website.
Amy: But when you say “annotation,” what does that look like in the video?
James: It can look like anything, which is really cool. We can just choose like a standard annotation and it could be like this little red or black or white boxes that have some text in it but what's really cool is if we spend some time, now this is for my advanced users on the call, if we spend some time on our video, we can actually, in the editing process, have an image that we put in our editing software that says, “Click here,” and when we upload it to YouTube we have an annotation frame around that image so that when people click on the image it'll still take you off of YouTube. If that was a little too technical . . .
Amy: No, but that's cool. That's good stuff.
James: Yeah, so the point is every video, whether we're doing list building or not should be designed to get them off of YouTube and onto your website, onto your blog or your web property.
Amy: Now, I have a question about this video you made. When you tell them to go to your website to get the free music, did you say you're sending them to a very specific page that has the opt in? You're not sending them to your blog and they're searching for this give away somewhere.
James: That's correct and yes, yes, yes, that's the big difference is that we're not just doing every video . . . because I've seen this before and it just isn't as effective. Every video is like, “Thanks for watching. Make sure to go to amyporterfield.com.” Why would I go to amyporterfield.com? I mean, obviously I would if you told me to go but if we sit there and say, “For a free video series on how to set up and optimize your Facebook fan page, click the link below.” It's more specific. It's more real. It's more tangible so, yes, this is a very specific squeeze page that I actually created just for this video.
Amy: Just to kind of sum up this process, because I think this is something very doable that everybody listening now could shut off this podcast and get to work on something like this, so you find out what people need from you. You set your intention. “OK. This is the type of video I'm going to do.” You do a little research to make sure, like your keyword research that you did.
James: And that's Google Keyword tool. That's a great place to start.
Amy: OK. I'll link to it in the show notes so it will be easy for everyone to find. Then you write your script, and I think that is a piece, and you mentioned it already, that so many people either rush through or overlook.
And I will say that the game change for me when I started to write my scripts for my video, and my thing, and I've talked about this before, is I'll write them a day or two in advance and then just kind of practice them here and there for 15 minutes at a time so when I get on camera I feel
really comfortable with the words and I do think that makes a huge difference, so just a little tip there.
Then you do your video but goal here is at the end of the video you have a very clear call to action, you're sending them to a very specific opt in page where they're going to get something instantly once they opt in. I think that also is a really great distinction. You're not just sending them to your website. You're very specific and I do think that's why you're getting so many opt ins there, one of the reasons, is because it's very intentional.
James: Yes. Instead of just being this kind of blanketed, broad call to action, it's very specific to what they were searching for. So if Amy chooses a keyword of “how to edit a Facebook page”, let's say that's what someone's doing, I'm just kind of pulling this out of thin air, let's say that that's a good one and she tells them how to do that and
then sends them to something that's like, “To learn how to use social media in your business, click here.”
It's like, “Oh, that's OK,” but what if it was something like, “To get five free templates on how to edit your page properly,” like, “five free templates on what one of your pages should look like,” or something like that, it's very specific, it's such a no-brainer. They want more. That's why they watched the whole video. They want more and if you don't give them more they're going to get it somewhere else if not from you.
Amy: Here's the deal, it's more work for sure. James, one thing I really have respected about getting to work with you and being around you a lot is you always have ideas that take some work, like you've got to get in there and devote the time and energy to but it also completely changes your success rate, meaning if you did this, you set this up, you found out what people needed, you have this great giveaway, you set up your sale or opt-in page, you can then, this will live on for a long time. Like, you've had this going since October.
James: Yeah, and this video has 32,000 views right now.
Amy: 32,000!
James: And if we look at the analytics, 10,793 of those views, which is one-third of the views, have come from the fact that people went to YouTube.com since October, however many months that's been, and searched the exact words “royalty free music”. I have an additional 5,819 views because 5,800 people have searched “copyright free music” in the past however many months since October. Yes, it's all very intentional.
Now, yes, I do always tend to put a little bit more of that elbow grease and work into something. I've never really been a fan of the people that are on here on the Internet looking for some quick, easy solution because you end up working harder doing that. That's what I find is just fascinating to me is the people that work so hard to try and cut corners and if you just do it the right way, you can have fantastic results with that.
I want to share one additional really cool thing I did with this video, Amy, if you're ready for it.
Amy: Cool. Yeah, do it.
James: So I'm checking the analytics as we go through this. The video has just under 32,000 views and, comparatively it's not a crazy number but it's an additional amount, I've received 1,318 views from Twitter and 491 views from Facebook and, yeah, that's it. So 2,000 additional views, just about, from the big social media sites and I don't use Twitter and Amy knows I really don't use Facebook so how did I get an extra 2,000 people to share and tweet out my video?
This was a very cool, awesome little thing I did. On the download page, and you can all check this out, you've just got to go through the process of it, of seeing the video, opt in, check out the download page. When I give my people their five free songs, I say, “Hey, you just subscribed. As promised, here are your five free songs. You can download them now.” And it doesn't have to be songs. This could be like a free report, a free video series, a free audio, a free chapter from your book. It has to just be something that they want.
Here's what I did, after I gave them the 5 free songs I said, “Now, I have an opportunity for you to get 5 additional songs, 10 in total. To get these five additional songs, all you have to do is click the share button below,” and I used a really cool yet simple plugin called “Share to Unlock” and what it does is it puts this little thing on the page and when people tweet or share or Facebook like, whatever, it will unlock an additional page of downloads.
Amy: Okay. That is super cool. I've never used anything like that before.
James: It's like I realized here are these people opting in, I have these download pages all over the Internet working for me and it's just wasted real estate. These are people that their interest has been piqued. You have their full attention right now so let's take advantage of that and what I wanted to do was to get them to be my number one fan and salespeople. They're literally, and this is really important that you make the distinction, when they click that tweet button, it's sending out a tweet back to the video, not to the squeeze page, not to the download page, not to my sales pitch. . .
Amy: Nice!
James: . . . back to the video so it continues to get more views on the video, which also in YouTube's eyes says, “Woah, who keeps tweeting out this video? Who keeps sharing this video? Look at all this traffic that keeps coming in from external sites. Let's push this up the rankings.”
The reason I get 12 to 20 leads a day and not just a bunch all at once and then never again is because it's this self-feeding mechanism that continues to drive itself and that's what I like to set up. So yes, it is more work upfront so that I can work less in the future.
Amy: That's exactly what I love about this whole strategy. When you set something up like this and you really put, like you said, the elbow grease into it, now it's going to live on while you're at the beach taking a vacation or whatever it might be. So we're always thinking, I shouldn't say we, I'm always thinking, “OK. What's my next thing? What am I going to create? What am I going to do?” But if I did more of these types of strategies, I think that I could actually work less and still reap the benefits.
James: Absolutely. I think that should be the goal. I really think so because, yeah, what's the point of doing it all if you're always like struggling to keep up with yourself. Now let me ask you a question, Amy. I just found someone, I forget what site it was found but recently there was a report and statistics about the controversy, the fight between YouTube and Facebook videos and this study concluded that a video uploaded on Facebook has over a 40% higher engagement rate than a YouTube video shared inside of Facebook. Have you heard about this?
Amy: I have not heard about that but I've been saying things like that forever so that makes me very happy. I've got to get my hands on that study.
James: Yeah, well, it makes me angry because, yes, obviously you want to hear things that are in favor for Facebook and I want to hear things that are in favor of YouTube. So I bring this thing up because I think it's very funny. I think it's very ironic in that now a lot of people are coming to me and they're like, “Well, James, Facebook is getting way higher engagement rates than YouTube. I think I'm going to do Facebook video.”
Amy: No!
James: I sit here and I roll my eyes because we're comparing apples and oranges. Facebook, at least for me, has never been a place to go and watch videos. I don't log in and say, “What great videos can I watch today?” It's usually a place to catch up with friends and hang out and kill some time and then, “Oh, hey, look, Amy just posted a video at the top of my newsfeed. Let's go check it out.”
But YouTube is a place where people are going to watch videos and really not do anything else except watch videos and comment on them so obviously the YouTube engagement's going to be way higher on YouTube and Facebook videos can't get posted on YouTube.com.
The results of this survey, my conclusion is don't ignore YouTube. Don't discount it or say, “I have to do less on YouTube now.” What I would start looking at is playing around with uploading the same video into both locations.
Amy: Oh, that's exactly what I do. My whole thing is when I have a video, I definitely would never not put it up on YouTube. I always use YouTube. I think you're crazy not to put up your videos on YouTube every single time. But then if I have a video where I want to include it as a Facebook ad or let's say I just want to get more discussion around that video on Facebook, then I'll upload it to Facebook as well.
So now I have it on both platforms, which I think you need to be everywhere it matters. So for me, it matters on YouTube and it matters on Facebook so I just do both but I would never, ever ignore one or the other.
James: I know you do YouTube stuff but your focus has never been a primarily YouTube business and you still have over 200,000 unique views and 3,000 subscribers on there just because you're putting the videos on there, because you made the video and walking away.
Here's the deal, my first business online, I think you already know this, Amy, was a program teaching people how to become a bartender because that's what I was, that's how I paid my bills through college and was able to build a success brand around being a bartender for private parties, events and stuff. So I created my first product back in 2007, 2008.
Till this day, I still get sales on this thing and that's really exciting because I haven't touched it in years and every time a new sale comes in it's $200 to purchase the program. It's all digital and then they get something shipped to them, to their house, it says, “How did you hear about us?” and every single time it says “YouTube.com”, “your YouTube videos”, “saw one of your YouTube videos”. It's never going to be, “I saw one of your Facebook videos,” because first of all, YouTube is a search engine. People are looking on YouTube to find the answers but then YouTube videos and mind, definitely, they get ranked inside of Google.
People are four years later typing in these “how to bartend” type keywords and they're finding my videos, they're watching my video. They see the call to action. They opt in. They get on my newsletter, which is all on autopilot, and then they purchase. How'd you find us? YouTube.
Don't ever discount YouTube. It's not going anywhere any time soon and it still has huge opportunity.
Amy: I was going to say, it's only getting bigger. I feel that video marketing just this year has become even bigger than it was last year. People are talking about it more.
You're learning
about it everywhere on the web. Do you agree that for some reason I feel like it's gotten this even more of a push lately?
James: I do and I laugh because people say 2013 is the year for video and that's so wrong. It's so b.s. It's 2013 is the last year that, if you're not using video because you have an excuse, that just needs to stop. This is the last year you can get away w-, actually last year was, was the last year you could get away with not doing videos basically.
Amy: I agree. It makes perfect sense.
James: . . . is how I look at it.
Amy: Yeah, these are such great tips, James. I feel like I could talk with you for hours about video marketing and I know what's great is you have a lot of great content on jameswedmore.com. So everybody definitely go check out jameswedmore.com but also you have a really cool program that I want to you tell people about where they could find out more.
James: Yeah, well, if you're interested in learning the whole YouTube strategy that I use myself, I mean YouTube's my number one lead-generating and traffic-generating source, I teach all that over at Video Traffic Academy and basically the whole process is designed to show you how to take simple, little videos and get them ranked inside of YouTube and ultimately into Google.
When you do that, it's game over because – what is the number – this was from Forrester Research, they said that a video has a 53 times greater chance of getting ranked inside of Google than a text-based article now.
So if you're still trying to do SEO for articles and blog posts and stuff, then you are paddling upstream and you're working way harder than you need to be. I just love it when people send me a Facebook message or an e-mail or an update saying, “I did exactly what you said and, boom, I'm number one for this keyword. That was awesome. I'm going to go do it again.” I'm like, “Yep, because it works.”
And make sure to check out my YouTube channel. Please do that.
Amy: Of course.
James: Just go to youtube.com/jameswedmore so you can watch some of my ridiculous videos.
Amy: They're good stuff. They're always entertaining and very educational.
Thanks, James, so very much for being with us today, I greatly appreciate it and hopefully you'll come back and share some more soon.
