Greetings and Salutations

I just finished reading a book on driving traffic and sales to a website. One of the points the author presses is that YouTube is now the #2 search engine in the world, behind Google. I know some of us are text-people and we think naturally about text content. But for an entire group of people out there, they are video-oriented people. They would rather watch a video than read text. Sometimes it’s a choice they make. Other times, it’s what they have to do. Maybe they have vision issues. Maybe they’re doing their treadmill routine and it’s much easier to watch a video than to try to read while they do that. There’s all sorts of reasons a video version might work better for someone than a text version.

Note that you don’t have to worry about the “duplicate content” issue with video – Google doesn’t penalize you for having an audio version to go with your text version. It considers those two different things.

So what he recommended is to try making a video of each article you write. Just read it into a camera! It works best if you are there as if you are “talking to” your friend, the reader. It shouldn’t be fancy or polished. Some of the best videos just have someone sitting in a chair as if they were sitting with you. The viewers want you to look “normal” and natural and not like an air-polished model. They want to trust you like a good friend. And then that trust carries over to when they do read your writings.

The key is to just try one or two. Don’t worry about it being perfect or ideal. You can always delete them later if you want. But you want to play and see how it works. Learn how the buttons in YouTube work. Get over that initial nervousness hump. We all get nervous about being recorded. I know I do! But the more you do it, the more comfortable you get.

If you absolutely don’t want your face on screen at the beginning, that’s fine! Start with just a photo of what you’re talking about, and talk in the background. That’s not ideal, but it’s a starting point. Take that first tiny step.

Here’s my plan for my Low Carb site.

I have a feed here that I’m not using much –

http://www.youtube.com/user/lisashealowcarb?feature=watch

Also, I’m on steroids until Saturday the 27th. So I can’t drink any alcohol.

So if I’m going to have to be away from alcohol anyway, starting Monday the 22nd I’m going to go on a juice fast for a week. I’m going to start by doing a review of the Blendtec blender I have. Probably on Saturday. Then on Monday, at each meal, I’ll video what I’m making and how I’m making it, and talk about its nutrition levels and so on. So that should mean 7 days x 3 shakes = 21 new videos, each a new recipe, that can both stand alone and also draw people along the sequence. All will drive traffic back to my low carb site. I’ll be doing these things anyway so it shouldn’t take any extra time.

Does anybody want to try a juice fast with me? You could just do a few days if you wanted to, like Mon-Wed, or maybe the weekend, whatever worked for you. It would be fun to have someone else doing even a few days along with me to see what you thought of it.

Even if you don’t want to do the juice fast, I definitely recommend doing youtube videos of some of your content. Do any of you currently have a feed set up? If so, where is it so I can share it with everyone?

All of you with books, I highly recommend reading the first chapter or even chapter-part into YouTube. It helps draw awareness to your book, and people love author readings. Do talks about interesting news related to your book’s topic. I have a stream for SuttonMass that includes a reading of Aspen Allegations plus a lot of other videos about Sutton –

http://www.youtube.com/user/suttonmass?feature=watch

So its purpose is to catch readers who would not find me otherwise - and send them to my website.

Let's have an editor chat on Wednesday, April 24th at 9pm EST all about YouTube. We can see each other's video tests, give suggestions, offer advice, and help people out. It's really easy to do. It's a great traffic builder for every web project you have. It's all about getting over that initial hurdle and trying it.

In the meantime, email me if you have a YouTube feed already, or if you need help setting one up. That way you can be ready to go as we work on this.

And who will join me in my juice fast? :)


Lisa Shea, owner
BellaOnline.com

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