There were a few great take-aways from this afternoon’s SMX East session entitled, “Pumping Up YouTube“, which are key to being successful on YouTube, the Internet’s 2nd largest search engine:

1. Know what “success” means.

What are you trying to achieve?

• Video views – Do you just want a lot of people to see your video?
• Conversions – Do you need people to click to another website and take an action?
• Deeper engagement with your brand – Do you need to use video give your potential customers more interaction with your brand?

2. Research keywords.

To be discovered on the 2nd largest search engine, you will need to know what people are looking for. Use YouTube’s Keyword Tool to find popular searches within your space.

3. Know your competition.

Search on YouTube to find other videos that rank well for the keywords that you would like to rank for. See what it is that you are up against and seek out strategies to out-do them.This phase should also help you in your keyword research. Find opportunities: are there some high traffic keywords that seem like they may be easier to rank for than others?

4. Create a kick-ass video.

You don’t just create viral content because you want to. Viral content – unless it happens by chance – must be well though-out and gripping! No one is going to pass on a video to their friend(s) if they don’t really care for it themselves. Here are a couple of ideas.

5. Fill-out your video details.

Put important keywords at the front of your video titles, include them in your description, and tags. Do not over-do it, just put keywords that are relevant and are based on your keyword research. Allow your videos to be embedded. Otherwise, viewers will only be able to see your videos on YouTube.

6. Use the “Featured Videos” section.

If you are certain that your video will be a major hit, then use YouTube’s paid “Featured Videos” service to get your video seen by many people in a short amount of time. Once the video takes off, your organic traffic will usually out-do your paid traffic.

7. Insert links in your videos.

Use annotations to insert links to other videos to maximize every viewer. Do not over-do this either. Make sure that annotations do not impede the viewing experience.

8. Interact with high value users.

Find users on YouTube who are active and add value through their participation in the social network. Get your video in front of them – without spamming so that they can do part of the work for you. Your video will also benefit with more traffic  thanks to increased comments. YouTube will be soon be implementing new features to increase the amount of social interaction on the website (for example by making it easier to find your friends).

9. Use social media.

With built-up and relevant social media accounts, get your video seen by more people. By “relevant” I mean that your friends and your user history should be somehow related to the topic of your video for it to get more qualified traffic. My favorite sites for video sharing are Digg, Twitter, and StumbleUpon.

10. Rinse, wash, repeat.

Go back and start over. Look at what you can improve about your video(s) and continue to keep your video channel page fresh with more videos!

Tags: Marketing, Video, Youtube