So, this time last week I was in London attending the UK’s biggest blog conference, and one of the sessions I was determined to go to was the YouTube session.
I’ve been getting more into making fun videos for a while now and while I’m never going to be a great film-maker I think that videos can both help enhance blog posts, especially for reviews, days out, and special occasions, and also be a great way to connect with online audiences separate to my blog. Hopefully I will be brave enough soon to do a face to face vlog and not just film the kids and things!
The YouTube session was done by Greg Brand, Creative Director at Travizeo, which is an online travel video company. Their videos are just amazing. The session was really well done and felt very relaxed & informal. Greg took questions at the start of the talk and then tried to cover those topics, so that we were learning what we wanted to know rather than just watching a pre-prepared slideshow.
These are the topics he jotted down to cover:
Now, we didn’t cover all of the topics in this order, and Greg’s tendency to wander off topic was informative but slightly erratic, so instead of going through each one, I’m going to share what I noted down & found most useful.
Random tips:
- Add YouTube information to your business/blog cards – I also need to add a link to my sidebar!
- Buy a tripod!
- Try out the Splice iOS app
- Use YouTube as a social platform, with regular posts & reply to comments to keep your audience engaged
- Never lie, be honest & true to yourself
- Good light is important! Try to film during sunrise & sunset, the golden hours
- Download the YouTube Creators Playbook
- Websites for purchasing royalty-free audio: Pond5 & AudioJungle
Encouraging viewers to stick around at the end of your videos:
- Create an ending to your videos, using a png image file template with spaces for videos/images
- Use “Associated Website Annotations” to add links to your blog, Facebook, twitter
- Link to other videos from the thumbnail videos/images
- Include an annotation with a subscribe link to make it easy for them to follow your channel updates
- Add links in your description too, as annotations don’t work on mobile
- Use the Branding Watermark and Featured Playlist features in InVideo Programming settings
I’ve been trying to work my way through these tips & added an ending with thumbnails & annotations to my latest video…
Hopefully it will help increase engagement and let people find my other videos and subscribe easily.
I really enjoyed Greg’s session and got a lot out of it, so hopefully you’ll be seeing bigger & better things in the future for my YouTube channel!
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