Sr. Account Manager
info@noodleheadstudios.com (mailto:)
November 2, 2009
Norcross, GA-, Today I am going to explain some of the ways to use Keywords with YouTube (http://www.youtube.com) , and I am also going to examine how some of the Atlanta Mayoral Candidates are doing in their attempt to steer viewers to their videos. When you post a video on Youtube you enter a title, write a description, pick a category and assign Keywords – also know as “tags” - to that video.
This is an important step because YouTube does not know what is in your video unless you tell it. Nobody at Youtube watches the videos, so there’s not an intelligent human there who can tell other viewers what content is in what video. The effect of this is that when a person uses the search bar and types in the phrase, name or term they are interested in, the computer at YouTube looks at the text entries associated with individual videos and then “tells” the searcher which videos they might want to look at. If you don’t let the search engine know what’s in your video, it won’t be able to tell viewers to look at it.
Let’s see how our candidates are doing… First, let’s take a look at the YouTube page for candidate Lisa Borders. Now Lisa Borders has done a good job of getting videos online, she has over 80 clips uploaded, but most of these clips have only gotten one or two hundred views. A quick check shows only one video with over one thousand views, and for a political contest in a city of over half a million with a metro area of over 5 million, these numbers are not good.
So let’s examine one video, the endorsement of the police union. This video has a brief write-up, which should be a lot longer, that’s bad, but it does have links to contribute and volunteer for the candidate, and that’s good. This video does have keyword tags, and there are limits to how much you can tag a video, but there clearly should be more information entered in both fields.
Also Lisa Borders has only 8 friends and 17 subscribers, which is pretty weak. Overall I have to give Lisa Borders a C grade on her YouTube performance.
Next, let’s look at Kasim Reed. Before we even get to YouTube, Kasim Reed has two YouTube clips posted on the landing page of his main campaign website, something Lisa Borders does not. That’s good. But when we get to his official YouTube page we see only 17 uploads, which is not even a quarter of Lisa Borders.
When we look at a positive segment posted from a newscast – something a candidate would surely like to have people watch, we see that the video description is blank and that the information in the tags section is a duplicate of the video title, and that is bad. Kasim Reed is not using YouTube tools to attract viewers, and again most of his view counts are well below one thousand.
And when it comes to online connections,
Mr. Reed has only 13 subscribers and no friends. I’m sorry Kasim, you get a D at YouTube University. So clearly, both candidates could do better and neither has broken through with a popular video. Each could have added a substantial amount of additional information in the description and tag fields… terms like democrat, republican, sales tax, voter and the like which would increase hits.
Also specifying hot-button issues like health care reform, crime rates, cash for clunkers, public option and other topics covered within the video will attract viewers. You can also change your tags any time you want, and even post the same video with different descriptions to see if one or the other gets more views. If you’re purely looking for view numbers and don’t care about relevance, follow the trends of what people are looking for that day.
For instance, Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com) lists the top ten most popular searches – check that list and copy it. Your video may have nothing to do with Paris Hilton, Megan Fox or Balloon Boy, but adding those terms will definitely make your video show up on searches.
Personally, I would love to see a video with Paris, Megan, Balloon Boy and one of the Atlanta Mayoral candidates all together. I don’t think it will happen, but if it did, it would probably get more views than all of the other candidate videos combined, which unfortunately says quite a lot about our political system.
The lesson for everyone here is that there are tools available to link your video up with people who want to watch it, whatever the subject. Most important, never forget that these tools, and the whole Internet are free! It’s like ripe fruit free for the picking. So taking a couple minutes to enter in keywords and descriptions could have a huge impact on communicating your message to the most people possible. Class is dismissed.
If you want to learn more or if you have an important projec,t call us at 678-620-2279 or log on to Noodlehead Studios.com (http://ping.fm/AwqF2).
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Noodlehead Studios is an award-winning studio based in Atlanta, Georgia. If you would like more information please contact Noodlehead Studios at 678.620.2279 or email, info@noodleheadstudios.com (mailto:) .
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