Video & Video Branding Secrets To Spike Up Your Video Views

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Video and Video Branding Is Marketing

Video content is currently, and perhaps for the foreseeable future, the most important marketing technique.  Video content in general is key.  People consume it in mass quantities.  Video branding can be as simple as putting a 7 second intro segment of yourself in the front of video content you didn’t create, but are just sharing.  

I don’t want to specifically talk about a video hosting platform, I’m going to keep the discussion about video content and video branding.  That said, there are many video hosting sites, including of course YouTube, Vimeo, Empower Network, iWoWee, Wistia, Viddler, Facebook and dozens more.

The more robust of these sites enable video branding through semi-transparent icons that can be placed on top of the video, showing off your brand.

What Makes For Effective Video Regardless Of Video Branding

In Chicago, on a Monday after an powerful Empower Network event, I stuck around for an advanced training class on effective video content taught by the videographer for Empower Network himself.  He shares some valuable information which I am going to share with you now.

How To Create Videos People Want To Watch And Share

S. M. I. L. E.

This acronym is the key to recall before turning on the camera so that you can create effective video.

Style – How you will be felt

Style is how you will present yourself.  The critical aspect of style is to simply be authentic. You must be yourself.  It’s extremely difficult to hide anything on video.  That last thing you want to do is try to be something you are not.  You do not want to try to be more professional, or talk in a different voice, and you definitely do not want to try and copy someone else.  All of these things are exposed on video and people aren’t going to be interested.

Style is about relating to people and the more you are yourself, the more people will be able to connect to you.  The most powerful moments in video are called ME TOO moments.  These are when you actually stumble upon words, or make a mistake, or when your dog goes running through the picture.

These type of things happen to everyone, and people can relate to it, and see that as concern or fear they may have had about being in front of the camera, and it makes you look more human and more likable when these little things happen.

If you take 20 takes to get it ‘perfect’, it won’t come across as likable as it would if you just left the little miscues in there.

Mission – How you will be heard

It is critical that you have thought about what you are going to say so that you have direction and coherency to your video content.  It’s very undesirable to viewers when they click play, and the video has someone stammering, trying to think about what to say, or keep a flow to their thoughts.  Spontaneity is nice in some cases, but not if it means you are lost for words or are stammering around talking about nothing.

Another critical aspect to your video mission, of how you will be heard, is to ensure you don’t make the video all about “I”.  It’s fine if you talk about yourself and your experiences, but at some point in the video, people are going to want to know what is in it for them.  You need to include the viewers.  You need to give them some feeling or idea of how they can obtain benefit or satisfaction or joy from your video.

Image – How you will be seen

Image relates to the technical aspects of video production, including the camera itself, the sound, the lighting, the editing, and other production components.

I’m not going to go over the equipment and compare features.  That is a subject within itself.

What does need some mention is lighting and sound issues.  Lighting is critical, obviously.  If there is inadequate lighting, besides the obvious poor quality of the video is the sound issues that typically are created.  When there is inadequate lighting, the sound is often out of sync with the facial movements, which obviously is a big distraction and a big turnoff.

It’s important for the lighting not to create shadows that make the video look awkward.  Outdoor lighting is fantastic but shadows must be considered.  Indoor lighting is often inadequate.  Its important to create enough light, and getting some inexpensive lighting might be worth while.

It’s simple to find out if you need additional lighting by just filming 15 seconds of video and watching it.

Sound is critical.  Microphones are great to use of course and most even lower end equipment supports microphone inputs.

When outdoors, wind can be a problem.  Having one of the felt pads over the microphone can help with this, but in brisk conditions, its worth a try to put your back to the wind and try to shield the wind with your body to eliminate the problem.

Launch – How you will be found

It’s important not to overdue the self-promotion aspects of your videos.  People with websites are constantly searching for video content to put on their sites.  If you video is interesting and not over-burdened with self-promotion, it’s very possible your videos will be used by others on their websites vie embed code or through links.

You videos will be invisible to the world with out text.

You must put a title and description with your video.  Also, if tags and other content is available for you to associate to the video, definitely take advantage of that.  This text content is how your video will be found.  Search engines can’t figure out what a video says.  The search engines will index the video based on the text content, so be detailed about the title and descriptions you use.  Consider how people will be searching for your videos, and make your content search engine friendly (SEO optimized).

Engage – How you will be fulfilled

Engagement is the feed back you will get from people in the form of comments.  Ignore the haters.  They will be out there for sure.  Never respond with anger or sarcasm.  Either ignore the ridiculous comments, or engage them with constructive questions.

For neutral or good feed back, definitely engage your viewers.  Take the time to care about what they say and relate to them.  Engage them in conversation.  This will get you followers and subscribers and is ultimately what you are seeking.

What is most important about creating video and video branding.

By far, the most important aspects of your video creation is the Style and the Mission.  This is where you need to spend 90% of your time and energy.  This is what makes the video appealing to others.

Typically, way too much attention is spent on the Image component, and it has very little to do with the success or effectiveness of the video.

Effective video marketing comes down to creating authentic videos yourself, which effectively is your video branding.  Or, seek out video content that you find appealing, and put a short segment of yourself introducing the video as your video branding strategy.