12. Tips for Producing More Effective YouTube Videos

So, you’ve decided to make YouTube part of your company’s marketing mix and you’ve even decided what type of video to produce. How do you go about making a must-see video, one that draws viewers and generates sales for your business?

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to producing effective YouTube videos. But I can impart lots of tips that can guide you in the right direction. Read on to learn how to make better-looking, better-performing YouTube videos—and drive customers to your accompanying website.

Tips for Creating Better-Looking Videos

When shooting a video for YouTube, it’s important to get the file format and technical details right. It’s also important to get the visual details right—to create a video that is visually and stylistically interesting to YouTube viewers.

What works well on a big movie screen works less well on a smaller home television screen. Similarly, what looks good on a TV-sized screen doesn’t look nearly as good when viewed in a small window in a web browser. If you want to create an effective YouTube video, you have to produce for the medium, exploiting those elements that make YouTube unique.

Shoot for the Smaller Screen

Given that most YouTube viewers will be viewing your video in a small window in their web browser, you must create a video that looks good at this small size, viewed on a typical computer screen. What does this mean in terms of visual style?

Put simply, when viewing videos in a small onscreen window, detail gets lost. Don’t expect a video crowded with multiple objects to look good in YouTube’s default player window; in fact, smaller objects in the frame might simply disappear in the background blur.

The best YouTube videos are those that exploit YouTube’s standard display. Don’t put small, complex objects on screen; use a large, simple subject instead. What works best? A simple talking head, positioned front and center in the frame. No fancy background, no fiddly details, just the speaker’s face big in the frame.

That goes even when you’re shooting in high definition. You can shoot an epic with a cast of thousands, and an HD picture will accurately reproduce the entire cast, but those thousands will look like little dots in a small browser window. It’s a matter of size. The best YouTube videos are visually simple, with a single main subject filling up most of the small video window. Get up close, and frame the subject so that he or it fills most of the screen.

When using a webcam, filling the screen means getting up close to the lens. When using a camcorder, you should zoom into the main subject, and remove any unnecessary people or objects from the frame. Close-ups are good; crowd shots aren’t.

You also want to make sure the scene you’re shooting has adequate lighting. Too many YouTube videos come out way too dark, which makes them hard to view. This is especially important when you’re shooting with a webcam; even though a webcam might claim to work under normal room light, you’re better off investing in a set of affordable photo floodlights or a separate speed light.

Accentuate the Contrast

As noted previously, visual contrast is highly desirable with small-footprint videos. Put a pale or white-clad subject in front of a black background, or a black-clad subject in front of a white one. And consider using brightly colored backgrounds, which pop in YouTube thumbnails. Believe it or not, hot pink really grabs the attention of casual viewers!

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

YouTube is streaming video, which means that a video streams from the YouTube site to a viewer’s computer in real time. Streaming typically works well if a viewer has a fast broadband Internet connection, and less well if he doesn’t.

To that end, know that streaming video doesn’t always reproduce rapid movement well. Move the camera too fast, or have your subject move too fast in the frame, and viewers are likely to see motion smears, pixilation, and other unacceptable video effects. Keep things slow and simple for best results.

Invest in Quality Equipment

To make a quality video, you need a quality video camera. That doesn’t necessarily mean a professional camera; a high-quality consumer-grade camcorder will do a good job. Make sure you have a digital camcorder, rather than an older analog one, so that your video is completely digital from start to finish. Look for a camcorder that works well under low-light conditions, has a quality lens with a nice zoom factor, and that lets you connect an external microphone. Personally, I prefer hard disk camcorders because they make it very easy to transfer video from the camcorder to your computer for editing; it’s a simple matter of transferring files from one hard disk to another, without having to play back a tape in real time. And the bigger the camera’s charge-coupled device (CCD), the better the picture quality.

Shoot Like a Pro

When you’re shooting your video, embrace professional production techniques—even if you’re just using a consumer-grade camcorder. Here are the things you need to keep in mind:

• Make sure the subject is well lit; use an external lighting kit.

• Make sure the speaker can be heard; use an external microphone, if your camera has an auxiliary mic input.

• Monitor the audio with a set of headphones while rehearsing and recording; don’t assume the camcorder is recording good sound just because the level meters are bouncing.

• Minimize background and crowd noise; keep it quiet on the set.

• Keep the camera steady; use a tripod.

• Don’t move the camera around too much.

• Don’t zoom in and out too much.

In other words, do everything you can to keep the focus on the main subject. Don’t let the camerawork distract the viewer!

Use Two Cameras

Here’s another way to add a professional sheen to your videos. Instead of shooting with a single camera directly in front of the subject, shoot with two cameras, shooting the subject from two different angles. This enables you to cut between shots in the editing process, adding visual variety to the video.

In addition, having two different angles to choose from makes it easier to edit the speaker, if you need to. Editing in different shots from different angles makes the fact that you’re editing less apparent; the cut isn’t as jarring or noticeable when you switch from one angle to another.

Look Professional—Or Not

If you’re representing a professional business, your videos need to look professional. The standard look of personal YouTube videos—an unshaven twenty-something in a t-shirt, staring intently at a web camera—just doesn’t give off the professional vibe that most businesses want. Whether your video’s cast is one or thousands, make sure that anyone on camera is well dressed and well groomed, that everyone is well lit and well mic’d, and that the whole production has a professional sheen.

Unless, that is, you want to give out a hip young vibe. In that instance, take off the suits and ties and emulate the personal look that’s become ubiquitous on YouTube. In other words, make sure your video has a look and feel that matches your company’s message.

Don’t Just Recycle Old Videos—Re-Edit Them, Too

Many businesses get started on YouTube by uploading existing company videos. This isn’t a horrible idea, especially as a first effort. It’s a low-cost, low-effort way to get your feet wet in the YouTube pond. However, your results will suffer if you just upload old videos without changes. You’ll do better if you bring an older video up-to-date in its content and appearance, even if that means re-editing the video or shooting new scenes.

Consider Creating a Slideshow

If you don’t need full-motion video or don’t have access to a video camera, consider putting together a slideshow of still photographs. Just compile the photos into a slideshow, add background music or a voiceover, and upload the whole thing to YouTube. Likewise, some topics benefit from PowerPoint presentations, which you can also convert to video for uploading to YouTube.

Hire a Pro

Don’t have the skills or equipment to create a video in-house? Hire an outside firm to produce the video for you. Every town has one or more video production companies that do this sort of thing. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel; let the pros teach you the right way to do things.

Break the Rules

Don’t confuse these tips for creating better-looking videos with hard and fast rules. It’s okay to think outside the box and do things a little different. For example, if you want to create a hip-looking video for a younger audience, it’s permissible to take the camera off the tripod and go for a “shaky-cam” effect. Do whatever it takes to achieve the effect you want.

Tips for Improving Your Video Content

Even the best-looking video will fail miserably if the content isn’t compelling—and compelling content can compensate for poor production values. Remember that what you’re shooting is more important than how you’re shooting it; it’s the content, stupid!

When creating content for YouTube, you want to give viewers a reason to come back for future viewings and to share your video with others. It’s this sharing that makes for a viral video—compelling content begs to be more widely viewed.

Be Entertaining

The first rule of YouTube content is the most obvious: Your video must be entertaining. Produce a boring video, and no one will watch it. People like to be entertained. Give the people what they want.

It doesn’t matter what product you’re selling or what your message is. Find a way to make your product, service, brand, or company entertaining. Not necessarily funny (although that helps—as you’ll learn shortly), but entertaining—at least enough to keep viewers watching for the entire length of the video.

Be Informative

Being entertaining is essential, but so is being informative. A good video needs some meat to it; ask yourself, “Where’s the beef?”

The typical name for this combination of education and entertainment is edutainment. That is, useful information presented in an entertaining manner. People might come for the entertainment, but they stay for the information.

Go for the Funny

Remember when I said that your video needs to be entertaining? Well, in many instances, the best way to be entertaining is to be funny. People like to laugh—and they remember the funny videos they view on YouTube.

It’s a fact; the majority of top-rated videos on YouTube are funny ones. It’s easier for a humorous video to go viral than it is for a deadly serious one to get the same exposure.

That means, of course, that you can’t take yourself, your product, or your company too seriously. Your company needs a sense of humor and has to be able to laugh at itself. When you laugh at yourself, your audience will laugh with you, which establishes an emotional connection with your customer.

Keep It Short

One way to kill your video’s entertainment value is to make it too long. Viewers today, and especially online, have a very short attention span. The YouTube audience is the post-MTV generation, which means even a three-minute video has trouble holding the viewers’ attention.

It’s imperative, then, that you keep your videos short enough so that viewers don’t tune out mid-way through. How short is short? It depends on who you ask; some experts say five minutes at the top end, some say one minute or less, some even say 20 seconds is ideal. My recommendation is to keep your video no longer than two or three minutes—and the shorter, the better. Videos longer than three minutes or so typically don’t get big viewership.

That doesn’t mean you have to produce a video that’s exactly three minutes long. As I said, shorter is better. If you can say what you want to say in 60 seconds, great. If you need the full three minutes, take it. But take into account viewers’ short attention spans, and present your message quickly and efficiently.

Keep It Simple

You don’t have to spend a lot of money on a YouTube video for it to be effective. In fact, it’s easy for a company to spend too much money on its videos; the result is typically an overproduced monstrosity that looks horrible online. In many cases, a single person talking directly to a camera is all you need.

Stay Focused

Part of keeping it simple is focusing on a single message. Remember, you have only a few minutes at most to communicate to YouTube viewers. Don’t spend that time trying to show your entire product line, or even multiple features of a sophisticated product. Home in on a single product and communicate its strongest feature or benefit. One video per product or feature should be your rule.

Communicate a Clear Message

Whether you produce a talking-head video or one with a cast of thousands, make sure the message of your video is clear. Viewers have to come away with a clear idea of what you’re selling and why they need it. Don’t let the production get in the way of the message.

One way to do this is to test your video by showing it to a few people—family, friends, colleagues, whatever. Ask them to give you a single-sentence description of what they’ve just seen. If they can’t repeat your message simply and succinctly, then you haven’t communicated your message well—and you have more work to do.

Avoid the Hard Sell

Even though your message should be clear, you don’t have to hit the viewers over the head with it. On YouTube, the soft sell works better than the hard sell. That’s why a how-to video showing your product in use typically works better than a straight-ahead product demonstration; the former is a soft sell that communicates a subtle message to the viewers—who will typically turn off a harder message.

In other words, infomercials and edutainment are better than straight advertisements. In fact, if a video feels like an ad, most YouTube viewers will avoid it like the plague.

Keep It Fresh

The video you create today will be forgotten a month or two from now. With users posting thousands of new videos on YouTube every day, your video will quickly become yesterday’s news. This requires you to update your company’s video library continually; you need to either replace or refresh older videos on a regular basis. If you go more than a few months without posting a new video, your company’s channel will lose viewership.

Design for Remixing

Here’s a tip for advanced video marketers. The Internet and YouTube encourage interactivity; passive viewership is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. To that end, consider the act of remixing when creating your videos. That is, design a video that viewers can edit, adding their own dialog and music, or even cutting and pasting elements in a different order. When you encourage viewer interaction, you make a stronger connection with potential customers; you make them feel as if they’re part of the process, and thus uniquely invested in your success.

Tips for Generating Sales

Creating a highly viewed video is great, but it’s ultimately meaningless unless you can convert those viewers into paying customers. How, then, do you turn views into sales? Here are a few tips that will help in the process.

Include Your Website’s Address in the Video

The key to marketing on YouTube is to lead viewers from your video on the YouTube site to your company’s website—where you can then directly sell your products and services. How can you accomplish that?

Unfortunately, YouTube doesn’t allow live links from a video to a third-party website. You can, however, include your website address in the body of the video and hope that viewers will remember it or write it down for future reference.

There’s no point being subtle about this. Because people have trouble remembering things such as 800-numbers and URLs (uniform resource locators, also known as website addresses), you need to include your address early and often in the video. I recommend starting your video with some sort of title screen with the URL overlaid, as shown in Figure 12.1. You should also end the video with a similar screen with the URL displayed. Make sure the URL is big and easily readable; high contrast colors, such as white text on a black background (or vice versa), provide the best results.

Figure 12.1 A title screen with the company’s URL prominently displayed.

You might even want to include your URL onscreen during the main part of your video. Use your video-editing program to overlay the URL, as shown in Figure 12.2. The URL shouldn’t interfere with the main content, of course, but you should be able to overlay it in a nonintrusive way.

Figure 12.2 A URL superimposed on the bottom of the video screen.

Include Your URL in the Accompanying Text

You can’t live link from within a YouTube video; unfortunately, you also can’t include a link to your website in the description that accompanies the video. You can, however, include your URL in the text description, but not as a live link. So, when you write the description for your video, make sure you include your URL or 800-number in the text.

Link from Your Channel Page

Although you can’t include a live link in your video or its accompanying text, you can include a direct link to your website on your YouTube channel page. Anyone clicking your username will see your channel page with the link to your website in the Profile section, as shown in Figure 12.3. When viewers click the website link, they’re taken directly to your site—where you can sell them more of what you have to offer.

Figure 12.3 The Profile section of a typical YouTube channel page, complete with a live link to an accompanying website.

The Big Picture

What’s the takeaway from all the tips presented in this chapter? The big picture is that you need to create professional-looking videos that are both entertaining and informative, and then make it easy for viewers to go to your website for more information or to purchase what you have to sell. Your videos can be funny or educational (or both), but they most definitely should be short; YouTubers have a notoriously short attention span. And, whatever type of video you produce, you should design it to be visually appealing in the small YouTube video window. There’s no point including a cast of thousands when everyone has to fit in a space only a few inches across!