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C h a p t e r 2 0 Marketing Your YouTube Videos 225

Target Your Content

Here’s something else about the content of your videos: The more targeted it is, the
faster it finds an audience. Yes, general videos would seem to appeal to a larger slice
of the YouTube community. But general videos also get lost among the millions of
other general videos; it’s tough to stand out in a crowd this large.

A much better approach is to target a particular slice of the community—a distinct
customer base. As in any other form of advertising, the more narrowly you target
the message, the more appeal you have to those targeted consumers.

In addition, when you niche-target your content, you can more easily promote it via
YouTube’s community features, as well in the blogosphere and via social media such
as Facebook and Twitter. When you narrowly identify the audience, it’s a snap to
locate the groups, blogs, forums, and other outlets that target the same audience. A
broadly focused video is much more difficult to promote; there are just too many
channels to choose from, none of which is an exact hit. In fact, a general interest
video might reach an audience altogether different from the one you really want to
reach. Why waste your time targeting viewers who will never be your customers?
You can more effectively and efficiently promote a narrowly targeted video via
channels narrowly targeted in the same way.

Write a Compelling Title

The title of your video is crucial to attracting viewers. Not only is your title
searched by YouTube when users submit queries, it’s also how most viewers deter-
mine what your video is about.

Yes, the full description is there to read, but most people skim rather than read—
especially when they’re browsing through a page full of search results. So your title
has to not only include the most important keywords or tags, but also convey the
content of the video.

This means, of course, that you have to create a concise, descriptive, and compelling
title. It’s copywriting at its finest, distilling the essence of what you have to offer in a
very short line of copy; it takes a lot of work and no little experience to get right.

Pick the Best Thumbnail Image

Finally, remember what a typical YouTube search results page looks like—lots of
video listings, each accompanied by a single thumbnail image, as shown in Figure
20.1. You need to attract viewers to your specific listing in the search results, which
means presenting the most attractive and relevant thumbnail image possible.