1. How to promote your video
2. How to increase video views

I have been looking at ways to increase the number of potential guests that view your Internet video tour. I have been exploring YouTube and have found it to be a great way to increase video views. It runs independently to your existing marketing ventures, therefore these are new potential clients. And best of all it's FREE advertising.

One advantage of video marketing, is that relatively few vacation homeowners have video tours at present, so competition on the YouTube video search engine is currently low, unlike trying to get a higher ranking on Google. This is not only a short term benefit to get more viewings, but has a  beneficial long term effect, because as the number of video tours increase over the next few years, you will have a great head start with the popularity of viewings, keeping you one step ahead for the years to come. For example lets assume that over the next 12 months you get 1000 views on YouTube then next year when a newbie has their video tour produced and uploaded to YouTube, your ranking will be higher.

A nice feature to watch out for is that you can add annotations to your video. For example you can add your contact details and superimpose information about the various rooms and pool area.

Another service they offer is PayPerClick so you can target people searching for 'Villa Disney Orlando' for example and the results will return your video. They use an extensive network of companies for the video advertising campaign and you can set the amount you want to spend. This service is additional to the free service they offer.

If you want to upload you video to YouTube, you will need to do one of the following:

Create a free account with YouTube:      www.youtube.com

• Upload your video (I will how explain later)
• Add your keywords and tags (so people can search for your video)
• Add annotations (contact details, room descriptions) optional
• Be sure that your video is public and not set to private

Three ways to upload your video:

1. Upload the low resolution video to your YouTube account. This is the file that has already been compressed that we use on our servers. Bearing in mind it will be compressed again, so the quality may deteriorate when you view it on YouTube.

How to get the file:

Contact Us, we will zip the file and make it available for you to download to your computer. You should then unzip the file and upload it to your YouTube account (No Charge).

2. Prepare a high quality video to upload to you tube. For optimal quality try uploading a reduced version of the master. the widescreen size YouTube recommend is 1280x720.

How to get the file:

Contact Us and ask to have your HD master video sent to you on a DVD (there is a $10 charge). When the DVD arrives, copy the file to your desktop, reduce the size of the video to 1280x720 and upload it to your YouTube account.

3. I can downsize your master and upload it to your YouTube account (there is a $35 charge). You still need to create your free account with YouTube first and you will then need to add your keywords and annotations for your video.

I have done some research on Florida vacation homes that use YouTube to promote their vacation home and noticed variable results. Some videos are getting very few hits and some well in excess of 100 per month. So I thought I'd add some more ideas to help maximize exposure to the internet video viewers.

After uploading your video to YouTube, add a title, description and keywords. These are what may determine the success of your video tour.

When you add your keywords, be sure they exist in your title and description text too, as the search engines check keywords against the text to make ensure a match. If the user types in a search for 'villa disney' and 'villa disney' exists in your title, keywords and description, your video will rank higher. Create your ad with a title, set of keywords and the main description that match and work together. Try to include the main keywords a few times in your description (don't go over the top or it may backfire)

YouTube has partnered with the Google advertising network. You can use pay per click advertising for your video tour to maximize the exposure beyond the organic video listings. This would place your video tour near the top when someone types in the keywords you associated with your video tour. The pay per click advertising can be purchased from Google Adwords. I have successfully used Google adwords for over 10 years for my software company.

Even if you don't want to use adwords pay per click advertising, it has some fantastic tools for creating quality keywords and determining the popularity for specific keywords searches. A high search volume for popular keywords is not always a bed of roses, it just means that your web page (or video) will rank lower as the paid advertisers are on top. The trick I used over the years was looking for alternative not as popular keywords or misspellings, as these people are looking for exactly the same thing but just using different words. This results in a higher ranking or if it's paid advertising the clicks will cost considerably less. Either way, adwords will provide you with the good quality search terms.

Kind Regards

Roberto Dicarlo
Videoscape Video Tours
http://www.videoscape.tv