I was excited to be a part of such a fun, informative, and , dare I say, Boombastic session on YouTube video optimization at SMX West. It was the last session of the day, the weather sucked, and the thermostat was set to “Chicago” but the audience was great and the presentations even better:







Here are some bullet points I took away from the session:

Jay Akkad

Product Manager, YouTube

• Content is king
• Thumbnails and Tags matter
• Related videos are HUGE driver of views
• Choose the right ad formats

Matt Ballek

Natural Search Supervisor, Resolution Media

I hit the podium and dazzled with some extreme Power Point wizardry:







I’ll be releasing a full YouTube version of my presentation next week along with a “Too Hot for SMX” version with all the colorful language you love ! You won’t want to miss it, so be sure to subscribe !

Curtis R. Curtis

Sr. VP, Strategic Partnerships, UniversalBuinessListing.Org

• Engage your viewers
• Keep your videos casual
• Be consisetnt – upload regularly
• Shorter is better

Jeff Martin

Associate Director of Search Marketing, TouchStorm

• Think about saturation !
• Guide viewers along to your goal
• Optimize playlists like they’re videos
• Engagement = Views

Did you attend this session ?

I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments in the comment board !

I’m ready to rock the house and melt some faces with my YouTube SEO presentation at SMX West 2010. The session is at 4:45pm on Wednesday March 3rd at the Santa Clara Hyatt. See You There !!

I am happy to report that I will be speaking at SMX West and talking about optimizing videos for YouTube. It’s an exciting topic, and I’m happy to be a part of it.

If you’re kicking around the idea of attending, be sure to read Danny Sullivan’s Why You Should Attend SMX West before you register.

As always, if you’re attending, speaking or exhibiting, be sure to say hello. You’ll be amazed at how personable and approachable I am !

UPDATE

For information, commentary, and assorted SMX buffoonery be sure to check out:

vidiSEO.com/SMX2010

The Old Watch Page

The NEW Watch Page

What’s New ?

Overall Cleaner Look

Almost all unnecessary text has been removed keeping the focus on the video itself. The video description has been moved underneath the video, comments and video responses are listed below that, and related videos run along the right rail.

Look Ma, No Stars

YouTube has been talking about the effectiveness of the 5 star rating system for some time now, and it looks like it didn’t make the cut. Instead you get the option to either ‘like’ a video or give it a ‘thumbs down’. Works for me!

HD You Can Understand

No more guessing what the quality of your video playback is. YouTube now allows you to select what type of p-ness you’d like to watch your video in

Smart Related Videos

The related videos on the right side of the watch page now change based on context. For example, if you come to a video through the search function, you will see additional search results on the right hand side for you to watch afterwards.

Find All Videos Uploaded by a User

I like this new feature a lot. The video uploader’s user name (located directly above the video) now has an expand button to show all videos uploaded:

Watch While you Search

Perhaps the coolest new feature is the ability to search for new videos to watch without interrupting the video you are currently watching. When you hit search, the video you are currently watching will shrink into the upper left hand corner of the screen making room for the search results:

Want to Try it Out ???

Click here to try out the NEW YouTube layout and be sure to let me know what you think, ya jerk !

Looking at the details in the patent image, you can see that YouTube is taking the overlay ad to a new, more customizable level:

(click to enlarge)

Some of the customizable features present in the patent:

• Ability to upload and place an image to the left or right
• Ability to change text and background color
• Two ad segments with different text & ability to change image
• Multiple click actions
• Play a video ad (by YouTube id) then link to site
• Link to site w/ no video ad
• Choose different overlay entrance styles
• Slide and Wipe
• Elastic
• Pop from Center
• Test your ad against a variety of background videos

I think we can all agree that this will make overlay ad creation easier and more accessible. Combine this ad generator with Google’s Video Targeting Tool and you now have a way to place your overlay ad on videos based on keywords (like politics or fashion), viewer demographics (like age and gender), interest-based categories, or some combination of the three. AWESOME !

The only thing not discussed in the patent is the bidding system for these overlay ads. Will these overlays be CPC or CPM based ? What if multiple advertisers want to advertise on the same video ? If anyone has any insight on this, please chime in on the comment board.

What will this mean to you? Well, it means you’ll see some things about the site design evolving to be more consistent across the site. And some things that haven’t worked as smoothly as we would have liked them to will get the attention they deserve. Lastly, we may determine that some things we tried out just didn’t fly and remove them from the site.

YouTube doesn’t offer any specifics on what will be changed, revamped, or removed but here are a few of my ideas/predictions:

Comment System Revamp

The comment system is not what I’d expect from a Google owned site. They could learn a thing or two from the folks at Disqus on how to make a comment system that works (I use Disqus to power the comments on this blog, so I’m a little biased).

But in all honesty, you can’t easily reference other comments using @ replies, and when you reply to a comment it doesn’t stay connected or nested under the comment you replied to. For example, someone commented on my video saying that I should shave my goatee. I replied to them. Easy. However, now my reply is being shown without the original comment, so I look like a crazy person talking to myself:

Video Thumbnails

YouTube partners can upload their own thumbnails, but your average user (or Brand Channel) can’t. I can understand why YouTube doesn’t allow everyone to just upload their own thumbnails (every thumbnail would have cleavage in it), but offering only 3 options seems a little limiting. I have a feeling that YouTube will either give more thumbnail options, or allow you to choose a specific time in the video to capture the thumbnail. Pretty please !

Rating Stars

We’ve already discussed how most people that rate a video will rate it 5 stars, so I’m not sure how useful a star system is for YouTube. I know others have talked about switching to an opposable digit orientation system (thumbs up/thumbs down).

My vision would be for YouTube to replace ratings with sentiment tracking. So instead of just showing how many ‘thumbs up’ a video got in general, you could see which part(s) of the video got the most thumbs up/down. Or instead of thumbs, they could have ‘LOL’ or ‘WTF’ buttons to see what other viewers thought were the funniest or most shocking parts of the video.

YouTube Groups

YouTube Groups have been put in the corner like Baby from Dirty Dancing. They don’t exist in the top level navigation anymore, and you can’t even filter your search to find groups. Because of this I have a feeling that Groups are one of those things that YouTube “tried out that just didn’t fly”.

My idea would be to transform Groups into Group Viewing Rooms. YouTube has already tested real time sharing:

Combining this feature with Groups would allow group leaders to schedule group showings of videos with group members and provide some basic chat functionality while watching.

What Would You Like to See Changed ?

Step One

Click on the ‘add link’ icon under the wall post text area:

Step Two

Paste the YouTube video’s URL in the link field and hit ‘Attach’:

Step Three

1. Add any text you want here about the link (optional)
2. Click the video’s title or description to edit it if you’d like
3. Hit the ‘Share’ button to release your video to your friends/fans

The Finished Product

Your video will appear with a thumbnail and the text you provided. When the video is clicked, the wall post will expand to show the embedded YouTube video:

This is a great way to share your YouTube videos with your fan base while making sure that all views are added to the total views on YouTube.

If you have any questions, leave me a comment and I’ll do my best to help you out. Thanks !

USA TODAY’s Jefferson Graham interviews YouTube video star Shane Dawson about his prolific video production for the world’s most popular video site, and how he lives on the income from the YouTube partner program. On the Talking Tech web video show

If you’re not familiar with Shane Dawson, you’ve probably at least seen his face on YouTube. He has the 4th most subscribed YouTube channel of all time (currently 1.1MM subscribers). I appreciate what he has been able to achieve even though his comedy isn’t really my cup of tea.

I think the lesson that brands can learn from someone like Shane Dawson is consistency. He creates a schedule and sticks to it every week with a new video each Saturday. Shane didn’t get to the top of the subscriber list because he promoted the hell out of one video. No. He created an army of videos that consistently get views week after week.

He also operates as a true member of the YouTube community by asking questions and urging viewers to leave comments (something I rarely see brands do).

How could you better leverage consistency and community in your video marketing strategy ?

YouTube Status Updates

The bulletins you write on your YouTube Channel are now broadcast to all your subscribers in the Recent Activity module on the YouTube homepage. So now instead of only being notified of new video uploads, your bulletin board acts more like a Facebook status update:

Now you can type a message AND attach a YouTube. Then when you hit the ‘post bulletin’ button, your post appears in the ‘Recent Activity’ feed of all your Subscribers:

This could be used to update subscribers of upcoming videos or topics, share videos you like with your subscriber base, or promote older videos when relevant.

Syndication Status

YouTube also rolled out a new indicator that shows the syndication status of your video after it’s been uploaded:

Once you hit 100% you know your video has been delivered to all of your subscribers. Pretty cool !

Delete Items from Subscription Feed

Lastly, YouTube introduced some new features to help you weed through your subscription videos. First off, when you hover over a video in your ‘Subscriptions’ module you’ll now see a tiny “x” in the upper right hand corner:

Clicking the “x” will remove the video from the list and replace it with another video. So now you can quickly sort through videos that interest you while removing the ones that don’t.

You can also adjust the setting to remove videos from this module once you’ve viewed them:

My Take ?

I think these are all great new features that add a lot of value to the subscription system in YouTube by increasing communication and making it easier to find videos that interest you.