YouTube is Becoming an Important Part of Your Social Media Plans

This is my first attempt at a VLOG, a Video Blog. I'm fairly satisfied with it as a beginners attempt. There are a couple of issues with the video.

Although I've worked for several hours, I cannot get the captioning to work well (when you enable it all you see is gibberish). I will continue to work on this and find out how to make it work. As soon as I get the answers, I'll share what I've learned.

Here is the link to my YouTube Channel, in case you want to subscribe.

I hope you will give me some feedback on the video and let me know if you'd like me continue posting them occasionally.

Don't forget to join the conversation!
Blessings,
Edie

I've had several of you ask for the written version of my VLOG. I'm adding it below:

YouTube is an Important Part of a Complete Social Media Presence

YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, and it’s owned by Google. These days, the search engine rank of a website with videos and one without is considerable. Videos carry a lot of weight with Google’s search engine algorithm. Videos are also much more likely to go viral than text-only articles. 

A lot of people go to YouTube directly to search for infomovies. This form of information is the video form of an article. Although presently there isn’t as much competition for video rankings in YouTube as there is for article rankings with Google, the Internet world is headed that direction at a breakneck speed. 

Because the competition isn’t as great, it’s going to be easier to establish a ranking now, than wait and try to catch up. Here are some things you need to consider as you lay the groundwork for a solid presence on YouTube.

• Keywords Still Rule. It’s critical to use your main keyword first (or as early as possible) in the video’s title, description and tags. You want to also use your own name, brand or website as well, but that should come after the keyword.
• The Title of Your Video is Critical. It’s important that the title is a good representation of the information the video contains. Although it may seem too basic to mention, you’d be amazed at the number of people who still title their files “untitled.mov” or something else generic.
• Include Your Keywords in the Video Voiceover. We’re all becoming more proficient a SEO for articles. Voiceovers are spoken articles and must be just as carefully keyworded for SEO.

It’s important to note that Google has a speech-to-text conversion technology which can convert your infomovie’s voiceover into captions. Google uses this to improve video search technology.

• Upload a Transcript File for Video Captioning. Uploading your own caption transcript is a much better choice than letting YouTube transcribe the audio itself. By uploading your own, you have total control over what appears in your video captions.

To upload a transcipt file, click on Edit Video in the YouTube Video Manager. Click on the Captions tab. Under the Add New Captions or Transcript header, select Transcipt File as the Type and upload your script file. 

To watch YouTube set up your file, click the CC button on the video and YouTube will display the words in exact sync with the audio.

• Build a Valuable YouTube Channel. Start branding your YouTube Channel the same way you would a new website or blog. If you’ve already begun to experiment with videos, go back and apply the suggestions in this article.
• Add New Videos to You Channel Regularly. This is just like blogging, regular, new content gives you much more power in the search engines. 
• Respond to Comments on Your Videos. Again, just as with blogging, answering comments is vital. 
• Look for Ways to Exchange Links with Other Sites. Just like blogs and websites, it’s important to prove your Channel is valuable to others.