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You’ve heard it repeatedly the last couple of years… video is the hot marketing trend for small business owners to promote and grow their business. Learn five key tips to starting your business blog and start driving new traffic to your website today.

Hi there internet fans! Ryan Perry here helping small business owners harness the power of video. If you’re a small business owner using video to market your business, be sure to subscribe to this channel to be notified of new marketing tips to grow your business.

In today’s video I’m going to share with you five key tips to starting a business video blog. Let’s jump right into it with tip number one -get the right equipment. This doesn’t mean you have to go out and spend thousands of dollars on complicated video equipment, but you do need to have the right equipment for the type of video you’re going to shoot. Please note that the quality of your content is more important than the quality of your gear. Personally, I would love to spend two thousand dollars on a new camera, but my trusted Canon does the job, so why spend the money?

…video is the hot marketing trend for small business owners to promote and grow their business.

For talking head videos. This type of video that I’m doing right here. You can use a smartphone, camcorder, point-and-shoot camera or a DSLR. Make sure that the camera you choose shoots in full 1080p HD and you mounted to a tripod for a nice steady shot. You don’t need an expensive tripod. I recommend purchasing a tripod that is at least 60 inches tall, so the camera will be at eye level with you. After all no one wants to look up your nose. For more ‘talking head’ video tips click the card above.

If you’re going to use your smartphone, buy a tripod adapter to mount your phone to the tripod. This way you don’t have to use duct tape to mount the phone to the tripod. Once the phones mounted, be sure to use the back facing camera as the quality of the camera is much better than the front facing camera.

When creating screen capture videos, I use a Logitech 1080p webcam, mounted high on top of the monitor at eye level. If you have a built-in webcam in your laptop, be sure to stack some books or a box to raise the level of the camera. Know what you’re going to say and keep it precise. The great thing about video blogs is that you can’t make enough of them. When thinking about your client’s needs, think 2 inches wide and a mile deep. That is don’t be general. Be very specific and talk directly to your prospects needs.

Use my Ultimate Content Creation Guide in the link below to step you through how to come up with relevant topics that your prospects will want to watch. YouTube is one of the best platforms on the web for driving traffic to your website. The more views on your channel equals more new visitors to your website. In the guide, you’ll learn how to come up with 52 blog ideas for your business in less than one hour.

Brand your YouTube channel! First impressions count and an easy way to make a poor first impression is not to brand your channel. If you’re a small business owner like myself, you’ll want to use a headshot of yourself as the channel profile image. Hire a graphic designer to create a banner image for your channel and unique thumbnail images for each one of your videos.

Now, I know for some, this may sound like quite a bit of work and I get it. But, marketing takes effort and if you’re going to invest the time, money and energy into creating new content. Why not just do it right? Learn more about branding your YouTube channel by clicking on the card above.

When uploading your videos to YouTube, be sure to SEO optimize the video for both YouTube and Google. This includes, adding keyword phrases in the title, description and tags section of the upload page. You’ll also want to include a link back to your website, so viewers can easily click to get more information.

Pro tip here. When adding a link to your Web site, you must include the HTTP:// in order for it to be clickable. If you only type in www.website.com, that will not create a clickable link and you’ll lose out on a ton of free traffic to your website.

Promote each video on other social media channels and your website. YouTube has a number of social media links built right into the video view page, making it easy to share your videos on Facebook, Twitter and a number of other social media. I don’t suggest using this feature for advanced marketing purposes, but it is a great place to start when you’re new and it doesn’t get much easier than this. Besides social media, be sure to embed your video in the blog section of your website for increased SEO benefit.

These are my five key tips to starting a business vlog on YouTube, driving more traffic to your website YouTube fans, I’m curious to know what do you think. Are these five tips spot on, or is there something else you think are have included? Let me know by leaving a comment below and liking the video. Your feedback helps me create better content for you, so be sure leave a comment below until next time. Have a great day.