Promoting a video blog is the same as promoting a blog, except that you do have a few more places where you can promote. Of course, you will want to use all of the same methods that you use to promote a podcast, a website, or a product as well.
Start with the marketing basics, such as Google AdWords, article marketing, forum marketing, marketing to newsgroups, cross promoting between websites, and purchasing advertisement in ezines and on websites. From there, let’s move to the more ‘blog specific’ promotions.
The first key to successfully promoting a blog is to pay very close attention to the Web 2.0 elements. If you have social networking profiles, you should post a link to your video blog there. If a blog is included, you can post your actual video blog there as well. Just be careful to change the textual description of the video, so that you are not penalized by the search engines.
Use social bookmarking through Only Wire at http://www.onlywire.com. This is explained in detail in the podcast promotions section of this ebook. Next, hit the top blog directories, and make sure that you get listed in the search engines as well.
The top blog directories include:
Blog Directory – http://www.blogs.botw.org
Blog Catalog – http://www.blogcatalog.com
Blog Hub – http://www.bloghub.com
Blog Flux – http://www.blogflux.com
Blogarama – http://www.blogarama.com
Blog Dup – http://www.blogdup.com
Top Blog Area – http://www.topblogarea.com
Blog Top List – http://www.blogtoplist.com
Blog Rankings – http://www.blogrankings.com
Weblog – http://www.weblog.com
The top video blog directories are:
Vlog Directory – http://www.vlogdir.com
Video Blog Directory – http://www.videoblogdirectory.com
MeFeedia – http://www.mefeedia.com/feeds
Blog Universe – http://www.bloguniverse.com
Video Blogging Universe – http://videoblogging-universe.com/vlogs
Fire Ant – http://fireant.tv
Vlogdex – http://www.herecomespod.org.uk/vlogdex
Vlog List – http://www.vloglist.com
Vlog Map – http://www.vlogmap.com
Next, make sure that you ping each time you post. This can easily be done through a service such as Ping-O-Matic at http://www.pingomatic.com. Do this each and every time you post, so that all of the top directories, where you have already listed your video blog, know that you have updated. This also helps with search engine listings.
You have to entrench yourself in the blogging community. Even though there are literally millions of blogs and a huge number of video blogs as well, never think for a minute that it isn’t a community. It is indeed. Start by becoming an active participant in one or two of the many video blogging/blogging forums.
Not only will you learn a great deal, but you will also get traffic to your video blog. As you develop relationships there, you will also get mentioned in other people’s video blogs.
You will need to visit blogs and video blogs that relate to yours in some way. Trackbacks and comments are a huge part of blogging, as well as video blogging. You should post comments on other people’s video blogs and blogs on a regular basis, and leave a link that leads back to your video blog. Make sure that your comments are relevant to the post, however.
Also, just as you would refer to other people’s blogs in a textual blog, you can refer to other people’s blogs in your video blog as well. Just be sure to add the track back link to the text that you use in your video blog description.
Finally, build your blog roll. A blog roll is a list of blogs that you find useful or interesting. Start adding important video blogs or blogs that relate to your topic to these, and request that they add your video blog to their blog roll as well.
Remember when we talked about how making your video publicly available would actually boost hits to your video blog? It’s absolutely true. You need to upload a copy of your video to all of the top video sites. You will create a profile at each of these sites, and your profile should of course contain a link to your site.
You could also opt to just make some sample videos, and upload those, instead of uploading each and every video that you do, but you won’t get as much traffic from it. It all really depends on how much time you have to promote your video blog as to how often you upload to the video sites. Here is a list of video sites that you do not want to miss:
YouTube – http://www.youtube.com
Google Video – http://video.google.com
Yahoo Video – http:/video.yahoo.com
Flurl – http://www.flurl.com
Eyespot – http://www.eyespot.com
Grouper – http://www.grouper.com
Jumpcut – http://www.jumpcut.com
Our Media – http://www.ourmedia.org
Revver – http://www.revver.com
Video Egg – http://www.videoegg.com
Vimeo – http://www.vimeo.com
vSocial – http://www.vsocial.com
Join FeedBurner at http://www.feedburner.com and make sure that you put a ‘subscribe via feedburner’ button on your blog. When you do this, visitors can easily hit the button, and select to have your blog added to their RSS feeds in their reader, or on numerous customized home pages.
I didn’t mention Technorati in the lists above because it is special, and you should pay special attention to it. Technorati can be found at http://www.technorati.com, and it is one of the biggest blog directories in existence. Make absolutely sure you list your video blog here, and also make sure that it is pinged after each post.
Remember that people may acquire your podcast or your video from a variety of sources. Therefore, it is a good idea to promote your video blog through your podcast, and your podcast through your video blog. Never assume that blog watchers are listening to the podcast and vice versa!
Make sure that you are using a website statistics program, so that you can analyze your traffic for your podcast and your video blog. This is usually available through your web hosting service.
This information is invaluable to a website owner, and it will help you to determine where you need to put forth more advertising efforts, or even where it is best to spend your advertising dollars. Spend less time on what is not working, and more time and money on what is working.
You will be able to see where your visitors come from, how long they stay, what pages they enter your site on, and what pages they exit from. Again, this is very valuable information that can not only affect how and where you advertise, but also what you do with the pages on your site.
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