By Scott Alden, search engine marketing manager for Ottawa University. Alden has more than 10 years of search engine optimization experience. www.ottawa.edu

Description

The description is where you get to describe what your video is about. Not only is this critical for fans to know what to expect or what they’re seeing, but the words used in the description also are used by YouTube’s search algorithm to determine what videos to display in results of a given search. There are many things to consider when writing descriptions.

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• Be clear and concise. Make sure it’s very black and white as to what you’re showing in the video.

• Put keywords, URL’s, and the most important information about the video first. The beginning of your description serves as the brief description that shows up in the search results. It also is the part of the description that appears before you have to click “more info” to see the rest of it.

• Take as much space as you want to describe what you need to. YouTube offers a huge space to work with… use it!

• Don’t over hype or pitch people. This is a quick way to make viewers click away. People want to see a fun, interesting video; they don’t want a brand to preach at them about a business opportunity. Let your video do the advertising, not your copy-writers in the description field.

By Scott Alden, search engine marketing manager for Ottawa University. Alden has more than 10 years of search engine optimization experience. www.ottawa.edu

YouTube is now the United States’ No. 2 utilized search engine behind Google. With the fact that Google also owns YouTube, Google’s overall dominance of search engine market share remains intact for the foreseeable future. What that means to you, is that YouTube is now no longer just a place for sports bloopers, cute pandas, laughing babies, and Star Wars Kid. No… YouTube is now one of the primary places that customers of your clients go to find information about products and services. This has caused a significant shift in the realm of video marketing over the last several years. No longer do you need to have multi-millions to have your commercial, products, testimonials, etc. seen by millions of viewers. Now, all it takes is the right video put on YouTube, and you can instantly have 10,000… 100,000… or maybe 1 million people watching your video and learning about your client.

So, let’s say you’ve done the hard part… you’ve created a fun, innovative video that shows your client in the best light. Now you’re ready to put the video out on YouTube! The question then becomes, “Now what?”

There are literally billions of videos living on YouTube today, with thousands added daily. So, how in the world do you make sure that your videos get seen at all without getting lost in the depths of YouTube’s video library? Anyone can upload a video to YouTube… it takes just minutes. But what will separate your video from others and actually cause it to be seen by your client’s customers is by knowing how YouTube’s search algorithm works. By understanding how and why YouTube shows which videos after a search, you’ll be able to maximize your clients’ video visibility and popularity.

YouTube’s search algorithm contains five main elements that determine how soon your videos come up when customers do a search. They are:

1. Title

2. Description

3. Tags

4. Number of Views

5. Rating

This is also the order of importance that most generally say you should pay attention to. (Be sure to keep video responses, comments, and ratings enabled on all your videos! Turning these off will put your video at a significant tactical disadvantage from your competitors, even if not all ratings and comments will be positive. You could always choose to monitor and approve the comments.) There are more than these 5 elements to the algorithm, but these are the primary ones that work within YouTube’s search itself. Some other elements include: playlists, flagging, embedding, comments, age of video, subscribers, and in bound links. But because the first five are the most important, and because #4 can’t be reached without the others, and you can’t really control how your customers rate your video, we’ll focus on the first three for this blog series beginning with Titles. The next post will be about Description.

Title

The Title that you name your video is perhaps the most important factor in making sure that the video gets found.

The title should be catchy, but it should also include relevant keywords like the name of the product, the name of the company, the name of the video perhaps, etc. For instance, in the title above, Sonic made sure their brand name was in the title. Had the title just been “You’re Crazy Commercial” then YouTube and customers would have had no idea it was a Sonic video. Be sure to use relevant keywords to the client’s industry as well. If your video, for example, promotes breast cancer awareness, then be sure that the words “breast cancer” are part of the title. Don’t be afraid to experiment. You can change the title any time you wish, so if you aren’t getting views, be sure to try changing the title around and see if that helps. Lastly, your title should be between 60 and 100 characters. Anything less than 60 and you’re not taking advantage of valuable real estate that YouTube allows, and 100 is the character limit for titles that they set.

By Marc Vasquez

My son is two years old and he’s at the age where I have to be an extra set of eyes and ears. He has a tendency to not be aware of his surroundings and bump into walls, fall over toys or shut his hands in things. Ouch. Sure, to you and me, it’s basic to know where you are and plan for ways to avoid personal injury, but to him it’s something he’s just now learning.

That said, with the New Year here, it’s never a bad idea to review things we thought we learned a long time ago in order to start out strong. Consider this your subtle reminder that a strong foundation rooted in the fundamentals is essential to creating great PR.

I believe it’s all about relationships, and you must take time to focus on continually cultivating relationships with your clients. Being on the look out for ways to hone these skills will send a message to them – you care.

I’ve spent time with our company’s clients not only to get to know their work style and management style, but also what they do outside of work. Who are they? I know what they like to do in their free time, what their immediate families are like and even what kind of soda they like best.

Whatever you can do to make their lives a little better at that particular moment is not just the right thing to do for your company, it’s the right thing to do to reinforce a high level of personal integrity.

What you find out is that having an extra minute to listen, a willingness to help or even an extra 32 oz. bottle of Diet Pepsi can help your client go from feeling uneasy to on top of the world.  

On Thursday, January 21, PRSA Professional Development is hosting a “Soup to Nuts PR Round Table Sessions: Pick Your Topic!” luncheon at Figlio Tower. You can pre-select two topics from a choice of 10 and participate in round table discussions on those topics. Personally, I’m looking forward to “How to Position Yourself as a Leader” and “University PR – Reputation Management” for more nuggets on relationship building. I hope to see you there.

By Lorell LaBoube

Finally! Mark McGwire comes clean about steroids. And I can wear his jersey again.

From a PR standpoint, McGwire needs to achieve two primary objectives:

1. Re-establish his credibility with the baseball community.
2. Avoid being a distraction during spring training with a team that has high expectations for 2010.

His public admission January 11 is a start to achieving these objectives.

Now I wonder if Tiger Woods will consider his example.

Lorell LaBoube

P.S. Disclosure: I’m a lifetime, rabid Cardinal baseball fan.

By Barbara Pruitt, APR

Santa’s not the only one making lists this time of year. You can find them on myriad topics in virtually every industry. The Best … The Worst … The Top .. The Least …you name it. If your content is compelling, lists make great PR tools (at Kauffman, we just released our own year-end list, and our audiences loved it!) because they are appealing to read, make for good fodder during slow news times (like the holidays) and can offer useful lessons.

No surprise that our own profession puts this tool to use. There’s the Top 15 PR Blunders (hope to never make this list) and the PR Power List of 2009 (you have to log in for this one), to name just two. Other useful lists for PR pros include resources and channels of communication, such as the 25 Best Bloggers of 2009 and the Top 100 PR Web sites and Resources.

When the lists appear, it reminds me that it’s a great time to step back and assess, not just my organization’s performance over the past year but my own. This annual self-appraisal keeps me from getting stale and burned out and energizes me for the coming year. Have you asked yourself what you did well this year?

By Ashlie Hand, APR, GKC PRSA 2010 President

Your 2010 GKC PRSA Board of Directors met on a recent Saturday to put our heads together and build a strategy for leading our chapter through another year of uncertainty and change. I’m very pleased to report that we all left that three-hour session feeling energized, optimistic and invigorated about the coming year.

With the help of Eric Morgenstern, APR, PRSA Fellow, president of Morningstar Communications (thanks again, Eric!), we developed a powerful new effort. Our theme for 2010 is “Give. Grow. Get.” Plan to see this showing up in a variety of ways – support materials for professional development, networking events, our new chapter website, this blog, our chapter Twitter account, The Network – our monthly e-newsletter, and more.

And more importantly – the message behind “Give.Grow.Get.” is why we are all here. Why we are members of PRSA and our local chapter. Here are a few ways you can make the most of your GKC PRSA membership:

Give

• Sign up for the Midwest District Speakers Bureau
• Join a committee
• Contribute to our chapter blog or e-newsletter
• Consider becoming a mentor

Grow

• Attend regular monthly professional development meetings
• Join an affinity group – NewPros, SeniorPros or SoloPros

Get

• Consider a leadership position on the Board or leading a committee
• Network, network, network
• Sign your agency or company leadership up for the Midwest District Speakers Bureau and gain exposure for your employer
• Consider becoming a mentee
• Sponsor the 2010 PRISM Awards Dinner

Our chapter would not exist without the passion, talent and commitment of our 200+ members. I look forward to representing you and invite you to call or email me anytime (816.374.5615 or hand@thinkkc.com).

All the best to you and yours this holiday season and cheers to a bright new year for GKC PRSA!

By Andy DiOrio

Recently, K.C. local and PR-savvy Ann Wylie of Wylie Communications hosted a teleseminar offered by GKC-PRSA entitled “Writing for Social Media: How to Make Your Tweets, Blog Postings and Nanocontent More Relevant.”

And, much like newly formed words that seem to result from social media, “nanoconent” has joined the list, as it refers to the snippets of information people usually scan when looking at Web pages; typically, the first two words of a sentence. Overall, Wylie advised our content to be relevant, interesting, personable and short, which would all lead it to getting “clicked.”

First and foremost, provide your readers with information they can use to live their life better. Bottom line, be an informer, not a “meformer,” where your updates benefit you and you alone. We’re all happy you had a McBiscuit for breakfast, but that doesn’t help our own hunger to actually learn something McValuable. Wylie suggests following these folks on Twitter for a steady flow of info: @CSWriter, @MarkReganCEO and @Mashable.

A key to helping avoid the pitfalls of pointless babble is to aim to pass the 70/20/10 test. Provide resources in 70 percent of your content, like @GuyKawasaki, use 20 percent of you time to engage in conversation, and spend 10 percent of your dialogue “chirping” i.e. what article you read during breakfast, not what you ate for breakfast. This will also help you survive the “who cares” gauntlet, get a post retweeted and show you as a valuable contributor to the conversation.

Want to make it interesting? Take a tip from the film “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and have a point. Simply use headlines like the FBI using this, this or this example to gain reader attention and interest. In addition, avoid traditional memo-speak such as “We look to invoke synergy with our tactical operational analysis” and give the message a personality by using an active voice, in the second person, to describe your short, tight message such as “Life: Keep it short, funny, meaningful.” Most importantly, keep your message targeted – it will help keep you off the naughty list, a place no PR Pro wants to be.

Oh, one last thing. If you’re going to shorten a URL, use Bit.ly … Tinyurl was so early 2009. This will help you in the social media sphere with the ultimate goal … getting your content “clicked.”

As Tiger Woods’ PR agent, what advice would you give him?

By Jackie Clark, APR

As the GKC PRSA PR Pro of the Year now has new opportunities that go with the distinction, I’ve recently began my first “official/unofficial” duties. On Nov. 19 I shared a conversation with the Federal Information Council, which is comprised of KC-based federal government communicators, about the mutual challenges public and private sector communicators have regarding: Economy, Environment, Enforcement and Social Media. Through our discussion we found several mutual opportunities/challenges. The HR folks at my company recently alerted me to “sidewiki,” which could pose a new challenge for communicators … and I’m interested (so were the FIC members and I’m sure your PRSA colleagues are, too) to learn more about this “tool.”

In addition, one of the fun things I had the opportunity to do is to participate in a gathering hosted by Sturges Word at 801 Chop House with Melissa Sturges (2008 PR Pro of the Year), Linda Word, Justin LaBerge and Lee Page; HNTB PR gurus Michael DeMent (2007 PR Pro of the Year) and Lydia DeWitt Steinberg (2005 GKC PR Distinguished Service Winner) and Spaces magazine editor Zim Loy…I only wish that I didn’t have to leave early to go to my trainer! Cool venue, great hosts, and always an enjoyable experience conversing with K.C. PR colleagues. Thanks for making the first month FUN!!

Thank you again to this chapter for this incredible honor. You made my parents (and me) proud!

By Lorell LaBoube

Ellen Goodman is on the mark with her column on mammography advice. No one, apparently, thought seriously about the impact this report would have on a public conditioned for years to accept as gospel that this screening should start at 40.

I happened to catch a cable channel interview on this subject that made me wince. Split screen, on the left a spokeswoman for the report wearing yellow (yellow!) rimmed glasses, mumbling and poor eye contact. On the right side of the screen the personification of a trusted physician calmly questioning the report’s results. Who do you think had greater impact?

Think of other tests viewed as gospel – the psa blood test for prostate cancer, colonoscopies at 50. Yes, many of these have value but in an era with skyrocketing costs and polarizing politics, anything that even might call into question accepted thinking needs careful communication strategies in place before going public.