Content Marketing With Video 19 – More About Video Responses

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In Content Marketing With Video Tip 14 we looked at video responses.

And video responses are a tactic for getting more views on your videos on YouTube.  And most people are not taking full advantage of video responses.

A couple of guidelines for you:

1. Every video you post to YouTube should be a video response to a more popular video on a related topic on YouTube; or
2. Your video should be a video response to one of your own videos…so creating a ‘tier’ of video responses.

Now it’s fairly easy to go back and make sure that all of your videos are set up as video responses.  Here’s a screenshot as I’m making my latest bass guitar video a Video Response to a similar video on YouTube:

 

All the videos titles that you can see in the big text box to the right (with the title: ‘Select The Video You Want To Respond With’) that haven’t got an asterisk next to them are videos that haven’t been submitted as video responses.

So it’s fairly easy to audit your channel and make sure that all of your videos are performing as effectively as possible by being set as video responses.  And this is how most people use video responses.

However that’s not the only way you can use video responses.  And there’s a way of using video responses that gives you a good a guarantee as there is of creating a video that will attract traffic.

Video Responses And Making ‘Eyeball’ Guaranteed Videos

So here’s how you do this.

1. Find a video on YouTube in your particular market area or niche that has got a lot of views on it.  (Note: what constitutes a ‘lot’ of views is something that’s different from niche to niche.   In some niches 100,000 views is awesome.  In some niches it’s the price of entry).
2. Then use the content on that video as a starting point and work out how you can create a video that either expands on the idea, riffs on the idea and takes it in a new direction, or breaks down the original content into a highly detailed (and highly consumable) step-by-step approach.
3. Then create your video using one of the approaches from above.
4. Optional Step (but highly recommended): before you create your video, make sure you have started building a relationship with the original video creator.  That way you can contact him or her and tell them that you’re filming a video that would complement their video.  And that you’d like to post it as a video response.  If you get a positive answer….your video is almost guaranteed a decent level of views before you’ve even set your camera up.
5. Film your video and upload it to YouTube.
6. Post it as a video response to the original video.

If everything lines up correctly and you get your video response approved, your new video should start getting some healthy piggy back traffic from Day 1 of it being published.

Applying It In Practice

Here’s a screenshot from the YouTube channel of a (great) Swiss bass guitar player whose YouTube handle is David Sin Rocks.  This shot shows the top 6 videos on his channel by popularity:

Now that top video – 1.8 million views – is an incredible number of views for a bass guitar video.  And this video is a ‘playalong.’  (A playalong is a video where someone puts on the original track and plays along to it – either playing the original bass line or trying to improve upon it.)

So the people who are watching that video are either:

1. Red Hot Chili Pepper fans who might like bass
2. Bass guitar players who like the Red Hot Chili Peppers
3. Bass guitar players in general who may or may not like the Red Hot Chili Peppers
4. David Sin Rocks fans who might not be bass guitarists.

Now I’m guessing that the bulk of his audience are made up of bass guitar players and fit profiles (2) and (3).  And that being the case, don’t you think that a good portion of those viewers would go watch a detailed step-by-step tutorial that was linked underneath as a video response?

Yep, I do too.  (And so did David, he started another channel where he teaches, created a video for this song and that video has got 215,000 views on it.  A verrrrryyyyyy healthy number in our niche).

So the next thing I should do is create a video doing exactly that (teaching the song, step by step) and post it to YouTube and contact David to get it approved as a video response.

Making This Idea Fly

This idea is simple – but you can really make it fly for your own content marketing with video strategy.

If I take just David – that guy has got over 60 videos on his channel with over 100,000 views.  Now not all of them fit me perfectly for several reasons – but there are at least 15 videos of those 60 that a detailed tutorial of would fit my audience really well. (That’s 15 on top of the 10 that I’ve already created tutorials for!)

And there are at least 10 other bass players on YouTube with similar videos.  With high video counts.

So not only does creating videos that you can post as video responses to popular videos ensure that you’ll start getting good views pretty much straight away, it also takes the guesswork out of creating content that will attract an audience.

So although this is a simple tactic…it’s incredibly powerful.

Summary

Video Responses are a tactic you should be applying in your content marketing with video strategy.

Every. Single. Video.  that you post to YouTube should be made a video response to another video – whether a popular video by a different creator, or whether to one of your videos.

Once you’ve retroactively made every video of yours into a video response, you can also use the video response tactic as a content generation method.

Find the popular videos in your niche.  Work out how to create videos of your own that add value to those popular videos.  Create your videos and post them as video responses.

Knowing that there’s a high probability that your video will get good traffic before you even storyboard it is a great feeling!

Next Step

Video Responses are covered in detail in my new course The Content Marketers Video Playbook.  Click on the link to find out more information on what’s covered in this unique step-by-step method on how to leverage videos for your business.

Related posts:

1. Content Marketing With Video Tip 14 – Leveraging Other People’s Videos Part 1
2. Content Marketing With Video Tip 15 – Leveraging Other People’s Videos Part 2
3. Content Marketing With Video 17 – Why You Shouldn’t Embed Playlists
4. Content Marketing With Video Tip 10 – The Call To Action Part 1

Tagged as: content marketers video playbook, content marketing with video, video creation, video responses, youtube