The Rise Of The Video Comment
Video blogging and marketing is on the up. Almost every new product that comes out has a video of at least half an hour (and some are up to 2 hours) telling you how good the product is – usually without really telling you what it is or how it is different to the other thousand or so products out there. But with the video sales page has come the video response or comment.
YouTube and many other sites actively encourage video responses to the videos that have been uploaded, but there’s not a huge take up on it, which is a shame because for the affiliate or rival it is a golden opportunity to either piggyback or hijack the potential customer.
A video comment is exactly what it sounds like and what’s more it will appear as a ‘related video’ in the block that appears at the end of the main event and possibly down the right side of the YouTube page. This means it is in clear view of someone who has just watched the item that brought them to the site and they are still receptive to the message it had given. This is an ideal time to make use of that attention.
Let’s say that the main event is a video advertising a new e-course on, for instance, list building. The course is mostly sold by affiliates – who are mostly much of a muchness so anyone would do to buy from… Enter the canny video-commenter affiliate-marketer.
The video commenter would put up a video comment in praise of the product and perhaps offer a related bonus item which now increases the value to the potential buyer. The commenter now stands out from all the ‘me too’ guys and gets the sale.
You’ve probably noticed that a lot of Google ads have ‘product name – is it a scam?’ headlines to get you to click on them, taking you to a sycophantic review to get you to buy through their link. There’s no reason why your video review couldn’t use the same tactic – whether it’s in praise or to show a rival product. Whatever the reason, you’ve pulled the customer to your site and link rather than someone else’s.
If you happen to find a video that’s really popular and going viral, you may even be able to get people interested who hadn’t even come to look at something like your offer. Let’s pick puppy videos as an example. Someone has put up a puppy doing something cute for the main video. Your video response comments directly about the video and at the end of your comment you slip in a line about your dog training guide and where people can get it from. It’s related, it’s relevant and a lot of people will see it. Ker-ching.
I’m sure by now that your head is buzzing with the ideas that video commenting could do for you.
All you need is a decent video camcorder – most mobile phones can manage video in HD resolution. Video editing programs exist for smart phones as well as Windows, Mac & Linux operating systems and are easy to use. Your video comment doesn’t even have to be you talking into the camera. A PowerPoint presentation or some screen capture shots with perhaps your own voice over – or find a voice over artist to do one for you from fiverr.com or elance.com (depending on what you want or can afford) whatever will do the job. Your response video doesn’t need to be more than a couple of minutes and could be the start of a whole new source of traffic.
If all of the above is too much for you simply write your comment and find websites that will convert your comment article into a video. There’s plenty out there or it’s back to the micro-job websites to find someone to do it for you.
All you need to do is to search out videos that are in your niche and are popular. YouTube lets you sort by recent popularity when you search for your niche’s keywords so you should easily be able to find something suitable. Once you have some targets, the video commenting world is your oyster.