A Big Marketing Opportunity Most SMBs & Local Consultants Miss

[JoyHawkins]

Greg Stirling posted this great article which I saw in the Whitespark monthly newsletter (if you don't subscribe to this newsletter, you should start now).

Google announced that "How To" searches are growing substantially.

This is a huge opportunity for SMBs to focus on creating awesome "How to" videos pertaining to their industry.

Examples:

A plumber can post a "how to" video on how to unplug a toilet
A realtor can post a "how to" video on how to find the best deals, foreclosures etc.
A tree service business can post a "how to" video on how to properly prune a tree

<a href="http://www.localsearchinsider.org/a-big-marketing-opportunity-most-smbs-and-their-vendors-miss/#sthash.ApoJZSVv.dpbs">A Big Marketing Opportunity Most SMBs and Their Vendors Miss | Local Search Insider</a>

I'm going to try this strategy out on my next blog post (make a video as well).

 

[Linda Buquet]

re: A Big Marketing Opportunity Most SMBs & Local Consultants Miss

That's a really great point Joy! I tuned into that one too and thought if I still had clients I would do it for sure.

And that <a href="https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/features/i-want-to-do-micro-moments.html">I Want-to-Do Moments</a> article from Google you linked to at the top is priceless! Really summarizes the "how to", "I want to" right now, mobile mindset. I was going to try to do a separate post on that one and am also sharing it in the consumer behavior part of our mobile webinar today.

Thanks for sharing!

 

[Paul IX Brand SEO]

Joy, this is a great idea! I've been doing it with some local business clients for four years now and it's been very successful.

The one very important lesson learned is that you should not depend on YouTube to host your videos. I use YouTube and love it as a backup host, but my client videos, the ones in video blog posts, are also hosted on Vimeo (Wistia is another option). About a year ago, one of my YouTube channels was hit by a false flagging attack and in less than a minute the entire channel was down.

One video was hit with the three quick flags that took the video and the channel down -- it was the local high school band playing the National Anthem. It took me two days to appeal the channel suspension and then appeal the flags on the video. Imagine your client websites with black boxes for videos for a couple of days! And YouTube's message in those black boxes is that the videos are removed for violating YouTube's community standards.

So my advice is to do the "How To" videos, but make sure the videos you use on your websites are hosted in paid accounts.

Thanks!
Paul

 

[mborgelt]

This is great, Joy! It's so easy to get tunnel-visioned when it comes to content and miss low hanging fruit like this. We rely heavily on Google Trends and Think with Google for stats on trending searches and try to find ways to create assets for our clients around their findings. It's like having a billion dollar market research company on your side for free! Thanks for sharing.

 

[Linda Buquet]

I just found a really cool new tool for finding questions your customers may be thinking of so you can address them in a how to post or video. Need to play with it and am planning to post about it tomorrow AM if I can.

 

[Local Mixed]

Targeting How to and another question searches started increasing with Google's Hummingbird update. The truth is that many people are searching Google on how to do something or asking Google to find an answer to a question.

I have been suggesting How To videos for YouTube for a couple of years now. Some of my best targeted traffic comes from my How To vides on my YouTube channel.

Since many people understand the power of YouTube and video marketing, there are some more things you will want to do to optimize your video to increase it's chances of not only showing up in YouTube search, but also Google's.

A few things you can do.....


1. For a local business, tag the video with the location.


2. Keyword Research - Use popular keywords that people are searching for in your title. Remember, Google indexes YouTube videos and KY research is just as important for your video as it is for your blog posts.


3. Add an extended description - forget the 3 sentence description. Write a nice post of 200-500 words. Make it a short blog post. Remember, Google can't crawl a video, so a relevent description helps explain what the video is about.


4. Another local business tip - add your NAP (Name, Address, Phone). Most people think local citations are only for review sites and business directories. But the truth is that a citation is any mention of your business. The higher the authority and relevence the better. There is no reason not to put your NAP in your video discription.


5. Upload a transcript. Again, Google can't crawl the video to find out what it is about. The good thing is that you don't need a full transcript - unless you have one. I have used my long description as the transcript. However, I often type out a loose script for my videos and use that as the transcript.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks Local Mixed and welcome!

 

[Todd McCall]

Those tips for using video for content creation on How To topics are very helpful, thanks. There's some details there that are easy to overlook.

I've been thinking about the topic of users searching with questions since the Joy and others brought it up in the latest Inside Local webinar. It's so easy to forget that most users have a different mindset and behaviors than we do when we are sitting in front of the computer all day long.

But I know when I'm on the go and want to look something up, I just ask Siri or Google Now a Who, What, When, Where and Why question most of the time.

 

[Linda Buquet]

I've been thinking about the topic of users searching with questions since the Joy and others brought it up in the latest Inside Local webinar. It's so easy to forget that most users have a different mindset and behaviors than we do when we are sitting in front of the computer all day long.

But I know when I'm on the go and want to look something up, I just ask Siri or Google Now a Who, What, When, Where and Why question most of the time.

Really good points all Todd.

We always have to try to remember to just pretend we are are client's target market and put ourselves in their shoes, and think about how they would search.

Now I KNOW it's hard for some of you big macho guys to pretend you are a soccer Mom,
but hey... it's part of the job!

 

[Tony Wang]

Definitely an interesting idea with lots of potential.

However, I'm wondering about the likelihood of a smaller local business getting how-to videos ranked. Does Google factor in "local" for a how-to video search?

For example, how would a local plumber get his "sink repair" video ranked above one by Home Depot? Doesn't seem like Google would give extra points to the local plumber just because he's local to the person looking for that video.