Further adventures in YouTube promotion

We did it.

We took an important subject that the media wants to ignore and put it - and kept it  - at the top of YouTube's "New and Politics" charts.

As I write this, the video - "The Truth about Katrina" - is the #10 highest rated video in this category of this month. Amazing when you think about what we're up against - McCain, Obama, Palin, Wall Street melt down, etc. etc. and the fact that the Katrina anniversary and Hurricane Gustav are long over.

The underdog - in this case the people of New Orleans and Southern Louisiana - can win...if the underdog has some Internet savvy.

Speaking of savvy, YouTube is adding so many cool "bells and whistles" that it's hard for me to keep up.

Can anyone point us to a good online resource (maybe hidden somewhere on YouTubes's site) that goes into the fine points of creating and customizing a YouTube channel and using all the other new stuff they're offering (text annotation, automatic transfer to another video, click from video to a web site)

The speed of change in this medium has swamped my ability to keep up. If you've got anything to share on this point, I'm sure fellow SystemVideoBlog readers will appreciate it. I know I will.

(Please limit posts to this subject.)

Thanks.

Ken

Comments

[Bob Barrie]

One of my clients (for something else) has some commercials that are a take off of the Apple vs. PC commercials... and they are a hoot!
But they haven't promoted them !!??

Go to YouTube and search on Greenling (home delivery of organic food in Austin Texas).

Seems to me one of the "tools" is to create content that is viral. Oh yes... please let me know if you figure out the secret formula for that?

[Jeff Yentzer]

I sure would like to know how to get more views. The best method, I've come up with so far is to let my email list of several thousand people know about my videos. And of course to make a quality video that has content worth watching. I've also started to search for videos that are related to mine, and when I find a good one post a - video reply -

Search for optahealth on Youtube to see some of my health and wellness videos.

[Ken McCarthy]

One of the cool new tools YouTube has added is annotation.

This lets your superimpose text right over your video...and change it later if you like without going through the edit process.

Why do this?

Well, for starters we increased the number of viewers who rated a recent video we posted by 2,400% just by asking them to give it five stars at the beginning middle and end of the video.

How do you annotate?

I don't know. I hired a bright kid to do it for me.

Here are the directions. Maybe you can find a bright kid and hire him to do it for you too:

http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/topic.py?topic=10534