Using Video in Your Product Reviews

by Missy Ward

Disclosure: If I'm not making money through affiliate links on the post you're currently reading, it's an oversight on my part and will be corrected soon.

Why consider using video in your product reviews?

Well, it turns out YouTube is the number two place people search – after Google. So using videos in your review and uploading them to YouTube can seriously boost your SEO rankings (and no, the same cannot be said of other video hosting sites; stick with YouTube – after all, Google owns it).

Authenticity Matters in Video Product Reviews

Thinking about adding a video to your site can be pretty daunting, particularly when you’re a work from home blogger. You might feel like you’ll need to put on makeup, do your hair, and clean your house before you can shoot a quick video about a product.

But the truth is authenticity matters in video content as well. While it’s always nice to look good and have a clean house, you can also JUST BE YOU on the videos, even if that YOU has kids crawling all over you… and your yoga pants.

The idea of creating and editing videos can also be overwhelming, but it’s pretty easy to do that these days. After all, if you’re not a Hollywood movie producer, no one is expecting you to have perfectly lit and brilliantly edited videos.

You can easily shoot video with your phone and edit it with simple video editing apps like Magisto, or even on YouTube itself. (I’ll share some resources at the end of this post).

Before I get into the best ways to optimize your visual content, let’s remember something very, very important: for the love of all that is holy, TURN YOUR SMARTPHONES SIDEWAYS WHILE SHOOTING VIDEO.

Do you not use your phone in the vertical position – this leads to your video have the deadly black bars on either side of the image. No one wants to watch that.

Optimizing Your Videos

You'll optimize your videos similar to how you optimize your photos in product reviews. Use your descriptive keywords across the board.

Video Filename

Your file name should be a description. So don’t upload vid2324.mov; upload “cardsagainsthumanityreview.mov” instead.

Video Title

Keep your title short and sweet – think half a Tweet or 70ish characters. And use your keywords in the title.

Video Description

It can be so tempting to add a brief novella about the video in the description field, but only 160 characters show up in the search results. Make those characters count.

Video Category

YouTube offers up a group of video categories. Choose the category most relevant to your video.

Add Captions and Subtitles To Your Videos

Inserting captions and subtitles into the video opens up your content to a larger audience, including deaf or hard of hearing viewers and viewers who speak other languages. It can also help your video be found easier. YouTube offers a great video tutorial on how to add captions and subtitles to your videos.

Add Clickable Links Using Annotations

YouTube has a feature called annotations that allows you to add text information and clickable links that increase viewership, engagement, and subscribers. YouTube offers directions for adding annotations here.

Create Your Own YouTube Channel

Creating a YouTube channel that links to your website as the place to host your videos is great for SEO.

Again, creating videos isn’t something you need to stress over. I know a blogger that has three million views on her videos, and they are all very casual, super short (think under a minute), and have no special lighting or much editing.

I don’t know if you’ll get millions of views, but you won't know until you try.

Embedding and Tracking Your Videos

Using a video marketing tool like Viewbix enables you to create customizable skins for your videos which will allow you to track affiliate sales easily. You'll be able to add in everything from clickable calls to action, newsletter sign-ups, a Skype app and more directly into your video as well as get an entire suite of analytics with your pro account. I use Viewbix for this, and it works wonderfully. Here's a Viewbix tutorial that I previously wrote about that will help you out.

Video Resources

My Favorite Video Editing Online Sites

My Favorite Video Editing Apps

Magisto (yes, available in an app, too.)
Lumify
iMovie

Bio
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Missy Ward

Co-Founder & President at Affiliate Summit, Inc.

Missy Ward has been in affiliate marketing since 1999. She is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Affiliate Summit, FeedFront Magazine, GeekCast.fm, Founder of AffiliateMarketersGiveBack.com and manages many of her own affiliate sites.