If you write a blog and want to expand your audience, or a business that needs more customers (who doesn’t want that?) you really need to be creating videos and uploading them for people to view!

Your competition is taking customers from you that have no idea you exist if they are uploading video and you are not. If they aren’t producing video for YouTube or their own sites then you need to make sure you get those customers they are missing.

Compete.com lists YouTube with 85 million unique visits in July of 2009! Just imagine what it could do for your site if you happened to create a viral video that got 100,000 views… 200,000 views…. 1 million views! A certain percentage of those people would visit your site and a percentage of those would sign up for your newsletter or buy something from you.

Now if my math is right, and you get 1 million views for a video and only 3% of those viewers visit your site that is 30 thousand visitors! If 3% of those signed up or bought something, that is 900 signups or sales! Sound good to you?

I know it’s very difficult to get a video with 1 million views, but take a look at YouTube and see what videos are that popular. Why do they become popular? What is great about them? It’s not the production value, it’s not because they have celebrities or cost a large amount of money to create.

These videos are crazy popular because they are extremely funny, or cool, or amazing for some reason. The videos can be planned out, but wildly popular vidoes are not outwardly selling anything, there is no pitch. If you want to create a viral video you cannot be selling in the video, let the video sell for you!

There’s an old saying from my door-to-door sales days “Sell the sizzle not the steak”. Well what does this mean to you? If I’m selling plant food for gardeners, do I tell them how wonderful the fertilizer is and how many nutrients are in it? NO! I am not selling them fertilizer, I am selling them BIG TOMATOES, that’s the sizzle!

Give for free something of value in your video. We are a camera repair shop and can’t make videos about how to repair every camera, but your customers are looking for something regarding your business, so find out what it is and give it to them!

Teach them something, give them information they are looking for, entertain them. [If you become an authority on your subject your customers will happily tell others about you].

No need to spend thousands on professional video production, but they must be easy to watch and understand.

• Make sure your camcorder or digital camera records good quality video, and no it doesn’t have to be HD quality for YouTube!
• Use a quality microphone. Poor audio will drive away most viewers, guaranteed.
• Use a solid backdrop, don’t show your cluttered basement or office or bedroom unless this is part of your presentation
• Write a script or at least notes regarding what you want to say
• Practice and view your results before publishing it. Ask others for opinions and feedback!
• Yes, you will hate the sound of your own voice, but that is how you sound to the rest of us so don’t worry about it.

Just go for it, things will get better as you go!

Now I’m off to try and figure out what my customers are looking for regarding digital camera repair for their Sony, Canon and Nikon cameras and then just give it to them.

How a single Tweet post went viral

If your looking to increase targeted traffic to your website or blog, here’s a straight forward strategy that I used to bring 172 people (210 pageviews) to my blog in a few short days using a viral content method.

Basic Testing Method

Through testing different Twitter post headlines, I found one that one style (quantification of facts) of headline outperformed my control headline by 210%. The Tweet post that I used was “6 effective ways to use twitter as a lead generation tool“. Now obviously you can tell by the title that there’s a clear benefit that was stated with a quantifiable fact. Instead of just saying “effective ways to use Twitter”, I started it with “6″. By using qualification in your Tweet posts, you add more believability, credibility and newsworthiness.

Follow me, I’ll follow you - Reciprocation

If your using the “follow me, I’ll follow you” method of reciprocation to add followers to your Twitter account, you should be choosing who you follow strategically. Choosing people who are your ideal target marker, or have a high probability of benefiting from your product or service is a good way of thinking about who you should choose to follow. If your in the PR, SEO or Copywriting business and you’re not targeting business owners who have a high probability of using your services, your Tweets will fall on deaf ears.

Tailor your Tweets to go Viral - Write with your end user in mind

If your using Twitter for business purposes, it’s essential to tailor your Tweets with your end user (you followers) in mind. My blog is about Joint Venture Marketing and Business Optimization Strategies, so I keep my Tweets tailored to these topics 95% of the time. Simply by tailoring my content to my target audience and providing highly relevant content with the right message, at the right time, and to the right audience I was able to get my Tweet picked up by 38 other Bloggers and media websites.

So my point is, regardless of your niche, you can get very targeted traffic to your site with the right message, at the right time, to the right audience.

Action Tip Takeaway (ATT): Go to your followers on Twitter and click on at least 10 profiles to see if you can find a pattern, consistency or particular demographic that will direct you in a particular direction as far as the type of content you may want to consider writing about. Once you find a pattern that your folowers fall into, use some type of quantifiable fact to further increase the benefit to your offering.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report