The Power of Twitter Introductions
February 28, 2009 by Lennie Appelquist
Filed under Twitter
Funny thing happened on my way to filming a Twitter Introduction…
Yesterday morning, I uploaded a Twitter Introduction Video to YouTube. I had seen a few others and thought that the notion of a Twitter Introduction video would be great. Twitter is such an amazing platform. Not only can I really connect with people and follow what they are doing, I can also share my activities with others. It’s very cool. I even got an invitation to have a beer from Internet Marketing Guru Matt Bacak (@mattbacak).
So back to the Twitter Introduction Video. It is a great way to be a little more than 75 pixel square image on your Twitter page. It allows you to be a real flesh and blood human. After all, if we are going to establish relationships online with social media, what better way than a video.
The process is really simple. You can capture video from your webcam on your computer, or video camera. I used a Panasonic DVX-100 – imported it into iMovie – no editing and uploaded it onto YouTube.
Once it was uploaded, I made sure to direct message all new followers with a thank you and link to my YouTube page.
That’s easy. What I also did was a little SEO on my Youtube page (including inserting my links to my Twitter page and blogs right in the description), did a little bookmarking, then uploaded it to other video sites.
Now if you search Google for “Twitter Introductions” you see these results:
Click above picture to enlarge.
What you see at #4 is a double video listing with thumbnails (two of them) and the only ones on the page. Do you think people will click that link more often as a result of the picture? I think the answer is yes. Now if you look above the two thumbnails, you’ll see a link to Mixx. Yep, that’s also me. That’s three links in the top four slots.
All this in under thirty-six hours!
So here’s the intro video:
Some YouTube tips:
- Always add links with the full URL in your YouTube description. (http://www.yoursite.com). I added a link to my Twitter and my two sites.
- Add a good description – with some good keywords.
- Add a creative title – I titled mine, “The Truth about Twitter Introductions”.
- Add good tags – If you add tags with two or more words, use quotes around them or YouTube will separate the words, e.g.. “Social Networking”.
Some Twitter tips:
- Be real.
- Post good links, not just links to your site… boring and selfish.
- Show interest in others – after all, this is social networking…
- Did I mention, be real?
If we are not yet following each other on Twitter, please use the Twitter link to my profile and follow me. I will follow you back.
http://www.twitter.com/lenapple
If you want to check out the Google results, click here…
Enjoyed reading your post. I have posted some videos but I have not had much success with generating the thumbnails, any suggestions. Also, I noticed that Google moved a video button to the front of their search page. When did this happen ? How significant do you think it is to businesses needing a video ?
As long as you have something to say, I think video is a GREAT resource. I think the key is doing some of the things I mentioned above: a good title, keyword rich description with URL’s (links), and good tags. Think about the words you are going after. I intended on getting good results for “truth twitter introductions”, I was very pleasantly surprised to get such good results for “twitter introductions”. This blog post is now in the top slot and landed there 2 hours after I posted…
Good luck!
Yes I enjoyed this post too. I am a recent adopter of online video marketing. Combining video with social media and targeted keywords has been quite effective for me. I advertise links to my youtube videos and post on multiple videos sites. A great video site for marketers is at http://www.Adwido.com the account is free. Plus they helped me boost traffic substantially by helping me target the right keywords.