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Viral Video Marketing: How YouTube can Help Increase Your Website Traffic

Article By Daniel D Dwase...

Ever heard of Viral Video marketing? No, you can't catch the swine flu with viral marketing, but it can spread the word about your new website with pandemic speed.

How does viral video marketing work? By using one of the most trafficked video sites around: Youtube.com.

If you don't already have an account, it's free to set up. If you already have one, but haven't setup a profile - this is a crucial step because it allows you to post your website URL; give a brief bio of yourself or introduce your company.

The best part about viral video marketing is that it can be twice as effective as writing content, because half the time, people don't read it - most people like things presented to them visually.

Most people are visual learners and need to "see" how things are done. Try using your website content as the script for your videos and see how much more you can accomplish.

If this idea wasn't true, television would never have made it. This is your chance to make your own commercial without paying a cent in airtime costs.

The great thing about Youtube: they make it really easy for others to post your video to their websites, even further spreading the word about your site. This is viral video marketing at its best.

So get started on that video, but be sure to keep it short - no more than 2 - 3 minutes to avoid boring your viewers.

Make sure that your website address clearly appears at least at the beginning and end of each video, but don't try to keep it displayed throughout the entire video, this can be annoying and will discourage some people from posting your video to their website.

Youtube can get you the exposure you need, but you'll have to help the process along at first, though.

Don't just post your video and leave it to Youtube to bring in views. Initially, you'll want to get as many people viewing your video as possible.

Here's some quick and easy ways to do this:

Link to other videos

Link your video to other videos that are related to your topic. You'll have to take some time to do some research for this, but it's well worth it. Find high-quality videos with lots of viewer activity.

Link to social networking sites

Post a link to your video on all social networking/bookmarking sites that you belong to and encourage them to write a brief comment about your video.

Email video link

Email a link to your video to everyone... and I mean everyone... that you have an email address for. Note: If you don't know the people personally, you'll need to introduce the video in a way that gently convinces them that they should view the video (and write a comment).

Briefly outline the benefits of watching the video. For example, if your company sells hand soap and you'd like to promote a new product you could say, "If you've been wanting to know how to avoid catching the swine flu, this video can show you how..."

Don't worry about whether or not these two groups of people actually go on to your website or purchase anything. The point here is to create a flood of viewers and get some buzz going about your video.

When the webmasters at Youtube see that something is stirring in your area, they are more likely to link your video to other relevant videos.

To fully understand the importance of this, consider your own Youtube viewing experience. How many times have you search for one video and ended up watching tons of others solely because their links popped at the end of one video?

Next thing you knew, you stumbled upon something so great that you were compelled to post it to your site or, even better, you decided to click the link to their website. Well, that's what I'm talking about here.

Youtube can expose your website to millions of viewers from all over the world. The sheer volume of visitors that surf Youtube is the viral component that makes it possible to increase your website traffic.

Your video is transmitted from one viewer to the next where it multiplies as they distribute it to other viewers that they come in contact with, and then they go on to transmit it even further � but the great thing about viral video marketing is that even though it can spread like a virus, it carries none of the health risks!