Online Video Promotion–Does It Work?

Thought I’d give it a try and wanted to share my experiences. The whole point of “video distribution” is to structure your book trailer titles and descriptions for optimal placement on Internet searches.

At our 2010 Spring Spirit Conference for SCBWI CA North/Central (@SCBWICA), my co-regional advisor Erin Dealey (@erindealey) and I invited DigitalWeavers to host a table in the foyer to talk to attendees about the benefits of promoting themselves with video. I decided to put my money where my mouth is and opt for DigitalWeavers’ video distribution package. Here are the pros and cons as I see them…

PROS
Owner Lisa Gottfried interviewed me by telephone asking several probing questions about the market I hoped to reach with my Nugget on the Flight Deck trailer. She developed a long list of possible keywords for which prospective readers/buyers might search and then (and this is the magical part that I don’t understand) discovered how many times those keywords were used in the last month. From that list of keywords, Lisa developed a list of possible titles for my book trailer and I chose the one I wanted.

Behind the scenes, Lisa worked her magic and posted the video with the title I chose and we waited. In about a week, she typed in one of our search terms (gift book for grandson) and Nugget on the Flight Deck appeared on the first page of search results in the #1 spot out of 1,350,000,000 competitors. If a prospective reader types “teaching vocabulary and science picture book,” my video appears on page 1 of the search results in the #1 and #2 slots out of 12,100,000 competitors. And, I’m definitely accumulating more “views” than I did before the distribution process. So far so good, right?

CONS
Well, here’s the catch. There’s not much we can do to then make the prospective reader/buyer view the video once it appears in their search results. Plus, it’s difficult to determine how the increased visibility and number of views actually affects book sales.

If anyone figures out a way to study this, I’d love to know!