10 Fundamentals Of Creating Videos That Change Hearts, Minds, Actions

Cre­ate videos peo­ple will love and start gen­er­at­ing more busi­ness from YouTube.

Greg Jarboe By Greg Jarboe from SEO-PR. Join the discussion » 0 comments

One key to suc­cess on YouTube is in find­ing a for­mu­la that works for your brand. How can you cre­ate video con­tent that peo­ple will love and start gen­er­at­ing more busi­ness from YouTube?


One of the sev­en ways to improve your video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy is to “cre­ate con­tent that is unique, com­pelling, and enter­tain­ing or infor­ma­tive.” Iron­i­cal­ly, YouTube put that phrase at the top of a check­list in its Cre­ator Play­book with­out com­pil­ing any impor­tant tips, best prac­tices, or strate­gies that tell mar­keters how to cre­ate con­tent that peo­ple will love.

For­tu­nate­ly, 10 fun­da­men­tals have emerged for cre­at­ing con­tent that changes hearts, minds, and actions. All you need to do is cre­ate video con­tent that is:

  1. Tar­get­ed
    • Study con­tent that’s sim­i­lar to yours and try to deter­mine who is engag­ing with it.
    • Take a look at any of your exist­ing con­tent and deter­mine who’s respond­ing to it.
    • Design every ele­ment of your con­tent to reflect who you would like to reach.
  2. Authen­tic
    • Cast sub­ject mat­ter experts or indus­try pro­fes­sion­als to add cred­i­bil­i­ty to your mes­sage.
    • Show­case real-life fan sto­ries to make your mes­sage relat­able.
    • Con­sid­er telling the back­sto­ry of your brand in a spe­cial video or chan­nel trail­er.
  3. Dis­cov­er­able
    • Make videos around trend­ing events.
    • Cre­ate “ever­green” videos that will be searched for over time, such as how-to videos.
    • Remem­ber that the algo­rithm can’t watch videos, so ful­ly opti­mize meta­da­ta, includ­ing titles, tags and descrip­tions.
  4. Share­able
    • While you can’t guar­an­tee any video will go viral, you can make it more share­able by using some proven tac­tics:
      • Iden­ti­fy trend­ing sub­ject mat­ter.
      • Con­nect through emo­tion.
      • Appeal to your audience’s val­ues.
      • Cre­ate ongo­ing series with break-out poten­tial.
  5. Acces­si­ble
    • Always con­sid­er the new view­er when writ­ing and pro­duc­ing con­tent.
    • Fold in con­text if nec­es­sary, but don’t refer to videos the user most like­ly hasn’t seen.
    • If you do host ser­i­al con­tent, include quick recaps at the begin­ning of episodes to bring new view­ers up to speed.
  6. Con­sis­tent
    • Devel­op video ideas that can be expressed over mul­ti­ple episodes.
    • Cre­ate a struc­tured for­mat so you don’t have to rein­vent every video.
    • Upload on a reg­u­lar sched­ule.
    • Make sure your videos have a clear point of view that reflects your brand.
  7. Con­ver­sa­tion­al
    • Give fans oppor­tu­ni­ties for feed­back or, bet­ter yet, involve them in your con­tent.
    • Let view­ers know their com­ments mat­ter, and that you’re lis­ten­ing.
    • Respond to view­er com­ments, both in video and on social media.
  8. Inter­ac­tive
    • Give view­ers a range of options for how to par­tic­i­pate.
    • You can share view­er ques­tions and feed­back in your videos, or incor­po­rate their actu­al con­tent into your chan­nel.
    • In some cas­es, you can let view­ers dic­tate the con­tent itself.
  9. Sus­tain­able
    • Plan your cre­ative con­cept care­ful­ly: does it have longevi­ty?
    • Imple­ment recur­ring for­mats and a pre­dictable pro­gram­ming sched­ule.
    • Make sure you have the in-house or agency resources to sup­port this effort for the long term.
  10. Col­lab­o­ra­tive
    • The audi­ence you’re seek­ing already exists on YouTube – you just need it to find you.
    • One effec­tive method is to col­lab­o­rate with estab­lished YouTube cre­ators who already reach your tar­get.
    • Iden­ti­fy poten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tors.
    • Remem­ber: YouTu­bers are brands them­selves.

Now, that’s a lot of advice – per­haps, a lit­tle too much advice. What should you do if peo­ple don’t love your video con­tent? Do you dou­ble-check to see if your con­tent was share­able and inter­ac­tive, or wor­ry that your top­ic wasn’t dis­cov­er­able and you didn’t con­verse with view­ers? Or, if your authen­tic­i­ty and tar­get­ing seemed great, would this indi­cate that your acces­si­bil­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy need work? Or, if sus­tain­abil­i­ty doesn’t appear to be a prob­lem, then – and I’m just spit­balling here – could this mean that your col­lab­o­ra­tion sucks?

This reminds me of the scene in “The Pale­face”, the 1948 west­ern com­e­dy star­ring Bob Hope, when Peter “Pain­less” Pot­ter (Hope) is told before the big shootout:

  • He draws from the left, so lean to the right.”
  • There’s a wind from the east, so you’d bet­ter aim to the west.”
  • He crouch­es when he shoots, so stand on your toes.”

Of course, “Pain­less” turns all this advice into, “He draws from the left, so stand on your toes. There’s a wind from the east, bet­ter lean to the right. He crouch­es when he shoots, bet­ter aim to the west. He draws from his toes, so lean towards the wind. Ah, ha! I’ve got it.”

Since 10 fun­da­men­tals are sev­en more than “Pain­less” could remem­ber, many mar­keters will be tempt­ed to do what most cow­boys do: Shoot first and ask ques­tions lat­er. But, you don’t have to uti­lize all 10 of these fun­da­men­tals. You just need to fig­ure out which one of them will work best for you.

For exam­ple, Roken­bok uses a con­sis­tent for­mat to make YouTube videos like “T‑Rex, ROK Blocks Snack Time!” Why did the toy com­pa­ny insti­tute a recur­ring show or series that can be repeat­ed again and again? Roken­bok gen­er­ates 50 per­cent of its cus­tomers from YouTube, which explains why it doesn’t stray from a for­mu­la that works.

Next week, we’ll look at anoth­er way to improve your video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy: Sched­ul­ing your con­tent.


Are any of these 10 fun­da­men­tals part of your video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy? What has worked for your brand? Tell us in the com­ments.

Greg Jarboe

Written by Greg Jarboe

President, SEO-PR

Greg Jarboe is President and co-founder of SEO-PR, an award-winning content marketing agency that was founded in 2003. He’s the author of YouTube and Video Marketing and also a contributor to The Art of SEO, Strategic Digital Marketing, Complete B2B Online Marketing, and Enchantment. He’s profiled in the book Online Marketing Heroes, a frequent speaker at industry conferences, and writes for Tubular Insights and The SEM Post. He’s an executive education instructor at the Rutgers Business School and the Video and Content Marketing faculty chair at Simplilearn.

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