“How To” Shoot A “How To” On YouTube

Let’s Get Straight To The Point

People are so impatient! Especially when it comes to video, if you don’t get straight to the point they’re going to be hitting that back button in a heartbeat. No one is showing up to your videos to hear you “umming” or jumping from one topic to another… they clicked on your link to hear a specific piece of content!

If I’m describing your videos right now, then you need to immediately cut the fat out of your videos and start getting to the point within 5 to 10 seconds. With that said, I want to dive right into what I want to share with you, my strategy for shooting a great “How to” video.

“How to” videos are one of the most popular forms of video content, in fact YouTube is beginning to overtake Google as being the top place to go to search online. Good thing for Google that they bought YouTube back in 2006! So when you think about it “how to” videos are soon going to be the most popular type of content online period.

Here’s the strategy I use to structure my own how to’s:

Finding Video Ideas

This part is incredibly simple. Since there are already so many “how to” videos online you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It’s ok to make a “how to” on a topic that other YouTubers have already covered. In fact, I encourage it.

You’re providing your view on the topic and you can always provide a more valuable piece of content than your competition.

What’s really great is that YouTube and Google tell you exactly what videos to shoot. All you have to do is type “How to (do X in your field)” and the automatic text will fill up with viable topics. It’s worth checking on both search engines because they do reveal different results.

 

The Introduction

As I said before, you want your video introduction to get into your topic as quickly as you can. You want to lay out exactly what’s contained in your video in a easy to understand way, like “In this video I’m going to show you how I doubled my email conversions in 3 easy steps.” This captures your viewers attention right away or they realize the video isn’t right for them. This is what I call the “promise” of the video. You want to include a version of this promise in the title of your video and your thumbnails as well.

Delivery Of Promise

This is the part of the video where you deliver on your promise. Simply, give them the “how to” piece of the “how to.” Just make sure you really are delivering on that promise otherwise you need to change it to fit into your video.

Call To Action

Then the last piece of my formula is a call to action. It could be to “subscribe to your channel” for weekly content, or to click onto your website to buy something. Maybe you give them a free report, it could be a range of options really. But you’ve earned their attention so absolutely use this time to build a stronger relationship with your audience.

It’s not that complicated. Just get straight to the point, deliver great content, and then give your viewers a valuable CTA to take action upon.

Action Steps

1. Search on YouTube and Google for what How To’s come up for your industry.
2. Get straight to the point in your videos, and give a promise around the content of the video immediately.
3. Make sure the promise is included in the title and thumbnails of the video as well.
4. Deliver your content.
5. Then give your audience a call to action to follow up on.

 

Results You Will Achieve

A process to create effective how to videos and build your audience online.

This article is based on an EHQ interview with the mentor.