10 Rules To Avoid The YouTube Slap!

You’ve heard of the “Google slap” where accounts are banned with no warning, sometimes for life.  Well YouTube and even Twitter have followed suit far more aggressively recently.  At least Twitter I’ve heard will work with you to rectify the issue and correct your alleged transgression. The issue with both Google and YouTube is that there is typically no forewarning prior to the punitive action taken.  For many, the only communication informing them that they may have accidently broken a rule is when their account is suddenly shut down.

I find this hard to swallow because there are little published rules detailing what they will or will not allow.  You then are forced to learn them when you taste the back of their hand!  This is important as many online businesses use You Tube as a great advertising and traffic getting tool while even more use You Tube to host their video content that they use on their blogs and sales pages.

I felt it would be very valuable if someone did the research to find out what exactly the “rules of engagement” are for YouTube which would then allow everyone to avoid unknowingly leaving their business vulnerable and thus costing you money. The information below is the result of interviewing many fellow entrepreneurs in my network to learn the mistakes they made which resulted in their accounts being immediately shutdown. I also included information found from my staff’s investigative research. The combination of both sets of information will allow you to “crack the code” sort-to-speak regarding what makes You Tube cranky and leave your account and thus your business vulnerable  Here you go:

1. You should only have one email address associated with your account
2. You should never post duplicate content
3. You should always make your videos relevant to its title & key words
4. You should never purchase views
5. You should never ever use software to add friends, comments or ratings automatically
6. You should NOT keyword load your descriptions with non relevant search terms to get traffic
7. Never (and I mean never) set up multiple accounts using the same IP address. You might get away with it for a while but you can only cheat the YouTube “Reaper” for so long. I don’t know exactly why this seems to be a stipulation for them but their enforcement of this rule has been repeatedly substantiated.
8. Avoid using your videos to aggressively market your business opportunity, product or service.  The key word here is aggressively. As I always say, build relationships.  If you’re sending your videos to other You Tube subscribers and spamming them, then you quickly become background noise to be ignored (or reported). This is proven true for all social media marketing for that matter.
9. With YouTube’s new insight feature, they are tracking the attention people are giving to each video.  If people are watching your entire video, YouTube can see this and then easily assume that your title is extremely relevant to the information on the video.   
10. The Google search ranking rules of providing good, accurate content that generate public interest are exactly the same rules that You Tube is using as well so bear that in mind when chosing the title, content and keywords for your video.

I would also strongly advise you to NOT use YouTube as your only video hosting source.  If you are using video marketing (and you should since it is very affective) then this is very important. I’ve talked to numerous online business owners who lost all their video content because they used YouTube as their sole video hosting provider.  Nothing is worse than waking up one morning to realize over a hundred of your videos are on “lock down” and thus, not playing on any of your sales pages or blogs.

 Trafficgeyser has a great audio & video hosting service that I’ve used for years.  I’ve tried several but the added value with Traffic Geyser is that they will also affectively distribute you video getting it ranked on Google search engines for your keywords quickly.  I have heard nothing but great reviews from advanced marketers that use this service as well.  iTunes is another option for such informal videos as pod-casts.  With more people on their mobile devices than on PC’s this is not a bad route to consider either.

Another great option is Tubemogul.com.  They offer some very impressive free storage and distribution options and their site analytics are pretty spectacular, even on their free service options.  The only caveat is that you cannot directly advertise you business or MLM on the video posted on Tubemogul.com (policy).  This is to prevent constant sales spamming and keep content fresh and valuable.  Most videos you dont really want to sell for knee jerk sales conversions anyway.  Those arent the “quality fish” you are trying to catch. You want to make certain that you affectively promote you, branding yourself as one that offers value and who is very likable, referring them to your blog or another feeder site.

Either one of these two options are reputable and come highly recommended.  It just comes down to which option best fits your marketing and online business objectives.  Bear in mind that you need to make certain when you use any video distribution service that you do not duplicate your video submission to YouTube.  That would of course violate rule #2 and leave you vulnerable to a good old-fashioned YouTube back-hand.

So avoid the YouTube slap by adhering to the rules I’ve mapped out above.  I never mind when rules are tightened because I feel it thins out the numbers of those that don’t provide real value, that spam others and aren’t committed to running their business the right way.  That equates to more opportunities for you and I.  I do mind however, when they are ineffective at communicating what those rules are.  Video advertising is too valuable for you to site on the side lines and not play ball just because you don’t know the rules on the YouTube field. You now know where the out of bounds lines are in your You Tube field of play.  So go ahead and play ball!

See AlsoPrevious Post: Making the Video: Internet Marketings Inexpensive Money-Making New Frontier

Patrick Daugherty

The “Biz Coach”

CEO of “Learn2Earnitnow” Online-Education & Support

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