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 accidentally 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:
- You should only have one email address associated with your account
- You should never post duplicate content
- You should always make your videos relevant to its title & key words
- You should never purchase views
- You should never ever use software to add “random/un-targeted” friends, comments or ratings automatically
- You should NOT keyword load your descriptions with non relevant search terms to get traffic
- Never (and I mean never) set up multiple accounts using the same IP address where there will be any duplicate content whatsoever. Duplicate content has proven to trigger a “slap”. 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 choosing 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 effectively 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 don’t really want to sell for knee jerk sales conversions anyway. Those aren’t the “quality fish” you are trying to catch. You want to make certain that you effectively 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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Multiple distribution is a must. I’ve noticed myself, some of my videos only getting 10 or so views on YouTube while at the same time getting over a 100 over at MetaCafe, you never know when you’re content is going to strike a chord and where that person will be. Also the different video sharing sties out there have different demographics. As I’ve heard DailyMotion is more popular in France than the US, and more popular to an extent than YouTube there in France, so if you want international attention you don’t want to leave out certain resources by submitting solely to YouTube.
With TubeMogul, some will tell you to submit to YouTube first then through TubeMogul for your other channels, I guess it would be the same with Traffic Geyser. I myself don’t do this and have yet to have a problem. I simply go back into YouTube and update the information adding the time and location stamp immediately upon uploading. It saves an extra upload step.
A friend of mine, however, was recently slapped by TubeMogul, not because he was doing a sales video, but merely interviewing a popular person in Internet Marketing. The name flagged in their search and they closed his TubeMogul account. So keep that in mind as well.
John
Cheers for posting this it was essential for a paper I am now writing for my thesis. Thanks
thank you for this great article. I have heard about the “slap” .. and not understanding why, it kept me from starting a video presence. This helped so much!
Yikes… your number “7. Never (and I mean never) set up multiple accounts using the same IP address…” what about those of us who offer setting up and administering our customer’s Social Media accounts?
Is this to put a stop to web page designers from helping others establish their little piece of cyberspace? I sure hope not.
Thanks for the warning,
Trish
I would ( and will add in) this caveat because that is an outstanding point Trish and I need to be more specific: Never (and I mean never) set up multiple accounts using the same IP address where there will be any duplicate content whatsoever. Duplicate content from the same IP address will trigger a “slap”.
Great breakdown of the hazards. I tweeted so more folks can get this info – we talk a lot about the Google slap but too many are using just You Tube and forget the hazards of their control of your account.
great thanks for sharing
Agree with most of what you said except for part of “You should never ever use software to add friends, comments or ratings automatically” … I agree with the ratings/comments part, but as far as sending friend invites I use Tube Toolbox, which stays within the YouTube terms of service and allows you to send friend requests and messages to relevant YouTubers who would be interested in your show or content type.
This really helps to “get the ball rolling” for a new channel and as long as your videos are good and relevant you’ll get a lot of “Thank yous” on your channel comments. Rarely do I ever get the “why did you invite me?” since I send invites ONLY to people who have commented/subbed/friended other videos/channels with similar content to what I produce. Obviously, if your videos stink or just promote offers you’re not going to get a good response.
Ok, you got me there Scott. I definitely needed to be more specific. I will add specifically not to use them to automatically add “random/non-targeted” friends or connections purely for the sake of increasing numbers… I use Tweetadder to search & find like-minded people and auto-follow as well so it’s obvious I’m a proponent of that time saving tool. Thanks Scott!
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Your article was a great quick read whilst eating a sandwich – and the replies to comments about clarified the same questions for us – thanks for sharing great content.
Hey, thanks for the info. I had no idea that they linked accounts via IP address and then scanned for duplicate posts. I work for a non-profit, and we have multiple departments and lots of interns. It’s easy for people to grab video content off a shared drive and host it to their own departmental YouTube account, but apparently that could end up being bad for all of us in ways that I never thought of. I always figured that if I was being safe with copyrighted music and not spamming keywords then I’d be okay…looks like I need to do some more homework on this issue.
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Great content! I am not really using youtube as a primary vehicle but intend to. Your warnings help out a LOT! thanks again!
Michael
RP, I have been … RP, I have been viewing your videos since I found you through Glendon’s site.Just wanted to thank you for the motivation and ideas you have given on Youtube.man, there is nothing better than making money doing something you enjoy.I look forward to seeing the finished product on the website!
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