4 tips from business experts: What makes a good video

We posted From the viral experts: What makes a good video.  Now, we take a look at advice from business executives and what they think makes a successful video that can money.

 

Don’t you hate it when you enter “Dramatic Hamster” into YouTube, and you find a never-ending list of copycats? How do you know which is the OC (original creator)? Usually, it’s the subscriber with the most views, but that isn’t always the case. We encourage making fresh content.

 

“We want to see the innovative, the creative works that truly do entertain you if you’re a viewer or inspire you if you’re a creator.”

- Metacafe Director of Corporate Communications Michelle Cox (Metacafe responds to Producer Rewards changes)

 

If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? The activity of a video is fueled by the people who watch it. Online communities are particularly strong on YouTube with an active comments system. Don’t forget about collaborative efforts like group editing on Kaltura.

“The key word today is engagement. The Internet used to be a monologue. You wrote, and everyone read. That’s boring. It turned into a dialogue, user-generated. Now everyone wants to have a tri-ologue or swarm where there is an end-on-end participation.”

- Kaltura founder and CEO Ron Yekutiel (Interview)

 

What’s worse than finding that the Girls XXX movie clip you clicked on is really a diatribe from someone’s office cubicle? Consider this an official warning not to mislead your audience with faulty tags or thumbnails. The online community, not to mention the Google search engine, will retaliate and flag your content, which will send your traffic numbers plummeting. 

“It’s not so much that you need to be the most popular. It’s how do you become the most popular based on the merit of what you do… If you put up a really sexy thumbnail of something that’s not, our video rank is going to kill you. We don’t count the view unless you actually watched most of it, so you’ll get low numbers of views because of that. They will stop watching it, so their user experience will be very poor, and your video rank will be very low.”

- Metacafe CEO Erick Hachenburg (Interview)

As video creators, we’re secretly masochistic. We crave criticism and praise. Business execs and viral video makers agree – get feedback from your peers. 

 

“Feedback is good; it’s going to help you produce a better thing next time. There’s a lot of things that video producers need to do, but the most important thing is don’t be afraid even if people will bash you. Not trying is the worst thing.”

- Metacafe founder Eyal Hertzog (Interview)

For more info on which video hosting sites to use, read our Making Money: a Comparison Guide to Online Video Hosts.