- To get more views on your channel, you can focus your current channel or create another channel around a specific topic (skateboarding, animals, cooking, nature) and pitch your channel to relevant bloggers to ask them to embed your channel in the widget on their blogs.
- By having a relevant video channel on their blogs, the bloggers would increase their users’ engagement and time on site, and it will give you channel views.
- You can usually find the blogger’s email address or contact form in the “Contact” or “About” pages of the blog. Make sure to address the blogger by his/her first name when writing to them. A sample pitch is included at the bottom of the page.
- For a list of the top blog sites on any topic, check out www.alltop.com, http://technorati.com/blogs/directory, http://blogs.botw.org, http://portal.eatonweb.com, and http://www.bloggernity.com.
- You might also want to use www.compete.com to check that blog's monthly traffic and write to the ones that are neither too high (in the millions) nor too low (in the teens) in monthly traffic.
- Our embeddable widget works on Tumblr, Wordpress.org (not Wordpress.com), Blogger, Typepad, and HTML webpages, so make sure that the blog you write to is built on one of those platforms.
- Make sure that the first video in your channel is the most attractive or attention-grabbing, because when your channel is embedded, the thumbnail of the first video will be the one showing up on the webpage and you would want to make people click on it.
- Our widget comes in all sizes and colors and can be embedded either in the blog's sidebar, in a blog post, or on a separate page of the blog. Usually, having your channel embedded on the blog’s sidebar is the most preferable because it will be exposed to more people.
- Generally one out of every ten bloggers that you write to would write back, so don’t be discouraged by the response rate. If you do get a blogger to embed your channel on their blog, it’s a big win because it will drive views to your channel automatically every week! It’s called the “magic number” in sales.
- If any of the bloggers responds, follow up immediately and follow their requests until they embed your channel on their blog. They might ask you for access to your ShortForm channel to add/rearrange the videos or change your channel name. Think of it as a business partnership in which you coordinate and cooperate with each other for the benefit of both! Email me after you have landed a blogger and you will get recognized.
Sample Pitch to Bloggers:
Subject: Put a channel of <Your channel’s topic> videos on <Name of the blog>!
Hi <First name of webmaster/blog editor>,
My name is <Your Name> and I’m an intern at ShortForm, a San Francisco-based web entertainment company that lets users curate YouTube videos into a video channel, and then embed the channel on their website to stream it continuously to their audience. You can read about us in the TechCrunch article here: http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/31/video-curation-is-growing-up-shortform-hits-one-million-visitors.
I have created a video channel on ShortForm about <Your channel’s topic>. Since <Name of the blog> is one of the most prominent blogs on <The blog’s topic>, I think that my channel’s content would complement your website perfectly! By embedding my channel on your website you will deliver relevant video content to your readers and increase your users’ engagement and time on site. I will regularly add new videos into my channel to ensure that it has the best content!
ShortForm's embeddable widget comes in all sizes and colors and you will be able to embed my channel in any part of your website. You can go here: “http://www.shortform.com/widget?current_channel=true&user_name=<YourVJName>” to see a preview of my embedded channel. To embed my channel onto your website, simply copy the HTML embed code on that page and follow the instructions at the bottom of the page.
Please let me know if you have any questions about embedding my channel on your website. If you would like, I can also give you access to my ShortForm channel so that you can add videos to it or change its name. I look forward to developing our blossoming partnership!
Thanks,
