4 Supercharged Tips To Getting The Most From Your Music Video

This is a guest article written by Caroline Bottomley of Radar Music Videos to help all your artists out there get the most from your investment!

* Research the kind of video you want

These sites find and feature the best music videos on the internet, use them for inspiration:

Vimeo Staff Picks http://www.vimeo.com/staffpicks

Lost At EMinor http://www.lostateminor.com/category/music/

Music Vid Kid http://www.musicvidkid.com

Submarine Channel http://2pause.submarinechannel.com/#/new

Promo News http://www.promonews.tv/

VideoMilitia http://www.videomilitia.com/

RadarTV http://www.radarmusicvideos.com/videos

When you’re briefing potential directors, give them links to music videos you like.

* Thumbnails

Thumbnails are the MOST important aspect of presentation and by far the biggest reason someone will click to view your video or not – particularly if they don’t know you and your music. If the pre-selected thumbnail isn’t excellent, without question you need to change it.

Most sites allow you to choose thumbnails – YouTube partners and Vimeo users can upload images. Dailymotion allow video scrolling and frame selection. If you’re not a YouTube partner, the pre-selected images you’re offered are taken from the beginning, middle and end of the video. Ask your director to end the video with static footage of the thumbnail you want, so you can be sure the thumbnail will be included in the three pre-selected images offered.

Ideal images include a close-up face with eyes looking to camera. Simple, strong, colourful images also work well. If you’ve got a few thumbnails to choose from, half-close your eyes and note which image stands out most.

*  Video Description

Use your video to pull potential fans into your own networks.

Include a call to action and a link in the first sentence, preferably in the first 65 characters – this is how many characters you see in Youtube’s preview, +/- a few.

If you’re concerned calls to action and links smack of hard sell, consider instead that it’s good manners to help people find your links easily.

Example calls to action are “join our newsletter”, “follow us on Twitter”, “like us on Facebook” or “buy on iTunes”. Always follow up with the link.

A good, short story about the video or the artist in the rest of the text encourages comments and helps your video turn up in Google (also known as SEO, search engine optimisation).

* Pay for an advertising campaign.

This is about getting direct access to potential fans. You’re buying access to the right people and enough repeated visibility to get your message across.

How many times do you need to see an ad before you act? Here’s what people on Quora suggest: http://b.qr.ae/w3Q1at

Advertising includes Google Ads, Facebook Ads and adverts on music blogs and newsletters.

Do a lot of small advertising campaigns on different platforms and testing different messages. Always have a call to action and measure the success of each campaign relative to the cost.

Get the complete “Ultimate Guide To Getting The Most From Your Music Video” by signing up for a free account on Radar, which you can do here http://www.radarmusicvideos.com/login

Radar is a worldwide network of talented music video directors used by record labels and DIY artists to commission and promote excellent, popular music videos. They also publish useful articles.