Sharing

If you upload it, they will come.

Okay, in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. With so much material available to eager viewers, a lot of people rarely bother to search out new material to watch; you have to do the legwork of putting your video in front of viewers' eyes. We'll cover numerous angles for promoting your videos in the following chapters, but here I am going to go over the built-in function YouTube has provided for "pimping" your videos on third-party sites.

Found underneath each video is the Share tab. Click this to reveal your sharing options for that particular video. I recommend you share or embed your video on these sites by visiting each site. You can learn how to do that in Chapter 10, but if you're new to YouTube or any of those other sites, you may find YouTube's help invaluable.

Sharing your video is easy, and it's crucial to building views.

Figure 5-11. Sharing your video is easy, and it's crucial to building views.

To share your video on any of the sites listed on the Share tab (Figure 5-11), simply click the name of that site. You will automatically be redirected to the website you chose and taken to the appropriate page to post your video, assuming you are currently logged in to that site.

Choosing any of these options will embed your original YouTube video on these third-party sites. This doesn't mean views from these sites don't count on YouTube; they do. When someone watches your video embedded on MySpace or Facebook, you don't lose out on that view counting on YouTube. Embedding your video on third-party sites can only help you reach a larger audience. You can find more about building your audience in Chapter 7.

Note

Embedding YouTube videos into blogs run by the WordPress software can sometimes cause odd issues, such as completely reformatting your beautiful WordPress template on every page of your blog. Here's a link that explains a workaround for this issue:

http://tinyurl.com/5zgneu (URL 5.3)

CONTACTING YOUTUBE WHILE UPSET

It's difficult to behave calmly when you're upset. After you invest a lot of time and hard work into your channel and your videos, should a video be flagged or a channel suspended, you will be very upset. Do not contact YouTube while you are upset. Being upset clouds your thinking, and the email you write while upset will be nasty and will most likely go ignored by YouTube.

When contacting anyone, it is important to remember to be respectful and calm. If something should happen to your videos or channel, YouTube does not have to fix it. It doesn't owe you anything. And YouTube editors will be more likely to help if you are courteous and respectful and clearly explain the issue you are having without cursing or placing blame.

If a video of mine were to be mistakenly flagged or removed, here is an example of what I would write to YouTube:

Howdy, YouTube,

Earlier this evening, my video titled I set things on FIRE! was removed from the site. I believe this removal was an error. Despite the title, the video does not show any criminal or negligent acts. The video did contain me lighting off legal fireworks at my birthday party. Further, the video did not include any obligatory swearing or other inappropriate content.

I'm asking you to please review the decision to remove my video. I can't see any violation of YouTube's terms of use. I even spent a good deal of time finding royalty-free music to use so the video would fall within the site's guidelines.

The original URL for the video was [insert the URL here], and the video was uploaded this morning around 9 a.m.

I would be very appreciative if you could please reverse the decision and reinstate the video. If you can't, can you possibly provide me with additional information about the reason for removal, so I can learn more and not have the same issue with future videos?

Alan

Now, please don't copy my exact wording should you have a video removed; if everyone sends in carbon copies, YouTube won't take any of them seriously. Rather, use this as a basis of some of the information you should include when addressing an issue like this. Notice I included the video's title, original URL, and time of upload. YouTube may need this information to find the video to which I'm referring. Note some things that are not in my letter: no swearing, no placing blame, and no threats.

When a video is removed from YouTube, it's never really gone; rather, YouTube simply removes it from public viewing. If you should have a video removed, calmly contact YouTube, and ask for more information. You may just be able to get it reinstated.