Last updated on June 14th, 2024
Today Camilo Coutinho of Double Play Media in Sao Paulo, Brazil, talks about how you can use the full power of your YouTube descriptions.
GUEST: Camilo Coutinho of DoublePlay Media in Brazil. Also find Camilo at Playa de Prata | Twitter | Instagram
HOST: The VidAction Podcast is hosted by Dane Golden of VidAction | LinkedIn | | YouTube
SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by our affiliate partners, including: TubeBuddy, VidIQ, MorningFame, Rev.com, and other products and services we recommend. Thanks for your support!
PRODUCER: Jason Perrier of Phizzy Studios
TRANSCRIPT
Dane Golden:
It’s time for HEY.com. This is the podcast where we help you grow your customer community through helpful how-to videos. My name is Dane Golden, and today we have Camilo Coutinho of Double Play Media in Brazil. Welcome Camilo.
Camilo Coutinho:
Hi Dane. It’s a pleasure to stay here on this podcast. And it’s great for a talk with your audience about video strategies and a lot of things.
Dane Golden:
I love whenever I see you at these great conferences we’ve met up at in California as far as all the different video marketing strategies, but I want you to talk about… well first, tell me what your agency is, Double Play. What is that?
Camilo Coutinho:
Double Play is an agency that helps brands and creators to make better videos and spread their messages using video strategies to make content, better videos, better scripts, to make optimizations, [inaudible 00:01:09], and training people for making your company make better videos. So we have three steps. The first is creation, the creative way. The second one, help people, and the third one is training, is the courses, online courses and all the things.
Dane Golden:
And what city are you in?
Camilo Coutinho:
São Paulo.
Dane Golden:
São Paulo. Okay, great. You just spoke at a huge conference which you… apparently you’re a keynote quite frequently, and it’s the RD Conference, is that right?
Camilo Coutinho:
Yes, RD Summit.
Dane Golden:
So you talked about YouTube descriptions, and this is really helpful for businesses because they need to optimize their channels properly, but tell me what your other previous keynotes were about really quick.
Camilo Coutinho:
It’s the third time that I make a keynote on RD Summit, and every time I want to speak about things that all the people maybe forget, maybe has a little bit lazy for do, and the first time that I made a keynote RD Summit in 2016, I talked about thumbnails. They really loved thumbnails. In 2017, I talked about captions and about how it’s important you choose the right keywords, and this year, 2018, I talked about descriptions because almost all the videos that my clients and my students send to me, almost all don’t have description, or maybe have only links: “Go to my other platform, go to the other social media” and I say, why you don’t have description?
Dane Golden:
Right. So, you talked about thumbnails and this is apparently in front of 5,000 people, right?
Camilo Coutinho:
Yeah.
Dane Golden:
Thumbnails, and then captions, and this is the year of YouTube descriptions. So tell us why YouTube descriptions are important, why you shouldn’t just put a link. Why should people use YouTube descriptions at all in the first place?
Camilo Coutinho:
Yeah, I think that people don’t understand the power of description because the people don’t understand how the YouTube algorithms run, and so the people just put the name of the video, put some links, and forget the algorithm reads entire the description. You have 5,000 characters and the people don’t put one line. So it’s very important, description, for help the algorithm, to understand what your video says because until we know the YouTube don’t read the video.
Dane Golden:
Right. YouTube, it’s not like a blog post. Without the metadata, YouTube doesn’t know what’s in the video.
Camilo Coutinho:
Yeah, yeah.
Dane Golden:
So, what’s step one? What do we want to focus on?
Camilo Coutinho:
I’m creating strategies for help. The creators or brands should make the descriptions more easy because when I talk, “Hey man, make better descriptions”, all they answer is “But it’s a lot of work, but it’s so long”, and I say, “Hey man, this is work because it’s not vacance, it’s not a trip, it’s work. You really need to work on your video”.
Dane Golden:
Yeah, it’s not a vacation. Wasn’t the video a lot of work? Don’t you want somebody to see it?
Camilo Coutinho:
Yeah! Maybe the people follow the easy way, and I say, “No, not the easy way, it’s the right way”, because when your customer pays you, it’s not the easy pay, it’s the right pay. It’s the right pay for your job. If you work a lot, you win a lot, if you work so easy and fast, you will win softship.
Dane Golden:
Now I have here… well, you start with the video title and keywords. Is that part of the description or is that just the first on the list?
Camilo Coutinho:
Yeah, the first stop is I make blocks on the description, and all the blocks is for help the people to just take the blocks on the right sequence to make the better description.
Camilo Coutinho:
The first one is the video title description. You want the first three letters, the first three lines you need to put the keywords. So, you can see your title in the first three lines on the description is the same three lines that appears on the search results page. So you need to be a salesman on these first three lines. And these first three lines, you need to put your main keywords. It’s very important to say that your video needs one main keyword. You have a secondary keyword, a third keyword, but what is your main keyword? What is the keyword that I type on the YouTube search page or the search box and find you? This is very important.
Dane Golden:
So, I think I added video title. You’re just adding the title at the top of course, but the video title itself, you’re sort of rephrasing that in a three-line description that’s packed with keywords, but the most important keywords and what you’re saying is that that first area when it comes up in search, those first three lines are going to be included, and that’s one of the reasons that people will click through.
Camilo Coutinho:
Yeah. We have the thumbnails, six percent of clicks and title, the other third percent. These first three lines is the 10 percent for all the clickable. So make your video more clickable on the search results page.
Dane Golden:
Some people might say, “Hey listen, I just want people to watch the video and go somewhere else; I’m just going to put a URL”. Why is that a bad idea?
Camilo Coutinho:
The people don’t enter in your video and stay in your video. You hurt your watch time, because people enter your videos, see the URL and the first three lines, and go away from your video. For YouTube, this is so hurtful in your watch time. So, I think it’s not so good you put a URL, hashtags, in the top of your description.
Dane Golden:
Right, because if they just immediately leave a video, you may have driven traffic to your website but the algorithm will dramatically down-rank your video because it’s not continuing the YouTube session.
Camilo Coutinho:
Yeah. Maybe sometimes, some people make content and put a link of the other social media, of the Facebook or Twitter, but when the people click and go to the Facebook, the people don’t have posts and they don’t understand why you put your URL of your Facebook or Twitter if you don’t have content.
Dane Golden:
“Go there, follow me. Someday I’ll have content”.
Camilo Coutinho:
Yeah! It’s so crazy. “So hey, stay here, maybe one day, in one year or two or ten, I will make a post”. It’s crazy.
Dane Golden:
So what’s the next… I think we’re on step three.
Camilo Coutinho:
The next step is the four paragraphs of content. Maybe this time you’ll listen and you’ll say “Oh, four paragraphs? Why I need to type all this content if I have the same content on the video?”. Okay, in Brazil we have 8 million people with don’t hear… sorry. How can I say that people don’t hear?
Dane Golden:
Well yeah, they’re deaf or they’re hearing-disabled, their disabled hearing. Yeah.
Camilo Coutinho:
In Brazil, we have almost 8 million people with hearing disable, and so these people don’t understand what you say in your video. So this content is very important for these people, but if you need more advantage for this, this content will help the algorithm to understand what your video say. This one is the place that you will write the four or five paragraphs of content with your main keyword, with your secondary keywords, and related keywords.
Camilo Coutinho:
So for example, if it’s a video of cake, the main keyword is chocolate cake. The secondary keyword is funnel chocolate cake, and related keyword is carrot cake.
Dane Golden:
This is a great idea of putting this in paragraph form because I actually do this. I write an accompanying blog post for each one and what I do is I take the transcription with the captions and I just turn it into some paragraphs that narrate what I do, but I could really just take that or the first few paragraphs of that and put that within this description. So that’s a great idea of something I’m not doing. So, great tip. What’s the next tip?
Camilo Coutinho:
The next tip, the next block is the links that you’ve spoken in the video. Why? It’s crazy when the people say, “Hey! Click on the description, the links of this video is all in the description”, and when you open the description, we don’t have the links! It makes other people crazy. So, take time for reviewing your video, and take notes for all the links that you say, because the people go to the description and click, but if you don’t have the links, the people maybe will use your comment box to make some bad words, maybe unsubscribe your channel because this makes people crazy. “Where’s my links?”
Dane Golden:
“You made a promise!”
Camilo Coutinho:
Yeah! “You made a promise”.
Dane Golden:
And you’re not fulfilling that promise by putting it in there. And what else?
Camilo Coutinho:
Yeah. And the next one for these blocks is links for other videos for your channel. For example, the example of the cakes. If you have other videos about, I don’t know, about cakes, you need to put the links here, but if you have links about other type of food, for example, tacos, it’s not really good to put your links of tacos in a video of the cakes. You need to follow the exact content. The people need to follow the new content of cakes maybe a street, but not change links for tacos for example. So this is how you create exact content. The people watch one video of cake, another video of how you make the cake for kids, and other video for how you can make cake for Christmas, and going watching video per video, and when people saw 3-4 video, you improve your watch time and it’s better for your channel.
Dane Golden:
Right. So what I hear you saying is that we’re not just wanting people to click links in the end screens or in the suggested videos, but if you add links to videos or even playlists that are highly related to the video in question, then you have an additional sort of secret way of adding to the watch time and having this continuous session play.
Camilo Coutinho:
Yeah, and we can’t forget about the algorithm, the algorithm with this entire description, and when you put these links in the description, the algorithm follows these links and say, “Hmm, there’s another video, with the same or similar content. So, make these videos together”. This strategy will help you suggested videos improve, recommended, and other things.
Dane Golden:
I had forgotten all about that. That’s great, and what’s the next block?
Camilo Coutinho:
The next one is video setup. The video setup is for example, I talk about videos that people always ask me, “What’s the name of her camera, of her microphone?”, and I put this box–
Dane Golden:
Are you saying… with video setup, you’re saying “what is the equipment you used to record it?”
Camilo Coutinho:
Yeah, or the equipment for recording, but for example, if I am a fashion channel, the people will ask me about the clothes and my shoes is na-na-na. My T-shirt is na-na-na. This is a box for helping your audience to make fast answers about the equipment for cameras or the ingredients of a recipe. For example, fast box to answer this question: What Dane is using in your video? Clothes? Equipment? Ingredients? I don’t know! This is very easy, to make this box for your channel about video, your channel about fashion, your channel about travel.
Dane Golden:
That’s great. I’m going to start following these because I’m not following some of these fundamentals, and you’re absolutely right. These are essential, but I’m leaving out some of these. So what’s the next block?
Camilo Coutinho:
The next is social base. Social base is a block that we put social media, the other social platforms to help the people to follow us, but when I said earlier, the platforms that you have content. Please, don’t send the people for your MSN, don’t send people for your occult. If you don’t have content, you don’t need to put this link, this URL in the description. This is just for, “Like my fan page at facebook.com/camilo, follow me on Twitter: twitter.com, blah blah.” If you don’t have content for example, on Snapchat, you don’t need to put this on the social base.
Dane Golden:
Okay, great. So this is your little social section. Then you have one last one; I bet you we’re going to have a fight about this, so go ahead, tell me what it is.
Camilo Coutinho:
Yeah, the hashtags.
Dane Golden:
Okay, I’m ready for a fight!
Camilo Coutinho:
Yeah, the hashtag is this new feature on the YouTube. It’s so good and so dangerous, because all the people understand hashtags, hashtags born into reader and the people… it’s common use, the hashtags on YouTube, the same way that they’re used on twitter, but so different. You only can take 15 hashtags in your video because when you put, for example, 17, the YouTube…sorry.
Dane Golden:
Doesn’t permit it? It doesn’t permit it?
Camilo Coutinho:
It doesn’t permit it, yeah.
Dane Golden:
I didn’t know that!
Camilo Coutinho:
Yeah, you only can put 15 or 16 hashtags, but for me, my tip is put only three hashtags. The first hashtag is the main content of your videos, the second hashtag is about you, a person, and the last one hashtag is about the category of the video. For example for me, if I talk about description, the first hashtag is “description tips”. The second one is “Camilo Coutinho”. The third one is “Video SCO tips”, because when you have a lot of hashtags, your audience don’t understand because you create a lot of noise. “Oh, but do people put 10 hashtags on the video? I don’t understand, what’s the content? What are you talking?”
Dane Golden:
So, I don’t agree with you on this one, but I think it’s still so early in YouTube hashtags that it’s in flocks. They’ve changed it even since they’ve launched this sort of promotion to the top of the description, and I just feel… I’ve seen this on some clients that… what I think is happening is people are leaving the video too soon because those are clickable, and I think it’s hurting watch time. So I actually used TubeBuddy to do a global replace and removed hashtags from hundreds of videos.
Camilo Coutinho:
Why?
Dane Golden:
Because I was so concerned that it was harming watch time. I think that YouTube is probably onto this. We can’t track this in the analytics anywhere, how people are using hashtags, and so this I think is evolving and your advice may prove to be correct, but I’m not agreeing today on that part.
Camilo Coutinho:
Yeah. I think it’s strategies, different strategies. How can you say, it’s so news, hashtags. We need to understand more, make more content, make more strategies. Test, test, test a lot… but, very good. I remember a strategy that I learned with my [inaudible 00:19:51]. It’s about using hashtags on the end of the description, and make that an about. You write “#about” and write another paragraph of content about your video: “In this video, Camilo talks about keyword one, keyword two, keyword three, and this is about keyword one, keyword three”, and so it’s another way to make more content, and put some new keywords on the description.
Dane Golden:
Yeah, and Sean Cannell, who’s been on this podcast, who you just said was your mentor, amazing, amazing knowledge. People should check him out with Think Media and Video Influencers with Benji Travis as well. So great, great tips; I don’t think anyone on a YouTube podcast has ever gone into YouTube descriptions ever so well, and so Camilo Coutinho, how can people find out more about you and your business, Double Play?
Camilo Coutinho:
Yeah, thank you for this incredible podcast. If you want to follow me, the best place is my Instagram: instagram.com/camilocoutinho, and Twitter, it’s Camilo like entrepreneur. If you want to know more about my company, doubleplay.com.br or youtube.com/playdeprata, the link is on the podcast, it’s my YouTube channel with a lot of tips. It’s content in Portuguese, but all of my videos have English subtitles. So if you have some questions, put in English, I will answer you.
Dane Golden:
Great, and so I just want to spell out your name and the name of your business so people can for sure get it. So it’s Camilo, C-A-M-I-L-O, and then Coutinho, which the spelling is C-O-U-T-I-N-H-O, correct?
Camilo Coutinho:
Correctly.
Dane Golden:
Alright, and then the company is doubleplay.com.br, that’s the URL?
Camilo Coutinho:
Yeah, yeah.
Dane Golden:
Okay. Great! Well, thank you Camilo Coutinho of Double Play Media in Brazil. My name is Dane Golden, and I want to thank you, the listener, for joining us today. HEY.com is about helping you grow your customer community through helpful how-to videos. How do you do this? By sharing your expertise, because when you share your expertise in a way that helps your customers in their lives better or do their jobs better, you’ll earn their loyalty, and their trust, and their business. Thanks to our special guest, Camilo Coutinho.
Camilo Coutinho:
Thank you!
Dane Golden:
Thank you!
Dane Golden:
Please subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app, and on YouTube and where you follow social media. Please follow me on LinkedIn, and check out our affiliate links in the description. Until next week, here’s to helping you help you customers through video.