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There are four psychological primary colours – red, blue, yellow and green. They relate respectively to the body, the mind, the emotions and the essential balance between these three.

What exactly is colour psychology?

It is the effects of the electro-magnetic radiation of light on human mood and behaviour – a universal, psychophysical reaction, which is not as heavily influenced by culture, age and gender as is generally thought.

Colour is energy and the fact that it has a physical effect on us has been proved time and again in experiments – most notably when blind people were asked to identify colours with their fingertips and were all able to do so easily. The shorter the wavelength, the stronger the underlying physical effect.

Colour is Nature’s own powerful signalling system – the universal, non-verbal language. Scientifically, it is the first thing we register when we are assessing anything: a very simple and obvious example of that is our reaction to a fly in our home: if it is black or navy blue, we will probably find it a minor irritation, but if it has yellow stripes our reaction will be different – most of us will recoil. The same instinct tells us when food is unsafe to eat and throughout the animal kingdom colour is widely used to signal sexual availability.

On a wider level, the colours of our environment affect our behaviour and mood. When yellow daffodils, bluebells and colourful crocuses appear, we immediately begin to feel livelier; when grey skies and rain or snow surround us we instinctively draw in and tend to hibernate.

If you are just about to get your lips wet in the video marketing world, you might find it pretty difficult to get going. Here are 5 steps that you can take to help get your engines going and train moving in the right direction. You will be focusing on quality, viewer’s interests and feedback and use as many influential video content sites as possible.

Focus on Quality

Many video marketers fail in their marketing endeavors not because their content has no value but because it is poorly shot. Invest in a good video camera (especially if you plan to be doing this for a while). Platforms like YouTube and Vimeo have video/film making tutorials online. Make sure to study those. It is ultimately important that every video content you create can be easily viewed (preferably in HD) and should be shot with ample lighting. If possible, try to be creative with the content to provide the viewer a little variation. Using subtitles and annotations is a good way to increase the viewer-friendliness of your video.

Make it about the Viewer

People will watch your content not because of your face or because of your story. Most people will watch your content because they have a problem or question that needs to be resolved or answered. So, if your content is a tutorial or how-to, consider keeping the viewer in mind when writing the script. Keep your own stories to a minimum and focus more on the video’s relevance to the viewer – his needs and his wants. If all your videos are tailored to the viewer’s self-first attitude (most viewers think this way), you will definitely catch their attention.

Never Stick to Just One

Some video marketers think that posting content regularly on YouTube will do. While YouTube does have a huge chunk of the traffic, the competition for keywords and tags there are fierce. Hence, simply posting on YouTube will limit the viral potential of your content. Consider posting on other sites like Vimeo, Daily Motion, Meta Café, and the like so that you can literally expand your horizons – or rather exposure.

Whether you are a regular content producer on Vimeo, YouTube, or any other video sharing platform, you probably know that getting your content to go viral depends on many factors – factors like quality, length, and “shareability”. Now, with regards to the last one – shareability – it would be a good move to define what this means. Shareability is a made up word that many in the social media world use to refer to the potential of a specific content to go viral, to be shared across social platforms. Now, how does one gauge the shareability factor of a video? Well, some would say the quality. Others would say relevance. Many would attribute it to an aggressive promotions campaign on social media. Well, all these are correct, but if you really want to go deep within, you will want to take a look at the qualities that a viewer will want to see in a video in order for him to think that he should share it. In other words, a video needs to have specific triggers that will encourage the viewer to share it to the people he knows will appreciate it like he did. And, what are those triggers? Here is a list.

Funny

If a video makes you laugh pretty much all the way through, you are most likely to share it to your friends, like you always do whenever you hear a brilliantly unique and humorous joke. Yes, those corny but laughable jokes you hear when hanging out at the office water cooler are usually the crack ups you share to your friends come the weekend. Well, the same viral concept can be applied with videos, except that it is easier since all a viewer has to do is click and the funny video will be posted on Twitter, Facebook, and even on his blog.

Cute

Any video that features a cute and cuddly kitten playing around or a baby learning to say his first words will always catch the fancy of nearly everyone in the world. Videos that have the cuteness factor integrated in it will touch the viewer’s emotions, which will most likely get him to click on that share button.

Shock and Awe

A tsunami hitting a populated beach area, a helicopter crashing, or a guy showing the world how he can dislocate his joints and contort his body are just some of the ideas for content that can literally pop the eyeballs out of their sockets. Shock and awe folks, any video with this trigger will surely go viral in an instant, especially if it is one that the viewer can relate to.

Controversial

Religion, politics, Obama’s opinion on gay marriage, these are all controversial topics. And, all controversial topics ignite fires on social media. Hence, if you want your videos to engage the minds and feelings of the viewers, make it about something controversial. This will spur the viewers to not only comment on your channel or video page but also expose it to other people with the same sentiments about the issue as well.

YouTube has heard the cries of the masses – “more quality content please”. To turn the tide against the battle of quantity versus quality, YouTube has made some big moves to ensure that the latter levels the playing field. You can scarcely see quality content – those coming from artists, musicians, filmmakers, and the like. Well, this is because they have all moved to Vimeo. Fortunately, with the new leap of faith YouTube is making, you may soon all those content creators coming back to the mother of online video soon enough.

YouTube’s New Direction

The Google-owned video giant has long been criticized for allowing copyright infringement issues and poor quality content to literally invade their platform. According to many vocal social media analysts, they see YouTube soon becoming a saturated giant, where most of the videos you will see later on are those with the essences of content spamming and poor value. As this seems to be the inevitable future, most of the quality content creators have moved to other networks that encourage the opposite. For instance, Vimeo has locked down on copyrighted and commercial content, making their community friendlier for the actual artists and filmmakers.

YouTube has apparently seen the light as they have just recently announced that their new thrust is to bring the hardcore content creators back. YouTube’s bigwigs have signed deals with a variety of publishers such as ABKCO Music Inc., BMG Rights Management, Songs of Virtual, Christian Copyright Solutions, Songs Music Publishing, and the like.

What does this mean? Well, it’s simple. With these new publishers onboard, YouTube is now poised to provide the artists, musicians, and quality content producers a chance to get discovered, build a career, and make a lot of money. Want to be as successful as the Foo Fighters, Cee Lo Green, and Adele? Good, then know that these are the publishers responsible for those popular bands and artists.

Content ID System

Now, in order for these publishers to distinguish the talents from the copycats, they need to be able to verify whether the music in a video is original or not. The YouTube Content ID System is the feature that makes this need come to life. With this system, publishers will be able to determine the copyright status of the music they hear, allowing the content creators and artists to potentially generate more revenue from their content.

YouTube appears really excited with this new move since it is something that is a win-win situation for everyone. The content creator is given a chance to distribute his content for money and possibly get discovered, the music publishers will be able to potentially discover and sign new talents, and YouTube beefs up its ad revenue through the content posted.

While YouTube is the premier platform for posting video content, many of its users still cannot grasp the various proven techniques in making a video that has the potential to go viral. For most online marketers, may it be those focused on generating traffic to a site or those currently making their money by being a YouTube partner, the viral potential of a video are the most important aspect of their video marketing efforts. This is because if a video goes viral, it almost always assures the content creator that his video will stay alive even after the first few rounds of massive sharing. Having said that, here is another look at the various techniques that are proven to be effective in ensuring the virality and longevity of a video on YouTube.

The Piggy Back

This is a simple and proven technique where you will create video content that will literally ride on a theme, topic, or issue that is popular. For instance, the American Idol finale is a hot topic now. Well, you can ride on that topic’s popularity by creating content related and relevant to it. This way, once you upload that particular video, it will most likely appear on searches for the particular keywords that the topic is related to. What this does is allow you to generate clicks and views fast and easy since you are pretty much riding on the coattails of others.

Create a Series

Some people think that merely uploading one fascinating video will do it. Well, the reality is that the video you upload and goes viral now will only really be a fad that may end up stagnant a few weeks later. The trick to getting that same video to go viral longer is by making it a part of a series and linking each video to other videos within the series or within your channel. Now, if you can’t create a series out of the topic of your video, you can do the next best thing – link it to other videos in your channel that is related to it. This way, if a visitor views the video and likes it, he might just click on those related links and be able to watch more of your content. If he ends up liking your content, he may decide to share the videos he has watched and even subscribe to your channel.

Build Your Fan Base

Now, this is easier said than done. However, this is actually the best way to make the most of your content, especially if you are using the content for marketing purposes. These fans will also be your channel subscribers and they will be the front row audience of your content as they will be privy to what new content you post. Obviously, the easiest way to build a fan base is by posting quality content and doing it frequently. Add to that a little social media marketing to boost more of that word of mouth effect you are hoping for. Well, if the quality of the video is that good, what you do on social media won’t matter much as the content should sell itself fast and easy.