Okey dokey, get ready for another fun post about stuff that you should be doing in order to become rich and famous. Seriously, though. I wish that I had done this at the very beginning of my translation career instead of waiting. Today, we’re talking about YouTube!

Whenever I talk to a translator that wants to establish themselves and find direct clients, and I suggest that they make a YouTube video, I usually get three responses:
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First – Why on earth would I make a YouTube video? Isn’t that just for cat videos and Pewdiepie?
Second – How is that going to help me find more work?
And third – How do I even make a video for YouTube?

I would bet that you thought the same things. I know I did when I first heard this, too.

Let’s start with the first question: why YouTube?

The first thing that I was to clarify here is that we’re not looking for YouTube traffic. Sure, it’s a huge search engine second only to Google, but people don’t search for translators there – they look for cats, puppies, and video game news – like the release date for Doom 4. So, your first reaction to it being useless is kinda right, but that’s not how we’re going to use it.
You see, Google owns YouTube. And Google has been known to give preference to its own content over that of its competitors and even other websites. So if you can post your content to one of their platforms, you’re likely to appear pretty high in the search results page. Have you noticed how many videos are showing up in Google these days? 99% of those are coming from YouTube.

That leads us to question number 2, How does it help me find more work?

Imagine that you’re an end customer, ok? You hop onto Google and start looking for a professional translator in your area that can help you with your project. There are 10 results on the first page of Google, but among them, you see a cool little picture of a really attractive person (the translator). The link says that they’re a professional translator that speaks the languages that I need. You decide to click on it. Up comes a short video from this translator telling you about their experience, their past work, and their contact information. Clearly this person knows what they’re doing – they’re so professional! And so you call them. Do you remember any of the other links on that search results page? Did any of them have pictures? Did any of them really do a good job selling the service?

That’s the beauty of video.
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You target a specific industry and language pair, you make a video, you get it to show up in Google, and you get more clients. It’s easy. So, now that you’re enamored with the idea of using YouTube to grow your business, let’s talk about how we make those videos.

My process is pretty simple. I make a simple PowerPoint presentation that highlights my unique selling points (USPs – the things that make me special). I record my screen using a free program called OBS and I do a little voice over with another program called Audacity. If you don’t have a microphone, you can use a cell phone. You can then put everything together with some video editing software, or use YouTube’s built in editor (which also happens to be free).

The next step is to optimize the video so that it actually shows up when people come looking for you. I suggest that you title your video “[language pair] [specialty] Translator in [location]” to start out – remember that you can make all the videos that you want, this is just an easy way to get started. Write a long description about you, your skills, your experience, and how people can contact you. For your tags, use what we call long-tail tags or keywords. My advice is to do a few searches for translators like yourself. Pay attention to what you actually write into Google and then use those phrases as your tags. That way, when people look for you, they find you. Also remember that most end customers don’t know our lingo, so try some more general terms as well. Under the advanced settings, you can also select where the video was recorded. I would suggest using the area that you’re targeting. Don’t forget that you can add subtitles and even translations of your video. That cuts the number of videos that you make in half if you can do two languages at once… or even more!

Once your video is online, share it across your social media accounts, embed it on your website, embed it on your Proz.com profile, add a link to it from your other professional profiles, like LinkedIn. The more views your video gets, the higher it will rank. Those embedded videos and links to your video also provide a huge boost to your rankings.
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Then you sit back and wait for money to fall from the sky

Actually, you keep doing all the other marketing stuff that you normally do, or make more videos. Nothing is instant in this world.

Now, there’s one more question that usually comes along with the idea of using YouTube: Does it work?
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I started using YouTube to promote my business about a year ago. The first video I made has received an incredible 151 views (that’s not a lot of views), but it has brought me 10 new clients over that year. I just released another video for another translation agency that hired me – that video has about 50 views, which led to 33 clicks to their website, and 5 new clients. It’s been up for a month.

Results will vary based on search traffic and how well you can sell yourself. My video was targeting translation in general in an entire state, this agency video that I made focuses on immigration document translation. There may be very little search traffic for your given pair and industry. However, if you get a 10,000-word project from that video, charging $0.20 per word, which is low in the direct client market, then even just one new customer a month can make a big difference.
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So, does it work? Yeah, it does.