Video Authority Author Review ⋆ Freestyle Author

Today, I’m reviewing Video Authority Author by Krizia (Miss K.) There is a lot to the course, so this is a long post.

Krizia is a very successful author and publicist. She’s worked with best-selling authors and has been featured in Forbes magazine. She’s sold some of her YouTube channels to investors for big bucks. I say all of this so that you know she’s the real deal. It’s probably the only reason I bothered to really go through this course.

It took me a little while to get through it all because, as you know, I’m not a fan of video as a learning mode. I get impatient because I can’t “skim” video the way I can with printed training. I am glad I did go through it though, because there is a lot of great stuff here.

When you get inside the members’ area, it is a bit confusing at first. It was to me anyway; because of course I didn’t watch the welcome video right away, which is where Krizia tells you how to navigate the training. There are a number of links under the welcome video for different training packages.

It seems that Krizia also teaches her Video Authority course for realtors and for virtual assistants so there are links for those as well as the author one. If you click on a link to training you haven’t purchased, it will tell you that you are trying to access the wrong membership level, but it WON’T give you a link to purchase that membership. If you’re interested in one of those other trainings, I guess you’d just have to contact support for that.

Clicking on the author training link takes you to the Module 1 training page. All of the Module 1 videos are on this page. Here is what you’ll get in the Module 1 videos:

Module 1 – Overview and Strategies

This part of the training tells you various video strategies you can use to promote your books and yourself as an author, an expert, and a celebrity.

Video 1 (18:09 minutes) is an overview – why you should be using video.
Video 2 (12:46 minutes) covers 12 ways to use video to promote your book.
Video 3 (16:35 minutes) reviews the 12 ways from Video 2 then covers 13 additional ways.
Video 4 (6:51 minutes) reviews the 13 ways from Video 3.

So Module 1 was taught pretty much like this:

She gives you the overview (how video is powerful and why you should use it)
Then she gives you some strategies.
Then she reviews those strategies.
Then she gives you some more strategies.
Then she reviews those strategies.

The content is very good, and there are some really interesting and creative ways to use video. It’s obvious that Krizia knows her stuff, and I can really see how some of the methods she discusses could be VERY powerful. Even though I don’t love learning from video, I do know how important it is in helping build a relationship with your readers. And as an entertainment factor, it’s huge. I know my husband can sit for hours watching videos on YouTube related to his areas of interest.

The repetitive nature of the training did bug me a little, just because of my resistance to videos. If this were taught in a classroom, I would probably consider it a great teaching strategy. Review is a proven way of re-enforcing what someone has learned. In this case though, I found myself skipping over the review to get to the next set of strategies.

This part of the training doesn’t cover how-to so much as just give you some really creative ideas for different types of videos and ways to use them. She does talk about book trailers of course, but she goes way beyond that. There are things like video diaries, video emails to your fans, video FAQs, video press releases and much more. She also points out how you can use video to catapult yourself into live speaking engagements.

Module 2 – The Step by Step Book Launch

There is only one video in this module (12:51 minutes)

This is exactly what it says, the steps to a book launch. This video covers WHAT to do, and is a great checklist and timeline for doing a book launch. The HOW is covered later on in the YouTube training.

She uses a mind map in the video and zooms to each portion of the mind map as she discusses it. There is also a downloadable PDF that is basically the screen shots of the portions of the mind map from the video.

I would have liked it better if the PDF had been an outline. Most mind map software will let you export an outline, and that would have been more helpful to me. It would be fairly easy to create your own checklist from this though, and I strongly suggest that you do so before going through the HOW videos later on.

Those two modules are the author-specific parts of the training. After that, you can access the rest of of the video and YouTube training and the additional content from the navigation bar at the top of the members’ area.

You will get:

7 YouTube Mistakes – a single video at 19:39 minutes.

8 Lessons on Going Viral on YouTube (based on strategies of big brands) a single video at 11:04 minutes.

I look at both of these as “extras” and suggest you save them for later, after you get your YouTube channel set up and optimized. How do you do that, you ask?

You’ll get all of the technical how-to stuff right here:

YouTube Step-by-Step Training

That section contains very detailed training on setting up, optimizing, managing and marketing your YouTube channel.

There are a LOT of videos in this training. When I first saw that, I found it pretty daunting. Fortunately the videos are all very short and clearly labeled. This makes it easy to locate and watch just the training you need. Most of the videos throughout this training are two or three minutes long, and none of them are over 10 minutes, at least in the first 4 modules of the training.

Get Your Copy of Video Authority Author

I want you to see how detailed this training is, so I’m listing all of the lessons here.

Module 1 is all about set up and it’s broken into two parts (pages.) There are 9 video lessons in part one:

On page two (part two) of Module 1, you’ll find lessons 10 through 18:

Module 2 contains the optimization lessons:

Lesson #1 | How To Submit Your Channel To The Top Search Engines
Lesson #2 | How To Change The Name Of Your Video File Before Uploading It
Lesson #3 | The Importance Of The First Minute Of Your Video
Lesson #4 | How To Optimize The Title Of Your Video
Lesson #5 | How To Optimize Your Description Box
Lesson #6 | Why Should You Add Keywords In Your Description Box
Lesson #7 | How To Add Keywords To Your Videos
Lesson #8 | How To Select The Best Thumbnail
Lesson #9 | How To Select The Best Category
Lesson #10 | How To Use A Keyword Trick To Get All Your Videos To Show Up At The Top
Lesson #11 | Why Do You Need Different Channels
Lesson #12 | How To Add Annotations
Lesson #13 | How To Add Playlists

Module 3 teaches Channel Management:

In Module 4 you’ll find the Marketing training:

Lesson #1 | How To Share Your URL
Lesson #2 | How To Share Your Videos On Social Media Via Your YouTube Channel
Lesson #3 | How To Embed Your Videos
Lesson #4 | How To Share Your Videos On Facebook
Lesson #5 | How To Share Your Videos On Pinterest
Lesson #6 | How To Share Your Videos Via Email On Pinterest
Lesson #7 | How To Share Your Videos On Google+
Lesson #8 | How To Share Your Videos On Linked In
Lesson #9 | How To Share Your Videos On Twitter
Lesson #10 | How To Add Your Videos To Your Email Signature

As you can see, it’s set up in such a way that you could have the training open in one browser window, and be working on your YouTube channel in another. You can watch a short video, do the steps from that video, then move on to the next task easily.

Get Your Copy of Video Authority Author

After all of those four modules, you’ll see a link to what Krizia calls the Core Video Marketing Training. These videos are a little longer and cover some more in-depth topics, like outsourcing video, finding video content, video location, and branding. In other words, how to actually outsource or create QUALITY videos.

And then, the final link on the YouTube training page is the YouTube Marketing Strategy mind map. Like the mind map mentioned in the earlier author-specific training, she provides a PDF containing the sections of the map. Again, I suggest making a checklist from this, so you can print it and work from it.

The final three tabs on the navigation bar (unless you purchase additional products) are:

PDF Cheat sheets (of course my favorite section!)

The downloads in this section are:

Video Production Calendar – This is a very nicely done Excel calendar. There is also a video on how to use the calendar (3:41 minutes.)
Video Disclaimer – A template to use when you are interviewing guests on your videos.
YouTube Overview Cheat sheet – This one is about optimizing and advertising.
YouTube Channel Template Checklist – This one is more about making your YouTube Channel more attractive.

Bonuses

There is a bit of overlap from the Cheat Sheets section here, but some extra goodies as well:

The Video Planning Calendar and training video are available in this section again.
Video training on choosing equipment. (33:23 minutes)
Disclaimer is available in this area again. There is also a video here on how to use the disclaimer. (5:50 minutes)
Two animated clips for getting viewers to subscribe to your YouTube channel. (These are designed to be added to the end of your videos as a call to action.)
Video training on the difference between Vimeo and YouTube. (6:03 minutes)
How to get started with screen capture video. This training isn’t there yet, it says coming soon.

Video Tools and Resources

This is the section where Krizia makes recommendations for the tools and equipment for creating your videos.

It’s obvious that Krizia is very passionate about video. I admit that I am not. But it IS a necessary and powerful way to engage your audience, and the training here is very thorough. I like the fact that all of her how-to stuff is broken into very small, easily identified instructional videos; and also that she doesn’t assume you already have a YouTube channel, or even a Gmail account. And if you do have those things, you can simply skip to the part of the training that fits where you are in the process, because her video titles tell you exactly what is on each one of them.

If you purchase Video Authority Author, you’ll be offered an additional training on making your videos go viral. I have not reviewed that one, so I can’t give any specifics about it. What I can say about it is that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it if you want to learn viral video strategies. Krizia impressed me that much.

If I’m going to have to learn something that I don’t particularly love, (and video is definitely on my must-learn list) I want to do it from a pro. Krizia is that, and she loves what she does AND she teaches video from an author point of view. For those reasons, I’ll be setting up my YouTube channel and getting started with video using Krizia’s training.

Teresa Miller

Get Your Copy of Video Authority Author

Get Your Copy of Video Authority Author

Get Your Copy of Video Authority Author

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