Where to Share Your Videos for Maximum Reach
Where to Share Your Videos for Maximum Reach
So you made an incredible video, sent it out on social media, encouraged sharing, uploaded it to YouTube and waited for the marketing fame and brand awareness to roll in.
Unfortunately, each time you obsessively checked throughout the day, your view count wasn’t as impressive as you’d hoped.
First off – don’t stress, we’ve all done it. But after you’ve spent time, energy, and money to make really amazing video marketing, it’s all about actively making sure your videos get in front of your target audience (not just your mom).
Video content offers you amazing benefits: more online visibility, brand awareness, better SEO, the rise of conversions and sales, and so much more. It’s one of the most effective formats you can use to enhance your marketing strategy.
If you’re not releasing your video content where your market already exists, or you don’t make it easy for them to find, they’re not going to see it.
In general, the more places you share your video, the better. However, there’s no point in distributing video in locations your target prospect would never visit. You’ll want to be strategic and selective, and always measure your results for maximum reach.
Your Website
It’s an established fact that buyers go through nearly 70% of the buying process on their own before ever talking to sales. That makes it more important than ever to offer the information people want to see. Such as guided product tours, on your website. You have to lead visitors, even if they think they’re leading themselves.
Embedding videos in your website helps improve your site’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs) just by virtue of there being videos. But it also increases the amount of time people spend on a page (known as dwell time), an important factor in SEO.
This means that if your viewers click and watch a two-minute video, those two minutes will end up making your site content more sticky, and thereby more likely to appear in Google search results. Cha-ching!
YouTube/VIMEO
One of the first spots you’ll want to upload to is YouTube and also Vimeo. As the second largest search engine, it’s imperative for your brand to use YouTube strategically to showcase your videos far and wide.
Because YouTube/Vimeo alone isn’t a video strategy. Your goal should be to use the channel to gain a lot of attention and drive viewers back to your website where they can consume more content free from distraction. As a bonus, once they’re back on your website you’ll also be able to track their behavior with video engagement data.
Campaign landing pages
If you run campaigns of any kind, then you likely already have landing pages. And whether they’re part of your own website or hosted on a separate platform, video content can improve them.
Videos embedded on your site can help increase conversion by 80%. Google recognizes pages where a click leads to longer time spent on a page. This means that if your viewer’s click and watch a two minute video, those two minutes will end up making your site content more sticky, and thereby more likely to appear in Google search results because you can hold the attention of interested viewers. This is why we have a video present on all of our webpages. Different viewers funnel to our site from different videos. For example, our real estate videos attract those who are in real estate, to our real estate webpage. This helps direct our intended audience to exactly what they’re looking for.
Email campaigns
In a GetResponse study of nearly a billion emails, those containing video had a 96% higher click-through rate when compared to non-video emails. This staggering increase in engagement with the inclusion of video makes adding an embed link here a no brainer. Again, this is another thing we do consistently in all of our email campaigns.
Email signatures
Beyond email campaigns you send out to promote your video, have your team members change their email signature to include a catchy line with a hyperlink to your video embedded on your site. What we do is use a phrase and include {Video} in the title. Also, if you link a video from Youtube, and using gmail, the thumbnail will automatically appear in the email.
This helps in SEO as your utilizing both google platforms. When doing this, make sure your video thumbnail is up to date and accurate. Nothing turns off a click when the thumbnail is of someone mid sentence with their mouth wide open.
Social networks
When distributing your videos, social channels are your best friend. You’ll want to post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, but you’ll also want to consider a clever use of Instagram and Pinterest. This is usually the most time consuming as well as aggravating for our clients. Most do not engage with social media properly. Since they do not engage with it properly that also means they don’t have a consistent posting schedule.
You’ll also want to upload your videos on those platforms natively. Native video is video content that is uploaded directly to (or created on) a social network and played in-feed on that platform. For example, on Facebook, a native video would be a video that is uploaded directly to Facebook, rather than a link shared from Youtube or Vimeo.
The beauty of native video is that it doesn’t interrupt the user experience with unnecessary extra clicks or new windows. The content is something viewers are more likely to engage with rather than an annoying distraction in their news feed.
Other places to share
To top off the list, you’ll want to distribute your videos in these locations too:
- Sales assets: Re-use relevant content wherever appropriate. For more statistics Threecolts has put together a detailed article.
- On your blog: (We highly recommend this!) where you’ll want to use the surrounding text to transcribe your video’s key phrases in order to have the content indexed by search engines
- Partner blogs: contact your industry partners and ask if they’ll feature your video content on their blog. If it’s relevant, helpful stuff they might ask for contributed content where you can include the video you’d like to share.
Maximize The Results Of Your Video Marketing Campaign
So far, you have a clear idea on which channels and platforms can be a good choice to promote your marketing video. But you also have to bear in mind some key considerations that will help you maximize the effectiveness of your video marketing campaign. You can distribute your video in as many channels as you want. But if you don’t stick to these guidelines, all your efforts will be in vain, trust me.
- Choose an enticing thumbnail: this is not a minor detail at all. The thumbnail you choose can make a big difference in terms of clicks. Make sure you pick out an image that is attractive, inviting and also coherent with the content that the viewer will find inside. Here you have some interesting tips on how to leverage the power of video marketing thumbnails.
- Pick out the right video hosting platform: names like YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia, Vidyard, and many others may resound in your mind. It’s vital that you choose the one that best fits your needs: analyze the branding options you want, the type of tracking tools you require, and other factors before making the final choice. For instance, here you have the top 5 best video hosting for businesses
- Add a compelling Call To Action: you have to guide your viewers in the direction you want, to let them know which next step they should take. A call to action is a must in this sense, so don’t dismiss it when you develop your video! It has to be coherent with the goal your video has. This will let you track results the right way.
- Find an attractive title: write a title that quickly grabs your viewers attention, that is catchy, enticing, descriptive…but also brief! It’s important that you make it coherent with the content that they will find within it.
- Choose the right keywords: do some research and come up with those keywords and long tail keywords that are relevant to your niche. Include them in the title and tags of your video. This will put it in front of the right people.
- Focus on the channels that work best for you: remember that it’s vital that you choose the promotional channels that match your specific goals, target audience, and product. Too many business owners get wrapped up in the idea that they have to be on everything all the time. It helps if you have an adequate marketing team that can distribute the content properly. But if it’s just you and another person, this will stretch you thin. Learn where majority of your audience is coming from, then fill content in those area.
