We all know that video content is king for content marketing – it’s going to return the best results for SEO and is the most effective content for customer engagement! So you, as a motivated and up-to-date marketer, have produced a video for your product or business. Now what?
In this blog post, I’ll give you the information to take that video and utilize it to its full potential. Read on!
What’s the point of a video? To be watched, right? Well, yes, but your video should drive customer engagement and send your audience to your storefront for more information. So you need to put that video where your customers can find it. First stop – the internet! Now there are a few options here, but the vast majority of videos are going to be hosted on either YouTube or Vimeo.
YouTube
Everybody knows YouTube, but did you know that Google owns YouTube? Behind Google’s search engine, it’s the second largest search engine in the world. So that makes Google + YouTube the 400-pound gorilla for video hosting, searching, sharing, and information searches. You really can’t go wrong with YouTube. You can create your own channel (or we can do it for you), upload your own videos, and share them easily via shortcode or embedding.
Vimeo
Vimeo is another great option for hosting and sharing your videos. They have a very nice user interface and styling to their site. If you upgrade your account to a paid account, you can customize your video player and add your branding, which is specifically very nice for video you might embed into a webpage on your site.
We typically recommend YouTube because the community on Vimeo is a much smaller, niche community of artistic creatives, but it might make a lot of sense for your business or product to be in that environment. When it comes down to it, you can’t go wrong with either choice.
Website
First, think of your video as brand new content for your customers. You want to put it where it can be easily found and watched. For some businesses, it makes sense to put the video on your homepage. This depends largely on what the subject matter of the video is, but also what kind of business you have. An image slider or banner is a great place for your video.
If the video is more product specific, then perhaps you should place it on the product page, but you may still want to have an image link on the homepage so that everyone sees that video content (and not just those who happen to be looking for that one product).
Social Media
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr… yeah, you get the idea. There are a ton of places out there where people gather to socialize and share content. These are obviously great places to connect with and engage your customers, but you need compelling content to spark their interest.
Use video as a part of comprehensive marketing strategy. Build some hype for it – post production photos or little teasers. When your video is finished, make sure to share it on all of those social media platforms – reach as many people in as many different places as you can. Make sure to ask for feedback and engage as much as possible with your audience.
Finally, make sure that your audience on these platforms has a convenient and easy way to head over to your website. Add your website into your YouTube description, and provide an easy link to your website or product page in your social media posts. If you’ve made a good video and your audience is interested, they’ll come to you.
Another great way to get views on your new video is to send out a newsletter. You may or may not already have a newsletter going, and if you do then this is all the more simple. If you have the video on your website, a newsletter is an opportunity to link directly back to your website. The most effective way to do this is to embed a link into a picture, and strategically place that photo somewhere in the newsletter. I like to use a screencap of the actual video/video player so that my readers know that it’s a link to a video and not just a photo.
Tradeshow
If you take your business to industry tradeshows, a video is a fantastic way to catch your prospects eyes and give your salesperson an opportunity to make an introduction. Or, you could have an informative video about your offering that prospects could watch while your salespeople are busy helping other customers (first come, first served!).
Office Lobby
We’d all like to have digital signage for our business. If you have the means, namely flatscreens in your office building, get some marketing use out of those screens! Whether you are a bank, retailer, an engineering firm, or doctor’s office, there is an opportunity to get your branding and products or services in front of your customers’ eyes. Let them know what all you offer, the industries you work in, important news about your business or industry, or any other information your customers might find valuable.
Now that you’ve done all that, you need to circle back around and analyze the results. Both YouTube and Vimeo have stat-tracking software within your channel’s account options. I would give the nod to YouTube here, as they have all the infrastructure of Google backing up their statistics tools. But more importantly, check Google statistics for stats related to your website. There, you’ll be able to see where your traffic is coming from – if your traffic numbers from YouTube, Vimeo, any social media, or direct links from email are going up, that means your video is working for you. If you’re not analyzing your results and tracking progress towards goals, there’s not much of a point!
Now take that video and put it out there! Good luck!