Before we get to the actual concepts, have a look at this:
“Video informs and entertains people and, good or bad, today most people prefer to watch a video rather than read a page or text.” ~ Lisa Lubin
That’s true! For you, for me and for everyone else!
We are all hooked on to videos more than plain pieces of content. It’s great if you have thought of making promotional and educational videos for your business but getting the best results out of those videos depends on how you circulate them. How do you get people to see your videos?
The first thought that will come to your mind is uploading your videos on YouTube. Yes, that’s a great platform and you should certainly do that, but don’t stop there!
You need to share your videos through many resources for ensuring maximum reach and user engagement.
Here are 10 great ways to share your business videos for getting the best response:
Vimeo
Vimeo is a popular platform for sharing videos. It ensures a quality viewing experience. This video sharing platform might not have a big audience like YouTube but a great benefit of putting up your videos on Vimeo is that it does not display a lot of ads in the beginning or in the middle of the video. Another positive aspect of Vimeo is that it plays your video by default on high definition and the viewer does not have to adjust any settings for this. For better response, it is preferable to have a thumbnail for your video. You can also select one automatically but it is recommended to create an appropriate thumbnail image.
Your Official Website
Along with various video publishing platforms, you can publish your videos on your website as well. If you have an online store, it is a good idea to create and publish videos about the products you offer, they will create a better impact than that of plain content. You can either directly put up the video on your website or you can take the embedded code of the video published on YouTube or Vimeo and post it on your website. It is preferable to have your video on the top of the web page or somewhere in the middle of the content where it can be clearly viewed by the people.
Social Media Websites
Social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest etc. are the best platforms for sharing your videos. Post your videos on all the official social media accounts of your company. You can also boost the visibility of your videos through paid promotion. Keep in mind that everyone might not see the video you posted right away for the first time; therefore, it is important to be consistent while posting videos. It is recommended to directly post your video on the social media websites instead of providing a link of your video posted on YouTube. You can also consider making different versions of your video for different social media websites. You can also create short introductory videos – Like for instance, you might want to create a very short teaser video for the actual full length video present on your website and direct the audience accordingly. You can make use of online tools like Hootsuite for publishing your videos at various times of day and night.
Pin Your Video At The Top Of Twitter Feed
You can pin a tweet at the top of your personal or company Twitter account feed. This ensures that your tweet does not get lost in the constantly published new tweets. It is a good idea to pin your new video at the top of your Twitter feed with the appropriate hash tags, it will result in a higher audience engagement and video views. It is proven that the pinned tweets get a better response as compared to the unpinned tweets and this is a great way to feature your video.
Newsletters
It is a good idea to add videos to your newsletters. A customer testimonial or a product demonstration video can be added to your newsletter, this will create an impact of a completely different level. If you have been sending newsletters for quite some time, your customers are already interested in your content. So now you can send something different this time – send a video with some descriptive content pointers. In the newsletter you can ask your clients for a feedback on the video.
Email Signature
No! You don’t have to add the complete video in your email signature. You can promote your video in the signature. When you create a new video, all you have to do is write a descriptive text in the email signature and add a hyperlink to the video. For instance, in your email signature, below your name and contact details, you can write – “Are you interested in knowing about our newly launched product? See Video!” and you can add a hyperlink to the product video that you have created. You must change this hyperlinks and descriptions every time you create a new product video.
Partner Blogs
You can get in touch with your industry partners and ask them if they can publish your video content on their blog or website. A good gesture while doing this is to offer to promote some of their content on your website or blog as well. This is a great way of creating new contacts and getting traffic from other authoritative websites.
Online Communities
Share your videos through various online communities and forums where it is permissible. It can be a Twitter chat, a Facebook or LinkedIn group or some other online forum. You must actively share your video wherever it is relevant. If there is an ongoing discussion where people are seeking some solution and if your video contains any information pertaining to that discussion or a solution, you must go ahead and share the video. However, whenever you post your video on any online forums, make sure to check the video sharing guidelines they have.
Stores, Trade Shows And Conferences
If you own a brick-and-mortar store, you can set up a flat-screen monitor LCD that plays your video. You can setup such LCD ads at various places in your city where it is permissible. In this case, make sure that your video is short and informative because people will see it while commuting and they will not have a lot of time to spare. You can play your full length videos in trade shows where you have a booth and in business conferences. Whole doing this, it is advisable to make a version of your video along with subtitles so that you can play it without audio as well.
YouTube
I have listed YouTube in the end because today everyone is informed about this platform. If you create a video, your first thought would be sharing it on YouTube! Of course you must create your business channel and publish your videos on YouTube. YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google which is used by people around the globe to search videos on various topics. YouTube is the perfect platform for putting up your educational videos, product demonstration videos, promotional videos and other general information videos. It can be a bit difficult to get found on YouTube but once you have a loyal audience, your videos will get more views and you will have more subscribers. Make sure that you fill out the title and description of every video that you post on YouTube, this will help your videos in getting displayed for the respective search terms. Organize all your videos in a well organized playlist so that they can be easily found on your channel.
Over to you…
You have created a great video and now it needs to be seen by the audience. You must reach out to the audience through the ways mentioned in this article and through many different ways you can. The ways through which you prefer sharing your videos will depend on the type of business you have, the type of video you have created and the industry you are operating in. You can also experiment when it comes to sharing your videos online, some things will work for you and some things might not but there’s no harm in trying.
