How People See Your Video is Just as Important as Making It

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You’re super excited because you’ve produced a series of videos for your company. Maybe you worked with a firm that specializes in video, an agency, or you’ve produced them internally. Maybe you even produced them yourself. Nice job! Whichever way you did it, you’re ready to release them to the world. Once you hit post, the views, likes, and comments are going to roll in. It’s definitely going to go viral. Most importantly, your customers are going to do what you want them to do. That was easy.

 You see where I’m going with this right? Producing the videos is only half the journey. Getting people to watch them requires a strategic approach. You need to understand your audience, know when and how to release the videos, and carefully curate them over a period of time. Understanding that a video strategy not only involves the production of the videos, but also their successful distribution, will help you create more engagement with your brand and drive more traffic to either boost product sales or promote your message.

Why Distribution Matters

Do you buy a car and not drive it? Do you throw a party and not invite guests? Videos are meant to be seen. They drive an incredible amount of business engagement. The stats back it up:

  • The average person watches more than 90 minutes of online video content per day [Wyzowl]

  • 64% of customers are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video about it. [Forbes]

  • Adding video to marketing emails can boost click-through rates 200%-300% [Forbes]

  • 78% of marketers say video gives them a good ROI [Wyzowl]

  • 76% of marketers say it helped them increase traffic [Wyzowl]

The single biggest missed opportunity I see with most clients is not having any specific plan beyond “upload it to YouTube or Facebook” for their videos. It should be no surprise that without a plan, you’re greatly limiting the ROI on your video investment.

Tips for Creating a Distribution Plan

Although video distribution plans are different for every business (and can be quite involved), I’m going to share some common components to help guide your strategy. Remember, a great video distribution plan means having a keen understanding of your audience. Let me say that again: A great video distribution plan means having a keen understanding of your audience. You need to know how they think in order to persuade them to click.

Behaviors

  • Define success. This is the most important part of your plan. Whether it’s views, shares, clicks, conversions…you have to be able to know when you’ve succeeded.

  • Know your audience’s habits. When is your audience most likely to watch your videos? Are they more likely to watch first thing in the morning when they get to the office or in the early evening?

  • Feeds have a lot of posts. People are probably going to miss your post the first time. Consider re-posting multiple times with slightly different wording at different times of the day and on different days of the week.

  • Many videos often need time to “incubate.” Sometimes the most successful online videos are re-posted many times before they go viral or amass thousands of views.

  • Be realistic about your brand reach. If you’re not Coca-Cola or Marvel (or one of their competitors), don’t compare their views and shares to your videos. If you have a niche audience, then maybe a few thousand (or even hundred) views is a huge success!

Platforms

  • Choose where you’re going to post your video. Does your video need to be tailored to those platforms? Maybe Instagram videos need to be shorter. Perhaps Facebook videos need to be square and/or vertical or have omnipresent text bars above and below the video.

  • Be clever about how your write your posts. They should be attention grabbing.

  • Thumbnails: This is the first thing your audience sees before clicking on the video. Your thumbnail should be a key image from your video with added text to explain what people are about to see.

  • Do you want to boost your potential audience? Consider budgeting money to boost posts on Facebook for wider audience and more shares.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

  • Make sure your videos show up in a search. Use tags. Categorize your video properly. Create a description that is short and to the point. Remember, YouTube only shows the first 3 lines of text, so if you have a call to action, show it up front.

  • Create your descriptions and tags based on how your audience is most likely to search. You may have a corporate name for your product, but how do most people refer to it? If it means one thing to you and another to your audience, use the language your audience would use.

  • Consider captioning your video as it helps to optimize the search for keywords. There are many services that can create captions cost-effectively. It’s also helpful since many people watch videos on mute, especially on mobile devices.

Metrics

  • Know the difference between “views” and “engagement”. A “view” is the number of times a video has been played (i.e. how many times someone clicked play). Engagement relates to the length of time someone spent watching your video. If 100 people watch your 90-second video, but only 10 make it past 30 seconds, you need to reflect on what’s happening.

  • Define conversion by knowing what the endgame is from watching your videos. It could be a product purchase, clicking on a URL, or registering an email. You need to know what you want your audience to do, and tracking conversion rates will help gauge the success of the video.

  • Most importantly, use the metrics to see what’s working and not working. If a certain type of video is performing better than another, try to understand why and make more of those kinds of video. If your audience isn’t making it past the halfway point in your video, maybe it’s too long, or maybe the there’s something in there that’s causing them to turn it off.

  • Adjust your plan based on your metrics! That’s what they’re there for. If something’s not working, modify your approach. It’s not an exact science. It mat take some trial and error to figure out how your audience will react to your content.

Producing online video with a distribution strategy in mind is the best way to help ensure successful brand engagement.