How to 'care' for your video after completion
Quite often there is a misconception that once a video is produced and delivered you can plonk it on YouTube or Vimeo and wait for the views, sales and praise to roll in. While having a well-stocked YouTube channel is no bad thing and it can certainly help with SEO, for your video to be commercially effective, it cannot be the only platform that it is seen on. So here a few tips on what to do with your video content once it is ready for broadcast:
Use it on your website's Homepage
Now this may seem the most obvious place to put a video, but it is probably the place that it will have the most immediate impact and not necessarily for SEO reasons. As you are likely doing so much to drive people to your website anyway with your networking and social media output, when someone lands on your site and they see an engaging, beautifully crafted video they will get a far better insight into your service and personality than what still pictures or text on a screen can. It is therefore generating that emotional connection that is vital to selling your product. Now whilst video is great for SEO, it is likely that the SEO benefits for a homepage video will go to the video platform that its hosted on. In other words, if you embed videos into your homepage from a YouTube channel, the SEO will likely go to YouTube and not for your site. Not a bad thing but something to bear in mind.
Share it on Social Media
Another one that may seem obvious is use your videos on social media. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram love video and the algorithms will favour a video rather than a post with just text, this is because by watching a video you are engaging with that platform and therefore staying on it which is exactly what they want. Another thing to be aware of is how you upload to social media, many just copy and paste YouTube links into a post. While this does include the video in the post it will not auto play in a news feed thus missing a golden opportunity to capture the audience’s attention. Additionally, by including a link to another site, most social media platforms will not value it above other posts as it is directing people away from the site. The way around this is by remembering to upload the video directly to the post so that it maximises your engagement by activating the auto play function and pleasing the algorithms. Make sure as well to tag those who are relevant to the video in posts to encourage interaction and engagement as well as some relevant hashtags about what you are saying and the industry you are looking to engage with to increase distribution around the platform. In other words, if you use tags such as recruitment, apprenticeships and careers into a post you are more likely to be seen by people searching for content relating to those topics.
Share it through local media outlets
Another great use of your content is to distribute it to local media outlets, the positives of having your video on site don’t just have to be felt by your business. Sharing it around to news, blog and networking sites can be a mutually beneficial way of attracting visits and getting your brand out there. Just like any other platform or organisation, these outlets will likely love getting good quality video stories as it will give them engaging content for their readership and all with no costs to them.
Keep track of it's progress
Finally, once your video is out there and you’ve done all that is required to maximise engagement, make sure to keep on track of it’s performance. All of the platforms offer up some great statistics on how your video is working so you can see how many views they are getting and whether people are engaging with it. And its by using this information that you can adjust your strategy to suits your business’ needs.
For any more information on how best to utilise your video be sure to visit our STRATEGY PAGE and for more video advice check out our VLOG PAGE.
