Video Distribution 101: How to Reach Audiences with Your Video Content
So you’ve just paid for a team to create some quality video content for your marketing campaign. What are your next steps? Do you have a solid plan on how to reach audiences with the content you now have?
Video marketing isn’t just about the content that you create— it’s also about how you distribute the material to your target audiences. As easy as it would be, you can’t just upload your video to YouTube and call it a day. Having a solid distribution plan after the video is made is key to seeing a return on your investment, increased brand awareness, and more traffic to your website or social media.
Here’s what every small business owner and marketing team needs to know about reaching audiences with their videos.
How to Build a Marketing Video Distribution Plan
Content distribution can be intimidating simply because of the sheer number of platforms that you can use. With so many choices, you may not even know where to start. However, your distribution plan will start with knowing what platforms you have at your disposal and the best practices for using them.
The main channels for organic video marketing distribution include:
Your website, including landing pages and blogs
Email marketing
YouTube
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
LinkedIn
We’ll take a closer look at each of these, but before we go into detail about each one, consider which platforms are best for your business. Think about the platforms that you already utilize and how you may be able to integrate video into them. Look at where you see the most traffic and which platforms your audience is most active on. The answers to these questions will help guide where you should focus your efforts.
Using Your Website for Video Distribution
Your website is one of the greatest tools at your disposal. Research shows that after watching a product video, viewers are 64%-85% more likely to buy. Video provides engaging, digestible content that draws people in. From an SEO standpoint, video keeps folks on your webpages longer, which can help boost search engine rankings.
Ways that you can utilize video on your website include:
Product and service demonstrations: Show off your individual products or services with videos on your product pages.
Explainer videos: Some customers may come to your homepage or product pages without a clue about your product or business. An explainer video can quickly let them know who you are and what you do.
Homepage background video: You can have a video play as a background when people visit your homepage. Check out how we did this on our homepage!
Blog content: Videos are great for accompanying blogs and a good place to put how-to clips, testimonials, tips of the day, and more.
Testimonial page: People can read reviews and testimonials, but that doesn’t have the same emotional impact as seeing someone speak of your work or product.
The question shouldn’t be whether or not you should use video on your website— that’s a given. Instead, your questions should focus on where and how to implement your content. Your specific marketing campaign goals will inform this.
Including Video in Email Marketing
Looking for ways to revitalize your email marketing campaigns? In some studies, including the video in emails increased open rates, boosted click-through rates, and decreased unsubscribe rates.
Embedded video isn’t supported in the same way across all email clients. Luckily, there are several ways to link video content that has universal support.
One of the most common methods is to include a static image with a play button in the body of your email. The image should be linked to your video, whether it be hosted on YouTube, Vimeo, or another video-sharing platform.
Did you try to click the play button above? That’s the kind of reaction you want the image in your email to get!
Using Social Media for Video Marketing
Social media plays a huge role in how your video will reach your audience. As of 2020, there are 3.81 billion people actively using social media— and chances are your target customers are too.
There are two ways that you can approach video marketing on social media: paid advertisements and through an organic social media strategy. We’ll be focusing on tips for organic social media strategy.
One of the most important things to keep in mind when distributing your content on social media is the game of trial and error. It may take a few videos before you start seeing the engagement you want. The key is to keep an eye on audience statistics and demographics and adjust your strategy accordingly. Don’t be afraid to experiment and find distribution solutions that work for your business and audience.
YouTube
Not only is YouTube the preferred platform for many in terms of video hosting, but it’s also a huge social media platform that gets over 30 million visitors per day. It’s the perfect place to reach existing customers and get your content in front of new eyes.
If you don’t have a channel already set up for your business, this should be your first line of business. Complete your YouTube profile— add your channel description, icon, channel art, and other social media links. Once you do that, you can begin sharing videos!
We could write a whole post about how to optimize your YouTube videos, but here are some basic pointers to start you off:
Make sure your thumbnail stands out: The thumbnail is what visitors will see on YouTube before they view the video. You want to make sure it grabs people’s attention but also accurately reflects the topic of your video.
Create a strong title: Include a relevant keyword or two in the title to give your video SEO juice.
Write a good description: Don’t think you’ve escaped writing just because you’re using a visual medium! Come up with a good description that summarizes your video topic.
Include relevant tags: Tags are descriptive keywords that help viewers find your content. Using these will help people searching for similar content find your video.
Because your YouTube video will likely be embedded in other places, you want to make sure that everything looks neat and ready for visitors.
Facebook is a social media giant with 2.7 monthly active users. Creating a business page on the platform can open up a whole new world of possibility, including marketing opportunities on other platforms like Instagram, which Facebook owns.
You have two options when it comes to posting videos on Facebook: embed the video from another source (like YouTube) or upload it natively to the platform. Typically, uploading directly to Facebook is the preferred method. Facebook treats embedded video links like any other link, meaning all people will see is a thumbnail, the title, and a few lines of the description. A natively uploaded video will appear directly in the Newsfeed and automatically play instead of redirecting the user to a new page.
Facebook offers a ton of great information and best practices for businesses using video on their platform. Basic tips include:
Ensure your video meets appropriate technical requirements.
Write an accurate title and description and select an eye-catching thumbnail.
Your video or description shouldn’t include engagement bait.
Post regularly and consistently, if possible.
Sharing videos on Facebook is great because it’s the perfect place to engage with your audience. If people comment, ask questions, or react to your post, be sure to respond!
Instagram has several ways to share video, including on your business’s profile (which shares to your followers’ feeds), Stories, Instagram Live, IGTV, and their latest feature, Reels.
Businesses have found creative ways to utilize these features in their video marketing campaigns. Here are the main points you need to know about each one:
Instagram Feed: This is probably what you are most familiar with when it comes to Instagram. It’s what users see when they first open the app— a streamlined feed of images and videos from people that they follow. You can post videos that will reside on your profile.
Instagram Stories: Stories are images or short clips that users share with their followers. Individual clips are limited to 15 seconds. Unlike videos that you post to your feed, which will stay on your profile, Stories disappear after 24 hours.
IGTV: IGTV was created for long-form content. While video length on the Feed is limited to one minute, posts to IGTV can be up to an hour long.
Reels: Reels is the newest Instagram feature and was designed to compete with TikTok. With it, you can record and edit 15-second multi-clip videos with effects and other creative tools. You will most likely not be sharing premade video content here.
It’s important to understand the limitations, differences, and best times to use each feature. For example, if you were wanting people to see a one-minute explainer video, you probably wouldn’t post it only to your Stories.
Hashtags are an important Instagram feature to take advantage of. When you post a video, be sure to add some hashtags to the description. These allow other users who may not follow you to find your content. You’ll also want to be sure to use relevant hashtags. Do a little research beforehand to find tags that get authentic engagement or have a community built around them.
If you have a Twitter account for your business, you can share your videos there as well! Like Instagram, you can also use hashtags to help people find your content.
Twitter does have a time limit, so you must trim any video you post to 2 minutes and 20 seconds or less. Additionally, the app has more technical restrictions, including a 512 MB size limit.
LinkedIn is the professional cousin of social networking. Though it’s business and employment-oriented, LinkedIn is still a great place to share your video content, especially if you’re a B2B company. Video posts on the platform earn three times the engagement than their text-only counterparts.
Businesses commonly share videos on LinkedIn that:
Announce new products or services
Explain product lines
Share updates or exciting news about the company
Give customers a behind-the-scenes look at operations
Bring awareness to an upcoming event
LinkedIn allows you to embed videos from YouTube or Vimeo, but also has a native video feature, which allows you to upload videos directly to the platform. Which one you choose is up to you— but uploading to the native feature has some benefits, like audience insights and in-feed autoplay, which grabs the attention of people scrolling.
Create Video Content Worth Sharing
For the best results with your video marketing campaigns, the content itself should be something that you’re excited to share with your audience. Your video should make an emotional connection with customers and propel them into action, whether it be sharing the video with others, buying your product, or donating to your charity. Partnering with a professional video production team like Remote Team Films can ensure that you have video content that will resonate with audiences and see results.