Video Production Jargon Busting: Promoting Your Video
So you have spent all that money on a fantastic business video, now what? It’s time to get it out there, maximise the exposure and hit your key performance indicators. Many a time we have produced a video and the client has done nothing to promote it and we want to change it.
We want to help you get the most out of the video so here are some things for you to think about:
Video & Social Media?
If you have a business video, look into using it for social media. Don’t be shy in using it in your posts. These days, every social network supports video uploads that play within user’s feeds, like Twitter and Facebook. For many of our clients that means creating one corporate video and splashing it everywhere. This is perfectly acceptable, but you can be more creative if you like with your video strategy, perhaps you could tailor it to each network and their respective target audiences?
Should you want your video content to really connect with your audience, work out which networks are being used by your target market and how they are using them. Once you have done this, consider what your goals are for each platform and what could be done to have specifically created (or edited) video for each place. We call these cutdowns or teasers. These are short snippets of the final video to build anticipation and get them to watch the full video; Hollywood does this for all their blockbuster films and calls them trailers.
Here just a snapshot of what we’ve found works best for each of the major social media networks:
Facebook: fun, silent auto-play friendly video for casual browsing. These videos shouldn’t be led by the videos audio. This is because when the video is auto playing in the news feed the audio doesn’t come through.
Twitter: Tease the viewer with content to drive them to your website. Short, pithy video clips work wonders. Twitter auto-plays video content, therefore any created video must be suitable for this. We recommend to our clients that Twitter video is no longer than 60 seconds and that’s at a stretch.
Instagram: Teasers that don’t require an action and company culture videos. Think short, sharp and punchy. The video doesn’t need to be complex, but it does need to be creative, Instagram is a great network for showing off creativity, so please avoid bland videos.
YouTube: Entertaining or educational videos tailored to your specific YouTube audience. These can tackle complex topics at length. It all depends on what your target audience what.
xXx: RETURN OF XANDER CAGE | Underwater Bike Stunt | Offical Behind the Scenes
Video & Email
If you already have an email list, consider sharing your latest video via this channel. At HSQ Productions, we’ve found that clients who spread their video through email get people excited about new content: they share to their friends/clients, who then spread it to their networks and so on.
Here are a couple of email tactics that clients have found useful:
Inform people there’s a video (subject line, email copy, play button on a thumbnail).
Entice the audience to watch the video with an appropriate thumbnail from the video in your email, just think, friendly faces attract clicks.
Link the thumbnail to a page on your website. This helps to drive web traffic to your site.
Don’t go overboard on the number of calls-to-action. It can be quite off putting.
Be colourful with that play button; put it atop an interesting (possibly from the video) image. This is a highly effective invitation especially in text heavy emails. Ultimately we suggest embedding the thumbnail image in the email leading to your website where the video lives, not directly inserting the video into your email.
This Week’s Action Item
Have you recently had a corporate video shot for you? If you did, try sharing it with a few others by email. Don’t forget to insert an enticing thumbnail image and link it back to the page where your video is embedded on your website. For a gold star, upload a teaser edit of your video to Facebook and/or Twitter and share your video link there.
Please comment below with your thoughts on this week’s Video Production Jargon Busting blog. If you have any topics you would like us to cover, please let us know.
Should you require a helping hand with anything video production related please contact us:
Email: adam@hsqproductions.com
Telephone: 0161 7060380