Leveraging Social Networks to Market Your Videos
There has never been a better time in the history of mankind to create videos, and there has never been a lower cost way to market your videos to viewers across the world than now.
Most of us are on the popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube, but from the updates and tweets I read on a regular basis, very few people leverage these marketing outlets effectively.
I’m not saying that I’m a social network marketing genius or anything but I pay close attention to the links my followers click on, and which ones they don’t. I think that promoting your videos via social networks is a great opportunity to take advantage of, but perhaps the biggest tip I can offer is to not always be pushing your own content, you need a mix of other’s work too. In order to receive attention you need to provide attention, so your posts can’t be about you constantly shouting out to the world “look at me, look at what I’ve done, look at what I’ve created.”
Some key benefits for promoting your videos through social networks:
- Increase awareness and interest in your videos
- Establish and develop positive word of mouth
- Grow your viewing audience
- Save money on advertising, the main cost is a time investment
- Develop a grassroots following and fan base.
When promoting and marketing your videos through online social networks you need to really focus on using good metadata. Your title is the most important piece of metadata for each of your videos, so you will want to choose a title that’s so irresistible that viewers can’t help but click on your link. Video descriptions are also very valuable pieces of content so provide interesting information, and be sure to include a back link to your website or blog. Tags usually get overlooked by many video creators but can have a dramatic impact on view count. I know of a video creator who tagged their video “thriller” the day before Michael Jackson died and the very next day the video reached 1 million views. That was purely luck and timing, but this should help you understand the importance of tagging your videos. Take the time with metadata because what many video creators do is spend hours creating their video, and then spend less than a minute on their metadata which is bad because this is how most viewers discover new videos to watch.
For maximum effectiveness it helps to use a solid team approach when promoting videos through multiple social networks. If you want to build or join a team to help create and market a video, why not get a Spidvid profile and leverage the talent of our production community.