5 Quick Tips to Reach More People with Video

If you’ve spent any time online in the past couple of years, you’ve almost certainly noticed that video is taking over. Businesses large and small across Houston and beyond are producing marketing videos to boost brand awareness, build social followings, and drive engagement and sales. Thanks to widespread, high-speed Internet connections and mobile devices, digital video has become one of the most versatile and profitable digital marketing tools out there—and best of all, video marketing is now affordable on any budget.

Producing a video that moves the needle isn’t as simple as shooting a few minutes of video on your phone and uploading it to Facebook, however. Every video should begin with a specific goal—boosting engagement, increasing brand awareness, growing your social following, generating sales leads, or something else that you can measure. Once you know what you’d like your video to accomplish, it’s time to create a video strategy for your business.

 

If you’re ready for your marketing videos to reach the largest number of people that you can, here are five fundamental tips that should inform your strategy:

 

1. Understand Your Audience

No matter how great your video looks and sounds, it has to resonate with your target audience in order to do your business any good. Know your target audience! Understand who your ideal customers are, what they need, what keeps them up at night, what makes them laugh, what inspires them, what makes their lives easier, and where they hang out online. Outline your videos to speak directly to their concerns—not yours, and not anybody else’s.

 

2. Optimize Your Video for Search

Did you know that YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world? It’s also owned by Google, making YouTube videos critical to search engine rankings. That’s why it’s important to implement search engine optimization (SEO) into every video you upload, no matter the platform. Add a catchy title and description, relevant tags, a script for closed captioning, and a custom thumbnail that will entice viewers to click through.

 

3. Share Video Across All Your Platforms

Social traffic can greatly increase your video views, while allowing your followers on other platforms to connect with you in more ways. Share your YouTube videos across all your social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and whatever else you’ve got. Save your Snapchat stories and share them on Facebook, providing a link back to your Snapchat profile for users to connect with you there. Embed your broadcasts on your website where you can provide more details and surround the videos with relevant content.

 

4. Engage with Your Viewers

So, you’ve posted a new video. Great—but you’re not done yet! Respond to all comments that come in after your video has gone live, and encourage viewers to post their opinions as well. Encouraging engagement from followers and site visitors is how you grow your following into a loyal community. Remember, in a live video, engagement can happen in real time! Be sure to acknowledge your viewers.

 

5. Pay to Promote Your Video

It’s very rare for commercial videos to go viral. If you have a great video that you know your target audience could benefit from, consider promoting your content. YouTube and Facebook both have effective advertising platforms that can help you reach a large group of targeted people. Often even a small budget can do a lot to increase viewership (and subscriber counts).

 

Producing great videos, promoting them, and engaging with viewers takes time and effort, but if you commit to it, you can build your brand much more quickly and effectively than you could without video. If you’d like some one-on-one mentoring on video marketing and other brand-building techniques, let’s talk! Contact me today.