You’ve finally done it. You are in possession of the hottest video the internet has ever seen. It combines the incomprehensibly viral nature of Rebecca Black’s vocals with the undeniable epicness of the latest Game of Thrones trailer. Phone this one in, people– this video is going to sell itself. While it’s true that some pieces of great content seem able to spread without much, if any marketing behind them, you’re not the type of person who likes to take chances with your premium content. You’ve created some beautiful, HD-quality video content that’s just begging to be shared and you want to give it the christening it deserves!
I recently found myself in a situation similar to the above description. I had a great piece of video but wasn’t exactly sure how to make sure I was getting the ROI I knew it deserved. I wanted to make sure my ducks were in a row before I launched so I did what any responsible SEO does when he or she needs to develop a skill: a crap-load of research. Here are some of the more actionable nuggets I’ve been able to glean from my foray into video marketing.
Surround Awesome with Awesome – When Google crawls your page it’s looking for signals to indicate that your content is related to a given query. A page with an H1 title and an embed code isn’t sending Google the message that this page is full of awesome, related content. In fact, Google isn’t able to decipher your video at all so why not send better algorithmic signals to the Big G by surrounding your already awesome video with equally awesome images and text. This also gives you another opportunity to target the keywords you’re after.
Give your visitors a resource to acquire more information on the headline they were just linked to– give them more reasons to link to your video. Tell a story about how the video was produced or simply summarize the contents of the video. Consider linking to other, related videos to keep the user who wants more as engaged as possible. Make your page the authority on the topic at hand and a, rich, linkable resource that people will continually reference in the future.
Here are a few other hosting options to help you serve your video from your own domain:
For more technical and video production considerations be sure to check out Phill Nottingmam’s presentation from a recent Distilled meetup in London:
Treat the description of your video (on YouTube or otherwise) the same way you would a meta description. Use keywords but don’t over do it. Write a paragraph that will convince someone that this video is both relevant and something worth watching. Remember that these terms show up in bold on the SERP if the Googler uses the same terms found in your Meta Description.
As with images, the video file should have a keyword rich file name with hyphens in place of spaces.
Other Technical Considerations – However tempting it may be, avoid using iframes as Google likely won’t crawl them. If possible, use an HTML5 video player with a flash video as a fallback. No one likes a video that starts blaring audio when they enter a site. Give users more control over their experience (and ear drums) by disabling autoplay. And finally if you’ve decided to give your users a choice between HD and standard video quality be sure to set the default play setting to HD. Users may not know they even have the option to upgrade so why not give them the best you’ve got up front?
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Brainstorm to Understand Your Audience – A piece of marketing content is only as valuable as the amount of exposure, attention and hopefully links that it ultimately commands. Spend some time brainstorming a list of the people and publications who might be interested in your video so that all of your hard work isn’t for naught! Get a handful of the smartest people you can find (willing or unwilling) into a room and hammer out a list of potential targets. Understanding your audience and what might appeal to key influencers will benefit your entire outreach campaign. (image right)
Double and triple check that these embed codes work on various platforms before launching. If you’ve ever had that sinking feeling a web marketer gets when he or she realizes that the embed code on an expensive infographic hasn’t worked for three days you’ll know what I’m talking about… not that it’s ever happened to me, of course! Some webmasters and bloggers are more willing to embed a video than they are to directly link to your page so make sure you’ve got a link back to the source inside of that embed code!
If a video is controversial, generating unsavory responses or you simply don’t want comments on your video for whatever reason this is always an option but I’ve often found comments to be a great way to keep people coming back for a second look.
Put Video Behind an Email or Social Wall – If you’re just starting out with video marketing this may not be the best idea for building a loyal following. But if you’re an established site with thousands of viewers who just can’t wait for your next installment consider asking users for an email address before viewing your content. You could give the user Part 1 in a series and ask for an email address to view Part 2. You can choose to provide a “Skip This” button to avoid frustration. This well can be an effective way to build an email list for future marketing wins. You could also employ something similar where you’d instead ask for a Facebook Like or Twitter Follow before allowing the user to continue on. Whether or not you make this optional will depend on the relationship you’ve built with your community.
Add Video to Old and New Content – Videos can and should be reused within other content on your domain. If you have an older post that might be supported by your new video, go back and enhance that content with a link to the new video. Likewise, in future posts you can always refer to your older videos as you would with any other piece of content. Try not to embed the video on more than one page as you want to make sure the original video page is seen by Google as canonical. As with duplicate images or text on multiple pages– it’s best to avoid it at all costs.
Sites to Submit Video to:
Reach Out – Think of video marketing the same way you would any other piece of original content. Many of the same strategies you’ve applied to your infographics and epic blog posts apply here. Grab your rolodex and do what it takes to get your content in front of as many web influencers as possible.
Here are just some of the places you might consider pitching your video content:
- Blogs whose audience might be interested in your video
- Email Lists
- Your own Social Media Accounts
- Powerful, on-topic Twitter accounts found via services such as FollowerWonk, Klout or MuckRack
- Learn how to Market to Reddit and then post to http://Reddit.com/r/Videos
- Thinking Local? Target local newspapers, radio stations and magazines
- On-Topic Community Forums
- Target blogs who often post video to their homepage
- StumbleUpon
- Got a funny video? Submit to ‘bored’ sites such as Bored At Work, At Work and Bored, or Bored.com
- Leverage current relationships with bloggers, influencers, community leaders and other affiliates
- If you’ve used YouTube and someone’s linked to the YT version, contact them and ask for a link to your domain.
- Depending on the nature of your video; consider utilizing paid video advertising on Facebook, Google, etc.
- Physically meet with contacts who might be willing to promote your content (do what it takes!)
- Submit to a Video Directory (Blip.tv, VideoJug, WonderHowTo, IMBroadcast, Bizuns.com/videos, DailyMotion etc)
- Send personal, genuine emails to publications and influencers that might post your videos
