how to distribute your video to your audience
DESCRIPTION
Planning, Shooting and Editing your video is only half the job. Content maybe King but Distribution is Queen! If you want your video to achieve your goals you need to get it in front of your audience. Hopefully our guide will help you to do this! If you'd like to learn more about video, either to grow your marketing understanding or to shoot some of your own in house content we have a members area on our website where you can sign up for exclusive guides, tips, videos and templates! http://www.mwsmedia.co.uk/TRANSCRIPT
Video Distribution
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MWS Media
present
With Hayley
Checklist Once you have a finished video you will need to distribute it. Distribution is the process of getting your video seen by who you want to see it. Here is a checklist of things to carry out in order to help your video achieve your goals. 1) Choose a Platform 2) Upload and Optimise your video 3) Share your video with the world 4) Start an ‘Internet Forest Fire’
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So! First, you need to decide which Video Platform (or platforms) to upload your video to. Things that will influence your choice: • What is your Video’s target market? Do you know
how your target market normally consume video? Which Platforms do they use?
• Is the aim of the video to get the most views and
raise awareness, interactions, direct sales etc? How are you going to measure its performance?
• Do you mind if the video is in a branded player?
Or would you prefer it to be unbranded or even reflect your brand (colours, logo etc)?
Your Options In the UK the most popular sites are YouTube and Vimeo.
1. Choosing a Platform
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YouTube Being the most popular site, YouTube has the most traffic. It also gives you SEO benefits as Google ranks you higher in its algorithms for having video content and based on the keywords and tags you use (we’ll go into this more later).
However on YouTube, Videos automatically play in 320p (low quality SD) to help them load faster. This isn't great if you’ve got a beautiful shiny HD video you want to show off.
YouTube’s player is also branded (with YouTube’s logo and brand colours of black/red) and is not customisable which doesn't always look great when embedded on a website or blog post.
It also shows suggested videos and adverts (before, during, after and next to) your video and only provides basic metrics.
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Choosing a Platform
Vimeo
Vimeo is the second biggest sharing site so still has a high amount of traffic. The big pro of Vimeo is that it automatically plays videos in 720p (HD) so your beautiful shiny HD video stays just that.
With Vimeo Pro members can also customise their player (change the colour, get rid of the vimeo logo etc) which looks great when embedded on your various outlets; they also have access to more advance metrics. Vimeo Pro is however a paid monthly subscription (if you want the extra options and customisation).
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Choosing a Platform
Other Platforms
There are other platforms available for you to use (Brightcove, Sprout Video, Viddler, Ooyala, Wistia etc) but YouTube and Vimeo are the most popular and widely used.
Nideo
Nideo is a platform we recommend looking into if you’re a B2B company. It is a new platform designated to business video. You therefore access to a business community within the platform.
However because it’s new and a business based platform it will have a lot less traffic.
Multiple Platforms
You can use multiple platforms to host your videos; the only issues that might occur is having to accumulate metrics like your total views from multiple sites or having to spend time uploading and optimising them all separately; that said there are even sites like OneLoad which specialise in this.
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Choosing a Platform
Now you’ve chosen your platform you need to upload and optimise your video. This helps people to find your video as well as helping with SEO purposes.
Keywords
‘Keywords’ are the words that describe all the elements of your video that are searchable. So the things that people might search for to find your video. These can be the subject matter, the companies and people involved etc. You will want to decide on these first so you can use them in your Title, Description and Tags.
For example some of the keywords we would use if we made a video on this subject would be: ‘Video’, ‘Distribution’, ‘Guide’, ‘Seeding’, ‘SEO’, ‘Views’, ‘Tips’, ‘MWS Media’, ‘Video Production’, ‘Company’, ‘Berkshire’, ‘UK’.
2. Uploading and Optimising your
Video
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Title
You want to come up with a title that not only describes the content of your video and draws attention to it but also contains the ‘keywords’ that might be searched to find your video.
For example if your video is a ‘how to video’ try to contain the question that people might be searching for example titling a video “How to distribute your video” because people would be searching something like “How to distribute my video”.
Description
You also need to write a description for your video. Again you will want to describe what it is as well as adding any links to social media networks, websites, contributors etc to help people connect with you.
You will also want to try and use your chosen ‘keywords’ again. Try not to ‘keyword stuff ’ though (filling the description with just/mainly keywords) you want the SEO bots to read it but humans to understand it!
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2. Uploading and Optimising your
Video
Tags
Now add all the ‘keywords’ that you want to be ranked for. In YouTube you are allowed 120 characters so pick wisely with your most relevant and important keywords first! In most platforms your keywords need to be in quotations ‘like this’ and separated by a space or commas.
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2. Uploading and Optimising your
Video
Where to Share
Next you need to let the world (or your target audience) know its there!
Again you’ll want to consider here the Video’s target market? Do you know which social media networks they use? Is email a better way to personally connect with them? Which ways have worked best for you in the past?
You’ll also want to embed the video in the networks rather than uploading it directly to the site. This way you’re directing all traffic to the one video rather than creating several copies of it (which will again stop you having to accumulate views and metrics).
Top 3 Platforms for Video Sharing in 2013
Facebook - The best platform for sharing video. More people will ‘share’. Not always best for B2B though.
Twitter - Second best platform statistically. With the fast moving, ‘current’ platform you can tap into news and what is ‘trending’.
Google + - The third best in 2013. Google + has SEO Benefits again as it’s a Google product. It is mostly used by businesses and ‘techies’, which can be useful for targeting.
3. Sharing your Video with the World
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Other Sites/Methods
Linked In - Business and Professionals social media platform. Lots of networks and groups too.
Reddit – Online community where content is ‘upvoted’. Videos, pictures, blogs etc are put into “subreddits” (categories). It’s big across the world but mainly the US. 100,000,000 unique visitors a month!
Pinterest - A content sharing service that allows members to "pin" videos and other objects to their “pinboard”.
Stumble Upon – A recommendation platform that presents you with videos, pictures, articles etc that it thinks you might like based on questions you answer when you sign up. You then ‘Like’ or ‘Dislike’ its suggestions to continuously get better suggested content.
Digg - Digg is similar to Reddit. It “delivers the most interesting and talked about stories on the Internet right now”.
Delicious – A ‘Social bookmark manager’. Delicious lets users save the links to all the things they find and want to keep. It aims to let users curate and discover in one place. Page 11
Sharing your Video with the World
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Email – Send your video via an email (or email newsletter etc) to appropriate contacts or companies that may be interested in your video, suggesting they watch it and perhaps share it with their contacts.
Staff – Could your staff share your video via their personal accounts? The accumulated ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ of staff is going to be more than the company’s social accounts!
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3. Sharing your Video with the World
Timing
This advice is general but more important if trying to ‘go viral’ is your objective. It is advised to release on a Monday or Tuesday and if you can manage it, on a day when there is no other ‘big news’ that people are focused on.
You could also check to see if there is anything related to your content that will be in the news or public eye on a certain day to try and tap into a subject or angle that people are already talking about / interested in.
The first 24 hours are crucial. You’ll want to do everything you can in the first 24 hours to give it the best possible chance to be seen by the most about of people or of ‘going viral’ (if this is your intention).
Trial and Error
When it comes to sharing your videos you have to keep in mind your specific target audience and do market research in the best times, platforms and methods to find them. You’ll soon learn which methods are more successful for your business and your videos.
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3. Sharing your Video with the World
Promoting
Now your video is out there the next thing to do is to try and start a snowball effect. You need to pinpoint people and methods that will push it out on their distribution channels. This will further help you to get your video seen by more people (or more of the specific people) you want to see it.
Key Influencers
Are there any experts, bloggers, groups, networks, celebrities, sport personalities, politicians etc who have huge influences over their many ‘friends’, ‘followers’ and ‘subscribers’. Would they be interested in your video content to ‘blog’ about, ‘share’ or ‘retweet’ it? Are there key influencers that will give you a new avenue to your target audience?
4. Starting an ‘Internet Forest
Fire’
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Stake/Interest
Is there anyone involved in, has an interest in or has a stake in the video (experts, contributors, sponsors, service providers, product producers, actors, presenters, extra’s etc?) that will want to share the video and would benefit from doing so?
For example are the actors wearing a certain brand of clothing or using a certain product in your video? The companies making those things could benefit from their products being related to your brand or from the exposure being in your video brings them. Promoting/Sponsoring/Advertising If you have allowed money in the budget for the distribution side of the video production process then you can also look into ‘Promoted’ or ‘Sponsored’ ‘Tweets’, Facebook Advertising, YouTube ‘Video Ads’ and ‘Promoted Videos’.
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Starting an ‘Internet Forest
Fire’ 4.
In Conclusion ✔ Chosen a Platform ✔ Uploaded and Optimised your Video ✔ Shared your Video with the World ✔ Started an ‘Internet Forest Fire’
Now you have completed the checklist we hope that everything in this guide makes sense and you now have an idea how to make your video achieve what you want it to. A lot of this will be trial an error depending on your audience, subject and intended outcome. As always just get in touch with me if you have any questions or need any help!
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MWS Media
Hayley is a Producer and Head of Marketing at MWS Media.
She enjoys spontaneous adventures and KFC.
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We are MWS Media, a Video Production Company based in our Greenham Airfield Studio in Berkshire!
We enjoy helping businesses succeed with our jedi like film making skills!
www.mwsmedia.co.uk [email protected] 01635 44812