In light of popularity of video content, there are many businesses which get past the struggles of video-making. They get to a point where they are consistently creating video after video for their website, Youtube and other social media channels. Thanks to quick and easy video creation tools like Tyle.
But just being able to make videos and publish on Youtube doesn’t mean your work is over. Your videos are likely to get ignored without proper promotion and optimization.
Just like you optimize your landing pages, blog posts and other content in order to make sure that it performs and delivers a positive ROI, you must make your video content undergo the same process.
Video optimization takes work. You cannot guarantee that a video you created will go viral, but it’s reasonable to implement proper customization to make sure that it grows your business.
Here are actionable steps you can take to ensure each video you create is completely optimized for maximum exposure and business performance.
Begin With A Goal In Mind
Before the surfacing of video marketing platforms, the general consensus was that a video is only good for brand awareness and nothing more.
But it’s now common knowledge that carefully planned videos can be dispersed through the entire sales funnel. Videos can play a major role in converting prospects into leads and leads into customers.
The important thing is to make sure that each video meets the exact needs of your prospects based on where they are in the funnel.
Before you begin producing videos, think about:
· What emotions you want to trigger and why? (For example, feelings like excitement, greed, envy or fear)
· Who are the target audience? It’s better to have detailed personas.
· What do you want the viewers to do after watching each video?
All these factors are vital because they help you create a more actionable and focused video.
For example, if your video shows that others have already been using your product or service to solve a problem even better than how the prospect currently does it, then you trigger the fear of missing out.
This fear can then be used to direct your prospects towards a specific call to action, like signing up for a free trial or registering for your upcoming webinar.
There are many businesses which are doing this really well through storytelling. One of the best examples is this video commercial by Adobe called Click Baby Click.
It features a CEO getting massively excited over the sudden rise in traffic and online orders of his product.
But near the end we see a baby hitting Buy Now again and again on his iPad, which is hilarious because the business didn’t look into the cause of the sudden increase in sales.
Underlying all this, the viewers get a feeling of fear about what could happen to them if they don’t use Adobe’s analytics product. That’s when Adobe asks “Do you know what your marketing is doing?”
That’s the kind of impact you can have with focused video content.
Include Calls To Action
Think about how often this happens when you watch a product video: Towards the end, it either fades to a blank screen, or shows next video suggestions which have nothing to do with your business.
Marketers have come a long way in realizing the significance of calls to action in landing pages, emails and blog posts, but when it comes to video content, CTAs are still not that prominent.
So no matter what, make sure that every video your create ends with a specific call to action.
The call to action can be to watch another video which takes the prospect deeper in the sales funnel, to register for a webinar or to reach a landing page.
Optimize For Search Engines
Regardless of where your video is hosted and published, you must take care of certain optimization factors to make sure it’s easily discoverable by people searching for content online.
Keywords In Title & Description – Basics first. The title and description you write for your video should not be just based on guesswork.
It’s essential to do keyword research to know exactly what people are typing in search boxes and how they are phrasing the problems or information needs solved by your video. You can do this for free, with tools like Keyword Planner, KeywordTool & UberSuggest.
Once you find the keywords which have a high search volume but not too many satisfactory search results, use them in your title and descriptions.
It’s better to use a phrase that people are more likely to search, instead of something that sounds clever.
When people search for a video in Youtube & Google, only the first few words show up in the search result pages. So when writing a description for your video, make sure that the main keywords and links are included near the beginning.
You can include a link to your blog, website, or social profiles so prospects can view the link even without clicking on “more info”.
Transcription Below Video – It’s not possible for search programs to index the content of your video, unless accompanied by text.
Without a written script, Google and Youtube will have a hard time figuring out the subject and other things being talked about in your video.
You can use a transcription service to convert your video into text, which you can then embed below the video or create a dedicated blog post about your video. The blog post will be able to notify search engines about the entire context of your video.
Make The Most Of Annotations
A great way to get viewers to engage further with your video and watch more of your video content is to use Annotations.
For example, you can get prospect to watch more of your videos by linking to them. You can also link to specific pages of your website where your prospects can go to learn more about the products or topics mentioned in the video.
Most of all, annotations can also act as calls to action. You can encourage viewers to subscribe to your channel or follow on other social media with the help of annotations.
Optimize Your Youtube Channel
The more popular your overall channel becomes, the better engagement and results you’ll get from your videos.
It’ll take some time and effort to build a channel with a lot of subscribers and authority. But once you have done it, you’ll find your videos easier to rank higher.
To build your Youtube channel’s relevance and viewership, there must a daily or weekly schedule for creating and uploading videos.
Create videos on topics that help your audience answer questions, solve problems and give insights related to your niche. Stick to your content calendar and keep adding new videos.
But before you focus on these practices, the foundation to a strong Youtube strategy is a properly set up channel.
· Ensure a descriptive channel title – This can be the name of your brand or products,
· Emphasize your products and services in channel description – Someone reading the description of your channel should be clear on what is it about.
· List links to other social profiles – Make it easier for prospects to find your website, blog, contact information or social profiles to connect with.
Upload a professional looking cover image – The cover photo for your channel should be relevant to your niche, as well as visually appealing. Here’s an example:
Build Backlinks To Your Videos
Inbound links from other webpages to your videos are important for other people to find your video and for search engines to assess your video’s authority.
Whenever you publish a new video, make sure to share and embed it on as many places as you can. Even an embedded video serves as an inbound link because it links to the video published on Youtube.
So you should allow others to embed you video content in their site by turning on the embed option from your Youtube video page.
Also share your video on your blog, Twitter, Facebook and whatever social media channels you are active on. In fact, you can create connect your social channels so whatever you post on one gets automatically shared on others.
Assess Performance & Refine Strategy
This is the final step in making the most of your video marketing. No optimization is complete without taking a careful look at the analytics.
If you’re involved in video marketing in a big way and creating a large number of videos, you must invest in a video marketing platform.
A good video platform can help you a lot with the detailed data it provides on who’s watching your videos and how engaged they are.
When you’re able interpret and get insights out of your prospects’ behavior, you can make accurate decisions about videos you’ll create next. By analyzing who watches your video content and for how long, you’ll know which topics and video styles are resonating with your audience.
Consequently, you’ll be able to change your video strategy based on performance metrics like average attention span.
For example, let’s say the data is telling you that visitors are dropping off in less than 10 seconds of playing your video. So you can make decisions like cutting down on the intro and getting to the point sooner.
Conclusion
The next time you’re about to distribute your video content to the platforms actively used by your target audience, make sure you have followed the best practices discussed above.
By taking care of each and every step in the video optimization process, you’ll able to make the best use of your video content and maximize lead generation, sales growth and brand value.
The result will be a huge difference in how your video content drives business.
