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With the advent of video hosting sites on the Internet, such as YouTube and Vimeo, it is easy to get your marketing videos distributed.
You can even self-host a video from your own website. Viral video marketing is not just a way to get your products and services out for public consumption, but you also can benefit from the SEO advantages that you get from properly keyword targeting the video’s description. The most important part about video marketing, though all aspects must work together, is starting with a subject proper for video. From there, it is all about getting your video some legs by sharing it on social platforms. The more shares you get, the more you ultimately benefit.
What to Shoot?
This is the first step in video marketing and can be trickier than most think. The video form has to follow a function. Too often, people start with “Let’s make a viral video!” From there they scramble to put something together that is based on their business, and it can all go wrong. Instead, you need to work your way to that, the video being the end result. So for instance, you start with a need: showcasing a new product.
What is the best way to do that and show all of the features? A video would work! See how that works? You don’t want to start being gung ho on creating the next viral sensation, but instead evaluate all of your material and see what would be conveyed best through the use of video.
One thing that is important to remember while shooting is that you don’t need blockbuster aesthetics, and there are plenty of good quality, affordable video cameras. This will get you quality visuals for your video; just make sure you use plenty of lighting, but professional lights shouldn’t be needed. What you really want to focus on is good audio, because audiences can tolerate subpar video quality, but few can tolerate bad audio. So just keep that in mind when you are shooting your video, because it is very important to nail that technical aspect.
Get Credit for Your Work
After you produce a video, it is time to get it out there. You can do this by sharing it on your social channels like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and so on. This is important, of course, because there is no reason to make a video if no one ever has access to it. If you have access to hosting the video from your site that is ideal so you can get the SEO benefits from your video (though that’s not the only way, as discussed below).
Regardless, you will want to have some sort of direction back to your website so once the video is viewed, there is a call to action to visit your site. If you are promoting a service or product, hopefully there is also a call to action in converting a cell. Regardless, you want all of your social brands saturated with the video so you are the number one entity associated with the production.
How to Get All the SEO Benefits
When it comes down to it, what you really want from your viral video is to make your name known as a go to place for your area of expertise.
To do this, you need to become more relevant to search engines when people search your field. In order to do this, you want to consider a few things. For one, you can still keyword target with a video by optimizing the file name and the description. Video is a little different though, because your keyword research might not be the same as for optimizing a website.
With video, people often search for videos, and you want to make sure you are targeting those search terms (hint: use the word video). A good way to do this is to perform a YouTube search for something related to your subject matter, and use the auto-fill terms as a reference. These are the terms people are searching for, and you need to play to that. Remember: don’t target for too many phrases with each video.
As earlier mentioned, this is easy for self-hosted videos because all the traffic ultimately is credited to your website. For instance, if your company is like Aspire Direct, which offers video programming services, you would want to self-host material that you offer. You would get your link when it’s shared, and become a more relevant source for this service.
If you host from YouTube or Vimeo, you need to create a custom embed code with your link in there. That way, as it gets shared, your video acts as a backlink, except much more valuable as Google sees rich media with more value. You will not get the full benefit as if you self-host, but it is still an easy way to share the video versus looking into another option if you don’t have the resources.
So these are the keys to having a successful video marketing campaign, or even if you want to do just a one-off video. Your content is very important, but remember that what you do with the content is just as important. You can’t just create phenomenal material and have no distribution for it, and your social accounts are great resources.
Follow these tips to optimize your video, and you will not only benefit from a great video, but also by getting traffic back to your Web properties. Creating a great marketing video isn’t hard to pull off, but it does require much forethought and determination. So when you’re ready, follow these tips, and make something your audiences will greatly benefit from.
Get Busy Media is a blog and resource center that helps small businesses and entrepreneurs build smarter companies. For more information on how to jump-start your small business marketing, please visit www.getbusymedia.com or connect with us on Twitter, @GetBusyMedia.
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