Published: July 15, 2024
by Justin Difazzio
We’ve talked at length about our three go-to words for acing a project in our blog about audience, blog about distribution, and blog about purpose. We’re going to return to our entry on distribution, specifically where video is concerned. Making a video and not nailing the distribution is like wrapping a gift box and forgetting to put the gift inside—not smart. But we see people doing this all the time!
Granted, creating a video can be expensive, so there often isn’t much left over to contribute to the distribution of your video. But that doesn’t mean it’s something you can skip altogether. Thankfully, we’re here with 8 helpful tips you can use on any budget to make sure your video gets the attention it deserves.
1. Make It Easy to Find
If you want people to see your video, make it easy for them to find. The best way to do that is to optimize your video for search engines (known as SEO, search engine optimization). One of the best places to aim for when you are trying to get found is the video results page on Google. They favor YouTube, so hosting your video on YouTube is a decent way to race to the front of the line. But how do you affect the SEO on a video?
Make sure you pick a target keyword that accurately describes what’s in the video, so people searching that term can find you. Get that keyword in the title, in the video description and meta description, and add comments to the video or upload a transcript so a search engine has something to look at when it’s trying to find you.
2. Make Sure Every Visitor Sees It
There’s a reason that newspapers put the most sensational stories on the top of the front page. That’s the part that everyone sees first, the story that will make people say, “Wow. I want to read that!” and buy a newspaper.
Or, to get modern, it’s why websites have hero images and bold text at the top, catching your attention before you can navigate away. That bit that loads at the top is considered “above the fold,” and it’s the key to making sure visitors see your video. Post it as high on your page as you can, so no one even has to scroll to see it.
Similarly, if you’re on social media (you probably should be, if you’re not, as it’s a very low cost way to market yourself), post your video there and pin it to the top of your feed. That means anyone who comes to your profile will see it, and it won’t get buried in the everyday stuff you post.
3. Get It Out in the Wild
If you have a dedicated audience, such as subscribers to your email newsletter, get your video in front of their face as soon as possible. Give that video a home on your website. That could be as simple as building a landing page for it so you can share the link. Then, create a thumbnail of your video and include both that AND a link to it in your newsletter. It’s as easy as that, and it’s free to do! Nothing is more budget-friendly than free.
4. Narrow Your Focus for a Wiser Spend
Your basic social media accounts are free, but they cast a net wide enough to miss people who you may be trying to reach with your video. By spending a few bucks, you can boost your posts to target a specific demographic. If your video is for people over 40 who are interested in pets and give to charity, you can push that post out to that demographic. For very little money and a flexible range of time, you can get your video in front of the eyes you’re aiming for with just a few extra clicks.
5. Build a Community
It costs nothing but time to get involved with people in groups that share interest in your particular expertise. Places like Reddit and Facebook have groups for every niche, and you could share your video in a relevant group, provided you’re not just dropping in, dumping your video, and ghosting them forever. That’s uncool, and it will get you talked about in the bad way.
Instead, find some groups, make some comments, join in some discussions, and get a feel for what kind of content they’re receptive to. When a relevant time arises, put your video out there as a response, as a contribution to a discussion, or to start a conversation. Just don’t go in cold turkey. When you engage with a dedicated group, not only might you learn something about your niche you didn’t know before, but also you’ll have more success sharing your stuff.
6. Take Advantage of a Captive Audience
Every year we create a video for a local animal shelter, telling the stories of the pets there and encouraging folks to adopt, donate, or volunteer at the shelter. We share that video on socials, on the shelter’s socials, and on our respective YouTube channels, but the best reception we get to that video is at their yearly fundraising event. It’s a dinner and auction where everyone in the community who loves animals comes to hobnob, eat, and chat. During dinner, the shelter always shows our video. And do you know who watches it? Everyone in the room. It gives us a chance to make an impact right then and there instead of betting on whose feed it will show up in online, and it’s vital to the shelter’s success.
Is there an event you could show your video off at? Maybe you should create one! Launch events, stakeholder meetings, board meetings, and informational webinars all make for captive audiences full of people who are interested in your organization. Make use of them! You’ve got a captive audience for as long as that video is playing. Don’t waste it.
7. Get People Talking
Most organizations have a web of relationships with other organizations in the area, whether they’re in the same niche or not. Pick out a few of them and talk to them about a content swap. It could be as simple as a “social media takeover day” where you post stuff for them and they post stuff for you. We do an occasional love fest post for our clients where we talk about who they are, what they’re doing, and what we’ve done for them (and vice versa, if they’re into it). Have fun with it! But during the content takeover, you can post your video to get a whole new set of eyes on it. Co-promotion can work wonders for extending your video’s reach and getting people talking.
8. Be a Tease
Teasing can be rude, but it can also be a really effective marketing tactic for video! If you’ve seen a movie teaser or a tv show teaser, you know what we’re talking about already. Is there a part of your video that is simply sparkling? Does someone say something thought provoking? Is there a hook? Maybe the best thing, in that case, is to make it into a teaser video. It can be short, sweet, and hint at what alluring content you’ve got to share in the full video. Find a funny bit or a tantalizing one-liner. The limit does not exist on what sort of thing you might share, but whatever you do, keep it short.
Instagram is an especially good place to launch a teaser, since you can show up in someone’s feed and get your teaser across before people know what’s happening. Grab their interest, make them laugh, and get them to look for the real thing. Except don’t make them look for it. Give them a link. You don’t want to tease them into getting annoyed.
Give one (or all eight) of these budget-saving tips a try with your next video. You’d be amazed at what you can do to get some views without impacting your overall budget. Don’t have a video to share? Get in contact, and we can discuss your next masterpiece and how to best distribute it.