Let’s imagine that you have a small business that has gone to the effort of creating a marketing video. It’s new, it’s shiny, it will have people flocking to your business – if they see it. Let’s imagine that you don’t have an enormous budget to get the video to pop up on every news feed and sidebar of every single possible customer? What, oh what will you do? Let’s take a lightning fast tour, because it’s time to release your video, and here are my favourite ideas to get your video seen by as many people as possible.
[bctt tweet=”Find out how to get your video seen by as many people as possible”]
Time and place will make a massive impact on how effective your video is, as will the effort you put into targeting your audience with your video content but today I’m going to give you four guidelines to help when you release your video.
1. Go big or go home
Put your video out in as many locations as you can and make the biggest splash you can. Multiple platforms, sharing rewards, sharing competitions, whatever you can think of and wherever you can think of you have to get the message out. So be bold.
2. Release your video as part of a package
Don’t be a bore. Make sure you maintain your blogging & posting, including none business related things, so that your audience remains positive and open to engagement. I wrote about this before (here) and it still remains true that all of your online communications are part of a conversation with your customers. People don’t want to be part of conversations where they are just constantly being asked for things so remember to keep up a wider spread of posts.
3. Release your video across multiple platforms
Yes you must release your video on YouTube but also upload it directly to Facebook. Don’t just share it because Facebook only autoplays native video. But don’t just stick with these options either. Produce a 6 second version for Vine. Make an Instagram version. Have you considered live streaming your video like a film premiere? No? Why not? Didn’t you hear me when I said ‘Go big or go home’? Post a link to Pinterest (which is still a shockingly underused marketing facility) and maybe even Google+. This is very close to my point above about going big and maybe you should think of it, as I do when I talk strategy with clients, as going wide. So… er, go big and go wide.
4. Follow your audience
I’m going to break this down into two further sections
1. Who Are Your Audience? Where Are They? Go There.
Once again I return to my favourite mantra: Know your audience. What websites do they visit? What news boards do they follow? What Facebook groups have they joined? What are their common interests? What are the things that they have in common that make them potential customers? You need to know these things so that you can join these groups and so that you can share your video where it will be seen by the right people.
2. Who Are Your Audience? When Are They? Go Then.
This is something that is so often overlooked. Time. The world has timezones. Different audiences have different online busy times. Use this information. Use your knowledge of your audience. Catch them when they are ready and open to watch what you have to show them. Did you know that the best times to have an eBay auction end are Tuesday evening or Sunday morning? I could go into the reasons for this but they’re not important. What is important is the fact that activity at certain times is more effective than at others. Exploit this.
Whistlestop it has been, this blast through video release ideas, and whistlestop it must remain because the sad truth is that I can’t do this for you. You have to know your customers and know where and when they are. If you don’t know where then you don’t know where to put the most effort. What’s the point of stringing together short and innovative videos for Snapchat followers if your customers aren’t there? But if they are there then that’s exactly what you should be doing. Compelling Snapchat content can generate very sticky followers who check back frequently because all content has a time limit of 24 hours. Similarly how do you live stream an event or a video launch if you don’t know when your customers are there? You can’t. But if your customers are there then don’t miss out on the chance to grab their attention.
As this is my first blog of 2016 I’d just like to wish you the best of luck, whatever you decide to do, and whenever you decide to do it. Please also share your releases in the comments and tell me what the results were because the power of online communities explodes when we share with each other and besides, there are probably many of you with better ideas that can help us all.
