I’m going to blog about using 3rd party content in your video marketing strategy (previously discussed here), but I should say from the start that if you’re a regular web user you’ll probably already know everything I’m going to talk about. This is aimed at the novice or nervous business owner who wants to build their on-line profile with video.
Why?
As people interact with your brand the algorithms used to feed items to your customers (especially on Facebook) will favour you more and more. Simply the more people look at and like the stuff you post, the more of your stuff will appear on their timeline. The more people that see that you curate stuff they like, the more they will seek out your brand as a place where they will find stuff that they like. You don’t have to make any of the stuff, and while they are looking at your time-line, tweets, Instagram feed etc. once in a while you can ask them to buy something.
What And How To Post
You want to find videos that catch and hold your attention. If they are of interest to you they will be to others. If you work in a niche market then there may be a certain topic that flavours everything you want to post or share as you know what your customers will find captivating. Whatever video you decide to share you need to add a title or caption. Think about how to stop someone in their tracks. Look at the title of this blog. It’s very boring, I know, but that is because it is an accurate description of the article content for an audience who are seeking this information. As an alternative I could have called it “The amazing secret to grow your online following” or “You never knew how easy it was to get new customers” or “Doing this one thing will get you customers”. All of these titles are true (yes I know they are exaggerations) and may give a business owner pause while scrolling through their news feed. When I write these blogs my customers are small and medium size businesses and I write for you while accommodating all levels of skill and knowledge. You need to caption or title your posts for your customers. But where can you find your 3rd party videos to share?
Where to find 3rd party video content
Let’s take a brief tour of some popular sites and what you can find there.
Firstly the obvious, and by far the most popular, video site on the web is YouTube. With over one billion unique users every month YouTube is one of the biggest websites ever and accounts for a surprisingly large amount of all of the data sent over the web (around 17%). You can find almost anything there but a prime resource for business is the “How To” video. Mostly with How To videos you will want to make your own to demonstrate your own skills and establish yourself as an expert amongst your customers but you can also leverage others people’s How To videos to draw interest to your brand. As a prime example of this you can look at “No Film School” a community of film-makers that uses film making related video from all kinds of sources to enhance their brand. Another top tip is to look at what popular movies are out soon and share the trailer from YouTube. This is content people want to see. If they have already seen it elsewhere but your post pops up on their timeline there is a good chance they will still watch it again by clicking the link that you posted because its what interests tehm. Nobody ever just watches the trailer for a money which excites them just once. Any interaction builds your relationship with them in their minds and in the social network’s algorithms.
Vimeo is the 3rd most popular video site on the web. It is more for the film buff and less populist than YouTube but there is so much high quality video available that there will be content you can use to your advantage. Have you ever considered that you can post a link to a short film made by a student film-maker somewhere that deals with your topic? Are you a charity? I’ll bet there’s a film or documentary somewhere on Vimeo that looks at whatever aspect of human activity you work with. This is part of a documentary series on the history of mental health treatment. I’ll warn you now that it is both powerful and distressing to watch, but the point is that you can find content here that may be exactly what your audience wants to see and you can use it to build your brand/reputation while helping the film-maker to publicise their work.
Vine. What can I say about Vine? It’s a lot of fun. No, that doesn’t quite cover it. It’s all of human creativity crammed into 6 seconds and ranges from the genuinely disturbing to the sickly cute and just searching a topic and watching what people have posted always makes me laugh. There’s always something to find to fill a post and people will watch because its only a few seconds long.
How to Cheat
Okay, so you can go out and search through video sites and find cool stuff and share and post, or you can cheat. There are many sites that specialise in eye catching content, whether they made it or they share it from the sources I suggested above. It’s like they did the work for you and all you have to do is visit them and share their posts. Reddit bills itself as the internet’s front page and consists of a list of items that users have posted and voted up the listings so the most popular stuff is at the top. Buzzfeed is a news and entertainment site where they share and make original content. Huff Post has more serious news but also has an excellent comedy section. Nerdist has more of a science fiction/fantasy/technology bent to it but again makes good original videos. Distractify specialises in stories/videos/content that will draw you in and link you on to many other stories. The point being that they are deliberately constructed to be enticing to look at.
There are many other sites just like these that have already done the work for you when it comes to creating enticing content, and you simply have to search for the stuff that’s right for your customers. This is all about leveraging other people’s content to build your relationship with your customers. Then when the time comes to ask them to spend, they may feel like your company deserves some of their hard earned pennies.
