How to Make Your Videos Easy to Discover and Share
Mobile video has become an effective marketing tool thanks to the popularity of smartphones and improvements in mobile technology. A study conducted by video technology company Unruly Media show that engagement with mobile video is three times higher than desktop:
Unruly used data from more than 3000 branded campaigns in this study. They found that the average click-through rates (CTR) for mobile is 13.63%, while desktop sits at 5.45%. They also found that interaction rates for mobile video have increased by a whopping 105.63% this year from Q3 2013.
Another study conducted by Harris Interactive earlier this year revealed that 67% of mobile video viewers discover new videos through social sharing.
With so many mobile users discovering videos through their social apps and networks, you need to incorporate the following steps into your video marketing campaign to improve engagement and discoverability.
Create Videos that are Relevant and Valuable
Knowing your target audience well is the most important step in creating effective videos. Don’t just look at statistics and demographics. Find out what your audience’s interests are. Determining what kind of content they like to share and what they like to talk about on social networks helps you create a video that appeals to their emotions and convinces them it’s something worth sharing with friends.
Offer Incentive for Sharing
A little incentive always goes a long way. Giving fans who frequently share your video something in return for their support can help encourage them to keep it up. This is a common trend in the music industry, with record labels often providing early access to full song tracks in exchange for shares.
Many artists also use the video itself as the incentive for a social media campaign. Dave Matthews Band, for example, asked their Twitter followers to tweet #Rooftop with a link to a promotional page to unlock an exclusive music video.
We’ve made a video for Rooftop! Share #Rooftop to help unlock the exclusive video here: http://t.co/dLbVZItjEP
— dave matthews band (@davematthewsbnd) August 20, 2013
Use the Right Channels to Distribute Your Video
There are several social video apps and networks that you can use for your video marketing efforts. Mobile apps like Instagram Video, Socialcam, Viddy, and Vine is great for creating, posting, and promoting short videos, while video hosting and sharing sites like YouTube or Vimeo are ideal for longer, more in-depth videos.
You need to integrate your videos into your website, or share them on your other social media accounts to increase their exposure. It’s also important to look into video SEO services to optimize your uploaded videos for search, especially if they’re hosted on YouTube.
If you haven’t started including mobile video in your digital marketing strategy yet, you should start doing it soon. Talk to us to get started!