How to Optimize Your Video Marketing Campaign
Why Video Marketing?
Every good marketer already knows it: With people’s busy schedules and short attention spans, simple text is not always the most effective way to get your message across. If you want a user to actually process what you’re saying, you may need to go a different route. Video marketing is an excellent way to portray emotion and tone in a way that text simply never could.
As the old saying goes: “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
#1 Make Great Content
You wouldn’t publish a half-done or unproofread post to your blog, would you? Video content created for your company should be held to the highest quality standards. That means high-quality filming, a professional microphone setup, and excellent lighting. Anything less means you are representing your company in an unprofessional way. This will turn users off and leave you with very little brand authority or trust.
You should do everything you can to ensure that your company comes across in all of your video content as well-informed and professional. Before you can do anything with any video, you should check it against your Video Quality Standards checklist:
- Excellent lighting: No graininess, no weird shadows, and no need to turn the screen brightness up to 100% to make everything out in vivid detail.
- Relevant setting: Why would you film a “Meet Our Founder” video in a car or restaurant? Use relevant and professional settings, but keep in mind the setting. A well-presented office background can come across as authentic, while white and solid color backdrops provide more of a corporate, clean aesthetic. Keep it real, and relevant.
- High-Quality Footage: No one wants to watch a shaky camera at 480p during what’s supposed to be a professional product demonstration. Use an HD or 4K camera and a tripod. Edit as needed.
- High-Quality Sound: If there’s wind cutting through your voice, coughing and sneezing in the background, a dump truck driving by or other annoyances, no one is going to want to watch your content, and they certainly won’t be sharing it (at least not for the right reasons).
Even bad video content can get ranked in search engines, but no real user is going to stick around. And, if the end-user doesn’t like what they see, video isn’t going to do anything to increase your ROI.
#2 Name Accordingly
Once you have created your content, it’s time to publish it. You have a few ways of going about this: Put it on your YouTube Channel, and then embed it elsewhere when you want to write about it or share. Upload directly to your Facebook page for the sake of your Facebook marketing. Or, host it locally on your own website. The latter actually isn’t recommended because it will just slow down page load speed. Plus, you’ll have a more difficult time getting your content ranked.
Instead, put your video up on YouTube or another popular content hosting platform. Name and populate the video accordingly, being certain to use keywords (tags) and a complete description and title to help users locate it.
#3 Transcribe It
Not everyone will have the chance to watch your video. They may be on a slow internet connection, not have the time to watch it right that instant or, in a rare case, they might actually prefer to read. Those with hearing impairments may also prefer reading over watching. For this reason, you should always have an article to go with any video you post to your website. Embed it at the top of the page and then write an article detailing what the video covers. This will also help rank your video, and improve the SEO of your website by giving you fresh content with a nice mix of media.
You should also be sure to edit the automatically generated captions as needed so that users can turn them on and still enjoy your video content, even if they can’t hear it.
Transcriptions also help Google relate the content of the video to search results, thus improving your SEO.
#4 Use VideoObject Schema
The rich snippet for videos is known as the VideoObject Schema. This allows you to input information about the thumbnail, video length, transcripts, and other important factors that can help get your video content ranked. Follow the markup (code) given at schema.org when embedding video into your blog and it will help you get ranked while, at the same time, giving your video a more visual presence on the search results page because the search engine will be able to include the right thumbnail, description, and so on.
#5 Get It Out There
The final tip to helping you optimize your video content is getting it onto the internet across multiple platforms. Upload a video to Facebook as the exclusive “first look”, and then later on add it to YouTube and other video hosting platforms. Embed the video on your blog and write and article about it, and then share that article on other platforms as well. One single, well-made video can go a long way in promoting your business, so get creative.
Product-specific videos can also be used in promotion for that product, on the product page, and more. There are many ways to keep re-purposing your video content.
What Next?
Our friends at Semrush put together an epic blog post on how to setup and optimize a YouTube channel. Check it out.
I also recommend you check out the Video Strategy Blueprint v 2.0 PDF for tips on strategy and video basics.
Neil K Carroll
Owner
I was your average small-town video guy, but when the pandemic hit, everything changed.
I ran a traditional video production agency with exclusively local clientele, a downtown studio, and a busy schedule. My days were long, travel frequent, and life as I knew it revolved around producing video content for my clients.
Then everything changed. Schools and daycares closed, my professional life was disrupted, and I found myself navigating a new path. It was one of uncertainty, with no end in sight and no destination obvious, but it demanded flexibility and resilience.
Unlocking Your Ability to Create Powerful, Professional Video Content
If you had to create an engaging, professional video for your business today, could you pull it off? If you’re like many consultants and other business professionals, you’d probably feel completely overwhelmed. Even finding a starting point might seem impossible. And that’s frustrating, because you know if you want to grow your business, video is an essential part of your marketing, sales, and communications strategies.
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If this sounds like what you’ve been looking for, please take a moment to check out the vidwheel Creator Network.