When you spend a lot of time and resources producing great video content, you can’t afford to let it go to waste!
Whether you’re looking to connect with people on a broad scale or targeting a niche audience, your goal is to get in front of the right people. Here are five tips to optimize the impact of your video and maximize your video distribution.
1. Have A Game Plan
Before you shoot the first piece of video, you need to have a game plan in mind for both content creation and distribution.
Start with the end goal in mind. Is it to drive viewers to your landing page or website? Is it to get them to pick up the phone and call? Is the goal to increase social sharing or engagement? Whatever your goal, tailor your placement and presentation to meet it.
If you are driving people from your video to your online resources, make sure you’ve set up the right landing spots. Also, make sure you’ve set up your analytics to measure performance.
Investigate distribution channels, line up your promotion and marketing approaches, and set your budget.
2. Know Your Audience
Effective content distribution is about getting your video content to the right audience. To do that, you’ve got to know who they are, what they want, and where they go online.
Gather as much data as possible and create target personas. These personas represent the target viewer that you’re trying to reach.
3. Be Original
The amount of video being produced is staggering:
- YouTube has more than a billion users.
- Nearly half the global population watch an hour or more of online videos every week.
- More video content is uploaded in 30 days than the major TV networks created in the past 30 years.
- 87% of online marketers are creating video content.
With all of that content floating around online, it can be difficult to stand out. Originality is key.
Context plays a pivotal role as well. Videos that have better relevancy to the environment where they are displayed have higher engagement.
4. Diversify Your Distribution
Don’t limit your distribution channels. You want to include as many channels as possible in your distribution strategy.
Map your potential available assets: owned site(s), mailing lists, video discovery platforms, and relevant blogs. Social channels can be highly effective using a combination of free and paid placements. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and others are built around sharing engaging content. Social sites and users love video.
5. Be Agile
The better you can tailor your videos to your target audience and present them in the medium’s preferred format, the more successful you will be. Consider publishing different versions of the same video that fit the behavior and audience tendencies of each distribution channel.
Marketers call this segmenting. Using different versions of the same messaging targeted to different groups can more effectively maximize your ROI.
Maximize Your Distribution
When you’re producing your videos, it starts with crafting content that provides value for the viewer. Whether it’s informational, educational, or entertaining, you must deliver quality.
It’s just as important that you maximize your distribution. After all, it doesn’t matter how good it is if nobody sees it. Creation is just the first step. It’s the promotion, platform, and distribution that will make it effective.
