You’ve got your video. What now?

Chances are, if you’re reading this then you’ve realized how video is the best and most effective way of communicating with your audience, you’ve gone out and found an amazing video production company, and you’ve had a fantastic video made that tells your story perfectly.  Now what?

Getting your video produced just arms with you with the tool you need to get your message out there, now you need to put it to use, get it front of the right people and ultimately get a return on your investment.  Simply uploading it to YouTube and letting it gather dust isn’t going to cut the mustard, you need to be a bit savvier than that.  Here’s our guide to the best channels you should use to promote your video:

1 – YouTube

You can’t ignore the number one player on the Internet when it comes to Video.  YouTube is by far the most visited video-sharing site online, in fact it’s the second biggest search engine there is after Google, so you need a presence on there.  The problem is over a hundred hours of video gets uploaded to YouTube every minute. You need ways of making your video get noticed.

Make sure you give it a title that entices people to watch it, something that promises the viewer that there is something in it for them if they click play. YouTube is littered with millions of unwatched videos with poor titles that people just skim over because they sound boring.  Next give it some tags so YouTube knows what’s in the video, and can make sure it appears next to relevant searches.  Tags can be literal (your company name, your business sector etc.) or abstract (is it funny, serious etc.).  Try and include a range of tags to cover any search that could lead to you.

Lastly write a description of your video that briefly explains what it is about, and any other relevant information.  Make sure to always include your full url in the description, this really is golden rule number 1.  When people watch your video you want to ensure that they can act on your message by quickly and easily clicking through to your website.  You only have a few seconds of people attention, so maximize this time by having your website url right there at the top of your description for them to click on.

2 – Facebook

Facebook is now a hugely popular video-sharing site in its own right now, and you can either upload directly to your company page or link to it from YouTube.  It has a few benefits over YouTube in that you can boost posts by way of paid advertising so you can target the type of people you want to reach, and sharing videos is hugely popular on Facebook, so there’s a good chance your video will get liked and shared and your followers will do a lot of the job of marketing your video for you.  It’s a great way of engaging with your audience as you can reply to comments and see who likes your video.

There is a downside to Facebook, in that due to the way their algorithms work all your posts won’t automatically be seen by all your followers. There’s a chance you might miss some people who would otherwise respond to the video.  Paid posts can counter this somewhat, but just be aware standard posts can sometimes linger in no mans land.

3 – Twitter

Twitter moves a lot faster than Facebook, and you need to keep on top of it to get real rewards, but it’s a social media you can’t ignore.  Tweet a link to your video, and for maximum exposure try and include one o two relevant hashtags (not too many though, it can look like overkill).  Hashtags like #bizitalk are great as they can generate plenty of retweets that widens the audience your video reaches.

As a lot of people follow hundreds, if not thousands of accounts, your tweets can get buried in their feeds, so tweet it several times at relevant intervals to gain maximum exposure.

4 – Google+

It’s a relatively new player, but amazing for SEO and a rapidly growing social media used by millions of people around the world.  Any content that gets uploaded to your YouTube account will automatically get shared on your Google+ (assuming they are linked to the same account) so make sure you promote it with +1’s.  Join relevant communities on Google+ and share it within these circles.  The more +1’s you get the higher up the Google search engine results you’ll appear.

5 – Pinterest

Another new player, Pinterest is peculiar in the social media world as its users are predominantly female, so remember this when you ‘pin’ content.  It’s quite hard to self promote yourself on here as you rely pretty much exclusively on other people repining your content, so your results can vary hugely depending on what your product is, but it is certainly worth exploring.

6 – LinkedIn

You might not automatically think of this as a place to share video content, but LinkedIn is actually the perfect place to get your message out there if you are trying to market a B2B product, as it’s populated almost exclusively by professionals.  Don’t be afraid to get your new video on there, you might not get as many views as on YouTube, but the views you do get could be gold dust.

7 – Social bookmarking sites.

There are literally thousands of these out there.  They’re the sort of sites people go on to waste a bit of time, and you’ve no doubt been on some of them yourself!  The most popular ones include; Reddit, Stumbleupon, Digg and Delicious, but there are countless more, and you can share your content on these sites to get great exposure.  It can be hit and miss, as only the most popular posts gain traction, but if you hit the right niche you can get shared and viewed, widening your exposure online.

8 – Industry specific sites

Chances are there will be websites closely linked to your industry and your target audience, so you should really focus on trying to get your video seen on these sites.  Sometimes it can be as simple as submitting content to them, but occasionally you might need to email the administrator of the site and make them aware of your content.  Most people are only too glad to have free content they can put on their site as long as it is god quality and will interest their audience, so don’t be afraid to initiate contact.  The best response you get from your video is going to be from your niche market, so the views you get form these sites can be the most valuable views your video gets.

By sharing your video content on all the above mediums you’ll give yourself a great chance on capitalising on your investment.  It’s by no means a definitive list, so use this as a starting point rather than the whole picture. Mooviemakers are one of the longest established animated explainer video companies in the UK. If you need any more information we’re always here to help so feel free to contact us for more advice on getting the most out of your video content.