What to do with Your Finished Film
The key to a great digital distribution strategy
So, you hired a production company and collaborated on the strategy, style and story of your film; they shot it, edited it and now they’ve handed you the finished product. What now? How do you make sure that your intended audience has exposure to your video? Unfortunately, just uploading a video to YouTube isn’t enough to guarantee that the awesome video you spent energy, money and time creating gets the reach it deserves. Here are some tips to rack up those views, and get your story out there!
Use YouTube
Don’t get me wrong, YouTube is undoubtedly the first place your video should go. Now the second most popular search engine in the world behind Google, YouTube is an integral part of any video marketing strategy. If your business or organization doesn’t already have a YouTube channel, create one and upload your film in the highest possible quality! If you have the marketing budget, or you are a 501c3 nonprofit, you can use Google’s Adwords program to turn your video into a YouTube advert – as a video overlay, a display banner, a skippable in-stream video or a non-skippable in stream video. Registered nonprofits are able to register with Google for Adwords Grants and receive $10,000 in free advertisements per month. This is an amazing resource that every nonprofit should try to implement. If this is the intention for your film from the start, let the production company know from the beginning of the creative process!
If you don’t intend to use the video for YouTube advertising and wish for it to be found through search engines, make sure that it is named in a way that search engines can use. Use a keyword phrase format instead of a full sentence. For example, if a user wanted to find a personal trainer in their area who specialized in back pain prevention they wouldn’t Google: “which personal trainer in Austin, TX is good for working with people suffering from back pain or slipped disks?”. Instead they would Google: “personal trainer Austin back pain”. In the same way, ensure your video is named with the keywords or phrases your audience would type to come across your video. This may seem simple, but often cool marketing lingo titled videos miss out on possible search engine results!
Rather than rely on YouTube alone as the hosting platform for your content, use it as a tool to drive your audience to your website, where they can learn more about your business or organization, without the distraction of cat videos or Kanye! One way you can do this is by adding annotations to your videos, which encourage viewers to click-through to see more content. Annotations have a higher success rate than web page banner adverts, however, they don’t appear on certain platforms (mobiles, tablets or smart TVs) and users have the ability to prevent annotations from popping up on their videos.
Use Your Website
A great way to improve search engine results is to ensure that you don’t cannibalize your own efforts in the Google/YouTube cycle (remember they are the same company!). If you use your uploaded YouTube video, and embed it onto your site by linking through to the YouTube file you create a YouTube loop. Video marketing expert Rand Fishkin recommends you embed the video directly onto your website, with a slightly different name than your YouTube upload. Uploading your video in multiple places and then promoting the channels separately ensures that you’ll have an adequate presence on both. Click Rand’s name above for some more info on SEO!
Whilst video marketing is undoubtedly more effective in increasing awareness and sales than text-based marketing (check out our previous blog post on the power of video marketing for more on this!) there are some users who do prefer to read through copy – maybe they’re surfing the web at work and don’t want the audio of your film to give them away! So why not give users both options? Include your embedded video in a blog post, either with the transcript of the film or a related article. This, inevitably, repeats the keywords in your film and increases the ‘searchability’ of your post as well as catering to all types of learners and web surfers.
Be Multi-Platform Friendly
Whilst YouTube and your own website are the most effective places for your full, finished film to go, the popularity of super short form social media platforms such as snapchat, instagram, vine and facebook should not be ignored. Most marketing forums and experts agree that the 3 – 5 second viral trend is just that – a trend – and the length of the video does not have an impact on its potential to go viral. However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t capitalize on that trend and use it to drive more traffic to your website. During the editing process of your film, ask your production company to isolate a few clips of 10 – 15 seconds that include an engaging piece of your story (as well as some still images) that can be uploaded periodically to these platforms. This way you can ensure that the smartphone generation, who might not ordinarily sit down to watch your 15 minute brand film, product launch or event coverage, are introduced to your story and encouraged to engage.
The key is to not to rely on YouTube or Google or Facebook etc to market your film for you, but to use these platforms as a tool to drive people to your website so that they can learn about the story of your organization and be prompted to share it, or contribute to it. At One Story we can ensure that your finished film exceeds your expectations, and we can guide you through an effective digital distribution strategy! Check out our other blog posts to see why you need video and how the creative process works, or if you’re ready to get started connect with us and our team can start working on getting your story heard.