By: Lori Smith
Videos – scary yes – not within your comfort zone,
probably – but I can’t stop emphasizing how
important videos are to your business’ success. I
admit, I’m just starting to develop a video content
strategy for my business. I’m currently working on a
couple of videos for my website. Be on the lookout for
my videos and a post on what tools I use.
If you want your business to continue to be relevant
in the crowd of online competition, then you need to
get on board with leveraging the potential that
videos offer.
If you’re still not convinced, let me give you a clearer
picture of how beneficial videos can be to your
business. Here’s a few statistics from some of the top
marketing experts.
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64% of viewers are more likely to buy after watching a video
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92% of viewers share videos
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Including a video on your homepage can increase conversion rates by 80%
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Videos used in e-mails can lead to a 200% – 300% increase in click through rates
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Using the word video in an email subject line boosts open rates by 19%
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52% of marketing professionals say video content has the best ROI
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Video ads increase purchase intent by 97% and brand awareness by 139%
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Social media videos get 1200% more shares than text and images combined
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58% of consumers consider businesses that produce video content to be more trustworthy
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Videos increase the chance of a front page Google result by 53%
Do I have your attention now?
According to Content Marketing Institute’s 2016
Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends research, 79% of
B2B marketers and 82% of B2C marketers in North
America are using some form of video content as part
of their marketing strategy
Considering this stiff competition, how do you go
have to look at videos in the same way you view your
other content. Videos like articles must be relevant,
strategic, helpful, and valuable to your audience. But,
at the same time, you want to convey your personality
and build a positive brand association.
In short, be yourself, have fun, and make it
informative.
Planning A Video Content Strategy
You need to start considering videos as an integral
not just an insignificant addition that’s done once in a
blue moon.
With that said, you should also treat videos the same
as you would any other expense in your business if
you want to see a return on your investment. It’s
important to make careful decisions in how you plan,
produce and promote your videos.
Developing an actual video content strategy will
provide you with the foundation your videos need to
be successful. Below is 9 steps to planning a strategy
that will take your videos from what the hell am I
doing, to awesome.
1) Plan The Role Of Your Videos
Before you even hit record think first about what you
want to accomplish with your video. What role do you
want it to play in your brand’s story? Then, plan out
the steps you’ll need to take to produce, promote,
and measure the performance of your videos.
Planning this out in advance will help you make
better decisions about what types of videos will be
worth spending your marketing dollars on.
2) Plan Your End Goal
What do you want to get out of your videos? What
results do you want to see?
Most often with social media metrics, success is
measured by views, but that’s not the way to truly
measure the success of a social media post. At least
not a post, with a purpose. Whether it’s brand
awareness, leads, subscribers, or some other goal,
your video should have a strategy.
Include a call to action in your video that leads your
viewers to the next step in your funnel. This might be
a landing page to sign up for a webinar, opt-in freebie
or some other product.
I wrote an article about ways to use videos in your
business. You can read it here.
Even if you have no specific goal for your video, at
least ask your viewers to share it to broaden your
brand’s reach.
3) Plan Your Content – Write A Script
Delivering your content on camera is not the same as
delivering it in writing. Written words don’t sound the
same when you speak them out loud. You want to
speaking on camera, not sound like a robot.
Videos can get weighed down by the heavy content,
which will likely cause your readers to either doze off
or bail on the video altogether.
Crafting a script will help you not only stay on topic
but also infuse some of your personality into the
video. A script can also help you avoid awkward
pauses and the dreaded ummms.
I have a free Workbook For Writing An Effective Video
Script. Get access below.
4) Plan Where You Will Host Your Videos
You need to decide where your video content will live
before distributing it. You have 2 options for this:
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You can host your videos on your own website.
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While this might be a little limiting in overall
reach, you have the control to customize your
videos to look and feel exactly how you want them to.
But beware, uploading videos to your site takes up a
lot of bandwidth and storage. When you’re using a
shared hosting server, and many people are trying
to watch your video at one time it can cause your
videos to either stop after a few seconds or not load at
all.
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Use a video hosting platform such as Vimeo,
Brightcove, Wistia, Facebook Live, or YouTube. All
you have to do is upload/record your video to the
platform of your choice. You’ll then have access to
some code that you can embed where you want
the video to appear on your site. The video is then
streamed from the host’s server instead of the
server provided by your website platform. This will
make your videos play more smoothly, and they will
be easier to share on other social platforms.
5) Plan The Stage For Social Plays
Knowing where to distribute your videos is about
knowing your audience and where they like to
hangout online. This will help you choose what social
media networks to share your videos on to get the
most audience engagement.
If your videos aren’t being viewed then what’s the point
of even making them. You need to get your videos in
front of the right audience, on the right platform, at the
right time.
A little research of your ideal audience will tell you
what you need to know about their online habits and
where you should be sharing your video content.
6) Plan On Adding A Transcript
Search engines aren’t exactly the most proficient at
indexing video content as they are text. Adding a
transcript of your video will help you to overcome this
SEO shortfall.
Another reason to provide a transcript is, not
everyone likes to consume information in the same
way. Some of your audience might prefer reading an
article/post rather than watching a video.
You want to make sure not only for your SEO but for
your audience as well, that you’re providing your
content in different formats.
7) Plan Your Tags
For SEO purposes make sure to add relevant tags,
titles, and descriptions to the metadata of your video
content just as you would text and images.
As with other assets on your site you want your videos
to be tagged with your target keywords so they get
ranked higher in relevant searches. Optimizing your
videos the same as you would your other assets will
only help improve traffic.
8) Plan To Promote Your Videos
Share your videos with influencers, your subscribers,
and your followers the same as you do your blog
posts.
You can easily share them with a screen capture
along with a link to your video on social media or in
your newsletter. Make sure, to always ask your
audience to share your video to expand your reach.
9) Plan On Tracking Engagement Metrics
One of the metrics you need to track that you
wouldn’t normally measure with text or images is
attention span. What you say??? The engagement
data for your videos will help you refine and
customize your video content strategy. This will give
you the insight you need to provide a better audience
experience.
Attention span is the amount of time someone
spends viewing the video. Think of it this way, if you
find that viewers are only watching a few seconds of
your videos and then clicking out of it, you need to
figure out why. Maybe your intro is too long or you’re
not grabbing their attention in the first place.
Point is, you have the ability to track this metric and
make adjustments accordingly. Think like a viewer
and create videos that YOU yourself would want to
watch.
Final Thoughts
Did I mention that videos are going to become more
and more important to your success? I did, well, it
bears repeating because I see a lot of people
struggling with using videos strategically.
Developing a strategic plan for your videos has the
potential to take your business to another level.
Videos can bring your business from behind the
screen to out in front. Meaning they will become the
main way to put a face to your business and build
brand awareness.
If you’re using videos haphazardly, without purpose,
or not at all, you’re missing out on a super exciting
marketing tool. So change out of those sweats, fix
your hair, and starting recording.
