Video Content: Get More Views With These 5 Best Practices

Now that you know how to use video in your content marketing strategy and you’ve how to create videos people will actually watch, how do you entice viewers to take the plunge and make that all-important click to watch your video?

Here are five best practices to help your video masterpieces reach the biggest, targeted audience.

1. Create a Catchy Title

You want something that will both grab their attention and offer a clue about your content. Focus on the benefit to the viewer: “10 Tips for…” or “Watch this before you…” and so on. Just make sure your content delivers on any promise you make. Nobody likes a click-baiter.   

2. Choose an Eye-catching Thumbnail

In case you don’t know, a “thumbnail” is the image of your video that’s frozen on the screen with the play button. Think of it as your video’s book cover. It’s the first impression potential viewers get of your video—and if you let YouTube automatically choose it, you’ll probably end up with a random image of someone caught mid-word with a goofy expression on their face.

Many opt for an easy-to-read title text combined with an image of the person speaking on the video, like the ones below:

As you can see, bright colors grab attention. If you’re doing a series, you might create a thumbnail template or choose consistent colors, font treatment, and overall style to make your videos easy to recognize.

3. Craft a Compelling Description

That little blurb under your video helps users understand what your video is about and why they need to watch it.

Some things to keep in mind…

Keep it short. What shows up on YouTube videos is about the first 60 characters. You can go longer, but viewers will have to click “show more” to see it.

Introduce yourself. Don’t assume viewers already know who you are and what you do. Even a line or two of boilerplate description will help give context to your content. You can put it at the end of your description “below the fold” and it’s a great place to add a…

Link to your website. If viewers like what they see, they’re likely to want to know more about you and what you have to offer. It’s good to have the link as part of your actual video, but a quick, easy-to-click link in the description makes it a no-brainer for them to visit your site.

Use Keywords. Think about the different things potential viewers might be looking for, and include them. You can use an SE keyword ranking tool or the YouTube keyword tool to find relevant keywords.

Connect from Multiple Places
It goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway: different people use different social media channels. The more places you feature your video, the more you’re likely to expand your reach.

Upload to YouTube. You were probably going to do this anyway, but sometimes Captain Obvious has a point.

Embed your video on your site/blog. You could just link to your YouTube video, but why send people off your site to a place where they may get sucked into hours of cat videos, never to return?

Feature it on your Facebook “Videos” tab. Your Featured Video will be prominently displayed at the top of your videos tab. Plus, it will be in the “About” section on your page’s main timeline. If you have a series of videos, you can also set up a video playlist to showcase them all.

Link to it from as many places as you can. The number of links that lead to your video affects keywords rankings in search.

Consider Facebook ads to promote to a target audience. For more on how to be successful at that, see 4 Ways to Optimize Your Facebook Ads.

Choose the Best Time to Post
When is your target audience most likely to be on Facebook? Twitter? Pinterest? Any and all social media platforms you’re on? Post your video when your people are apt to be scrolling, so it’s less likely to be hidden deep in their feed under all those cat videos. What day of the week does your site get the highest traffic? Embed your video early on that day (or the night before) to get maximum views.

We can’t wait to see what amazing videos you’ll create and look forward to hearing about your successful campaigns. If you’d like additional promo ideas for your videos—or help with any aspect of your social media—contact us! We’re here to help.