To simply create a video for a business is great; well thought out and well produced content will give your search engine results a good boost; however, it’s important to have a strategy in place that will ensure your videos are providing ongoing value.
Here are a few ideas and tips to help make your video marketing more effective:
Review & Update the Titles of Videos
Are the titles of the videos still relevant?
Are they catchy & engaging?
Do they reflect the current messaging strategy or target words of the business?
If they don’t, it’s time to change them.
The title of your video is one of the most critical factors for search engines to determine what the video is about. 55% of Google universal search results include videos, this is huge opportunity in search factors which need to be taken advantage of.
Video titles also need to be appealing to searchers, so avoiding keyword stuffing and using more descriptive words to entice clicks.
Do some research to find out what the most searches are, but here are a few ideas for video titles that have been shown to boost interest.
Include things like:
Steps to …
• How to (one of the most searched words)
• Tutorial
• Best
• Funny (We’ve all done it!
Can any of your video titles be rewritten to include these words?
Review and Update Video Descriptions
5,000 characters or roughly 800 words are allowed on YouTube for a video description, so make sure that space is being used advantageously.
Important keywords should be at the beginning of the description, and include a website or blog link.
Hyperlinks are allowed in the description boxes on YouTube, so this can increase referral traffic back to your website and you should be able to monitor this through using the analytics.
Review & Refresh YouTube Tags
Are there misleading tags working against the video in the search algorithm?
Updating the video tags is a good way to refresh the video and increase its visibility in the search.
There are 4 main types of video tags that people should be aware of:
• Specific tags
One word keywords that covers the topic. If YouTube gives you suggestions that are what you essentially want, use them, but also use the same words in a generic way.
• Compound tags
Multiple-word tags. Copy the video title and use it as a tag, leave out conjunctions and prepositions (such as: ‘of’, ‘in’, ‘and’, etc.), because YouTube ignores these types of words.
• Generic tags
Words like how-to, tutorial and vlog. YouTube offers suggestions, use them. • Misspellings
If keywords include commonly misspelled words, include these in the tags on purpose to capture searchers typing it in the search bar. This is an increasingly important area since people frequently mistype information. For instance, people often type our name incorrectly as TakeOn TV instead of TakeOneTV, we tag the misspelling to capture all those searches.
Optimize Posting Times
To boost declining video views is to look at the social media metrics to analyse what days and times videos are being posted.
Optimal times when audiences are online might be being missed. Identify different patterns in the times of the day and day of the weeks when most of the audience appears to be online and interacting with content – these are the times that videos should be researched.
One of the peak times for researching on line is Sunday afternoon or evening!
CoSchedule recently complied research from over 6 of the top marketing blogs on the best time to post on social media and broke it up into palatable advice:
• Facebook: 1-4pm, late into the week and at weekends.
• Twitter: 12-3pm, with a peak best time of 5pm. During working week is best.
• LinkedIn: 5-6pm midweek.
• Google+: Beginning of the workday, morning is optimal.
• Pinterest: Saturdays are the best bet – and later at night.
• Instagram: Monday gets more attention
Understand Where the Audience is (and Follow Them!)
For some people and companies, the ‘if you build it, they will come’ concept may work, but for most, video content can quickly disappear into the vast world of online videos.
If this is happening re-evaluate where the target audience is, and investigate how to get the videos discovered more easily. Essentially, you need to put your videos where your audience is looking, be that Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Websites or Industry Directories.
A first step that could be taken is to identify how viewers are finding the videos. Look at the referral traffic numbers of the specific video. Which source is gaining the views? Which are driving the longer watching times?
We hope you found these hints and tips useful, try them out in a logical sequence and see what makes the most difference for your business. If you’d like any help with future video marketing please do give us a call on 01494 898 919 and we’ll arrange a complimentary discovery session.
…because seeing is believing!