The use of video to promote a business is not a new phenomenon. In fact, the production of a promotional video which goes viral is still one of the commercial holy grails, one that every business hopes to achieve.
Until your own video goes viral, in fact, whether it does or not, here are some tips and tactics for effectively promoting a new video for Youtube.
We’re making some simple presumptions here. Firstly, that you have a Youtube station for your business, and secondly, that you have youtube promotion produced a fantastic video to promote your business. We’ll be doing an article on how to make fantastic promotional videos for Youtube in the coming weeks, so weather for that if you want some top tips. For the time being, we’ve had a lot of enquiries about video promotions, so let’s look at how to promote a video you have ready.
The first and most obvious way to announce a new video is to mention it in your blog. Doing a blog feature on your video and embedding the video within the blog will jump-start the views on it. Launch the video, talk about it and encourage people to check it out.
Your company newsletter or email is another perfect spot for their announce your new video and encourage views and shares. Again, you can talk about the video, encouraging your audience to view it, and you can also upload it into an email or newsletter.
Posting it on your social media is an absolute must. Mention your new video and post the anchor text or upload it into Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Make sure you use the right hashtags and keywords in your captions and descriptions too. With Facebook, you can upload a Youtube video. With Twitter contain a tiny url link for your video. With Pinterest you can pin a visual and a link directly to your video.
Youtube videos are also worth promoting on the popular social bookmark creating sites. Consider promoting your video on StumpleUpon, for example.
Whatever social platform you post a video link on; you are increasing the likelihood that it will be viewed. Now, as views climb, it will be seen by the Youtube search engine too. And don’t forget, that Google sees popular and well viewed Youtube videos browsing results too. You want as many people viewing your video, as quickly as possible. Videos have a relatively short space life these days, so the art of promoting them involves getting links to view them out to as many platforms as you can, as quickly as possible.
PR is also a great way to basically launch your new video. Releasing a well timed PR article to various newswire services and media outlets will also help to get news of your video out into the mainstream. Think creatively about who would be happy to add an article about your video to their blog, newsletter, or once a week update email; are you a member of a trade group or organisation? Employing some traditional PR tactics will give you a good selection of media outlets where you can promote your video too.
If you have the budget you can also consider advertising your video. Google AdWords, or Facebook ads with links directly to the video, and advertising on Youtube itself are all ways you can invest in your video. However, for most of us, this is often a expensive option. Consider what’s best for your business. If you can afford to invest some extra money in advertising your video then it is worth setting a budget and giving it a helping hand for the first week or so. However, for small to medium sized businesses, we might recommend you try the free methods first. They take time and effort and it all hinges on how effectively you share your business content, but there is no doubt it is effective.