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If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth an 89% return on investment.
According to this 2020 B2B Marketing Mix Report, 41% of surveyed marketing professionals said they would work to incorporate a video content marketing strategy.
Clearly, video has been on the rise for marketers as it is an engaging way to involve your target audience in your message but also because consumers are looking for more video content.
Promo conducted a 500 person survey surrounding online video watching habits and it revealed close to 50% of respondents watched over 5 videos a day. This means that your audience is watching and searching for video content – 67% used YouTube as their go-to online video platform.
If you’re not yet using video as a part of your content marketing strategy, you need to work it in. Without video content, you’re abandoning the portion of your audience who are actively seeking visual content.
If you want to skip ahead to a specific video distribution tactic, here’s a TL;DR
Video Content Marketing on Social Media Platforms
1. Upload Your Content to Facebook, Natively
2. Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram are the Top Channels for Short Videos
3. LinkedIn Has the Highest Retention of B2B Marketers
4. YouTube is the Market Leader in Video Sharing Platforms
Redistribution ≥ Distribution
5. Gifs are Great for Landing Pages
6. Repurpose Top Content into Blog Posts
7. Engage Through Email with Video
Competitive Advantage
8. Learn From Your Competitors and Industry Leaders
Branded Content
10. Brand Storytelling lets People in Behind the Scenes
Tagging and Transcriptions
11. Meta Tags for the Benefit of Google Bots
12. Transcriptions Increase the Value of Your Information
13. Captions Create Inclusivity for Those Viewing without Sound
14. Built-in CTA’s and Links Push Prospects Through Your Funnel
Video Content Marketing on Social Platforms
1.Upload Your Videos to Facebook, Natively
85% of all video content watched on Facebook is watched without sound, this only re-emphasizes the need for captioning content – especially if Facebook is going to be a chosen distribution channel.
Once on Facebook, video optimization for social media is key – 92% of Facebook users access the app or website through mobile. On mobile, square videos can result in an 80-100% increase in engagement and in some cases bring in 30-35% more video views.
If you don’t think mobile optimization is relevant, just remember that 94% of Facebook ad revenue comes from a mobile platform. Speaking of Facebook ads, the cost to purchase ads decreased 6% in 2019 while a 37% increase in ad impressions occurred.
Without getting too far away from content distribution, you should consider the importance of going live on your social media platforms (and consider using a live streaming platform if you want to stream on multiple channels at once.). Facebook users are 4 times more likely to watch live stream videos than recorded content.
Leverage that information by hosting a webinar or live Q&A based on a topic you recently released content, that way your webinar or Q&A is doing double duty – gaining engagement and promoting previous pieces of content. And once you’re done, you can use a video maker to edit and repurpose your live stream for distribution down the road.
2. Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram are the Top Channels for Short Videos
All three of these platforms support video content and are predominantly image/video sharing platforms. However, shortened content tends to perform better on these platforms.
Quick Stats
📱TikTok has an estimate of 800 million monthly users
📱Instagram has 1 billion monthly users, with 500 million daily story users, and it is the
fastest-growing social media platform in Canada.
📱Snapchat had 210 million daily users by the end of 2019 with over 210 million snaps
created daily.
These platforms are great for promoting teasers of your longer videos, a 30-second clip of an educational video with a link to the whole clip on your site.
Additionally, Instagram has rolled out its IGTV for longer video clips when needed.
IGTV is built for how you use your phone, showing vertical videos in full screen, these videos can be up to an hour-long – 59 minutes longer than an Instagram video allows.
Each account becomes its own channel that users can subscribe to – this is a great location for a video blog and posting how-to/FAQ videos. Video blogs are a great way to get across a sense of company culture and highlight the amazing and talented members of your team.
Good to Know: Both Instagram and TikTok support shop functions 🛍️🛍️
TikTok allows for video clips ranging in length from 15 seconds to 60 seconds. Making it the perfect place to leave engaging clips for your audience. Many brands have leveraged TikTok to share informational content pieces, creating trending videos that feature product benefits, upcoming events, or relatable content for their audience.
MonogDB has made great use of TikTok in promoting their content, company culture, and in spotting trends they can manipulate to their advantage. If you’re not an avid TikToker, like myself, the “things in my ____ that just make sense” audio has blown up with 330.3 K videos.
Or you can be like Jason Derulo and strictly create trending video content to boost your brand awareness and increase your audience base.
Have you heard his new song “Savage Love” yet? It was developed for TikTok based on his success on the platform and his phoenix rise back to fame.
When it comes to Snapchat marketing, content is displayed for 24 hours before being removed. Making it a great place to promote upcoming events and share pieces of content that speak to your audience. This is not the location to be posting walkthrough tutorials or content of a similar nature.
I could go off on all things involved in social media marketing but you’re here for video content distribution so, for now, that is all I will say about these platforms.
3. LinkedIn Maintains Retention of B2B Marketers
Whenever we think of B2B marketing the first place our minds wander to is LinkedIn and for good reason.
LinkedIn is by far the most reliable site for B2B companies to engage with one another. There are over 690 million users on LinkedIn, in over 200 countries, with a join rate of 2+ new members a second. These users are professionals from every industry who are online during working hours, with their business caps on.
All those stats make LinkedIn a B2B marketer’s playground, and we have the ultimate guide to B2B marketing on LinkedIn.
When it comes to video, LinkedIn does not disappoint us as it has emerged as the most successful channel for B2B video marketers – an overwhelming 87% of marketers using video on LinkedIn described it as an effective channel.
If you’re new to video marketing start by creating one of the most common types of video:
🎥 Explainer videos (72%)
🎥 Presentation Videos (49%)
🎥 Testimonial Videos (48%)
🎥 Sales Videos (42%)
🎥 Video Ads (42%)
Slack has made great use of Linkedin for explainer videos to educate their users on new updates, shortcuts, and underused features.
As you can see, Slack was able to generate over 12,000 views on one video they posted explaining the how-to and benefits of linking your Google Calendar to Slack. These viewers were able to then make a more informed decision about purchasing Slack for their team. If you saw that video as a current user you would be excited by the feature and are more likely to recommend Slack to a friend.
Although this may not be the kind of exciting video you imagine when thinking of marketing content, these video styles work to create conversions.
4.YouTube is the Market Leader in Video Sharing Platforms
Well, you knew this was coming up because you can’t talk about videos without discussing the kingpin that is YouTube.
If you’re looking to grow a YouTube platform for video content we have a lot of need to know YouTube marketing statistics for you → did you know that on average a first page YouTube video is 15 minutes long?
With over 2 billion monthly users, this is the place to be distributing your video content.
How-to videos are here to stay. 90% of DIYers watch how-to videos on YouTube during an actual project. These don’t have to be construction or hobby-styled how-to videos, software walkthroughs are just as popular on the platform.
Looking at Adobe’s YouTube account 👆👆 their most popular videos have a balance between tutorials or walkthroughs of their programs and promotional content showing off what you can accomplish with their software.
As we will discuss later on, video content is also a great way to increase brand awareness, by posting relatable on-brand content to your channel. This is content for your audience to enjoy without feeling pressured to buy items or trial a product; from this, you will develop a brand personality that will increase customer trust.
When distributing video content on YouTube you need to be consistent at uploading to ensure your content is being viewed and not lost within the 500 hours of YouTube content that is being uploaded every minute. Using a platform like DistroVid to automate this, adding videos not only to YouTube but also other platforms like Vevo, is a good move, particularly if you are making music promos.
Also, make sure you’re uploading your YouTube content the right way from the start. Although the platform supports almost all formats, the recommended format is MP4, so you might want to use a WebM to MP4 converter to set up your content for success. Additionally, tools like FlexClip can help you create and edit captivating videos that resonate with your audience, while a YouTube hashtag generator can help you find relevant YouTube hashtags.
As anticipated, 85% of video marketers are using YouTube whereas only 79% leverage Facebook – making these two platforms the most used among video marketers.
Remember to optimize for mobile, 70% of YouTube views come from a mobile device.
📱 When possible always use a square layout, with minimum dimensions of 600:600
📱 Video thumbnails need to have high contrast between foreground and background
📱 Youtube ideal dimensions are 1920 x 1080 or 1080p
📱 Ensure your text is large and legible – phone screens are small and will reduce the size of your content
📱 Preview it on mobile devices
Redistribution ≥ Distribution
Once all this fantastic content is distributed on the web, there are many ways to get eyes on that content. Beyond social media teasers and SEO optimization, let’s talk video content redistribution.
5.Gifs are Great for Landing Pages
Everyone loves gifs… or is it jifs… regardless of what you call it, we all enjoy them.
Something we don’t enjoy is a slow loading web page due to a video that auto-plays with sound on the homepage. If your page is struggling to load a video, why not turn that into a gif that clicks through?
Gifs are essentially condensed videos with animation added in so why not make a gif out of your video? It is easier than you think and they are a great way of sharing video content.
Mural has made good use of gifs on their webpage instead of opting for bigger video .mov files.
Maybe the video you have won’t gif well, no worries you can always use Canva to develop a personalized gif that gets across the message of your video content.
These gifs can work double-time by stopping social media scrollers in their tracks.
It is easy to glide past a static image but a moving gif in the middle of a social feed will draw more eyes. Make sure to pair your gif content with a strong CTA caption to get your audience onto your site.
6. Repurpose Top Content into Blog Posts
For every video you create, which is resonating with your audiences & performing well, you should write an accompanying blog post around the same topic of your video.
Ross Simmonds has mastered the content remix – take a look.
Here he has created a blog to support his video on the topic of marketing experimentation.
This creates an alternate avenue to promote video content and another piece of content to be picked up in Google searches.
Cisco’s 2019 Internet Phenomena Report, revealed 60% of all internet traffic was video streaming, up 22% since 2018, but we can’t neglect the 21% of folks still looking to read about a topic.
7.Engage Through Email with Video
Sending out a weekly or monthly newsletter? Include a video snippet that provides specific tips, showcase products, or advertise events to customers.
Soapbox knows how to spice 🌶️ up an email
Emails are so mundane and routine, but by throwing in a video, you have just changed the game in grabbing audience’s attention. Including video content in emails can increase the open rate by 6%.
Now that you have your audience engaged, pull them through to your site with an enticing call to action or make your video a click-through – sending them directly to a landing page.
Competitive Advantage
8. Learn From Your Competitors and Industry Leaders
I am not here to condone plagiarism or stealing – I am here to condone inspiration.
Check this out, HubSpot has imported all of their podcasts on YouTube. Note that they did not simply upload the audio track of each podcast episode, they took the time to add in captioning throughout. Meaning that when you watch the YouTube version of their podcast, you can read along and take notes as needed – giving you the most out of their podcast while increasing their reach.
Your competition will always be your competition, why not leverage them and learn from their best practices? Take a scroll through your competitors’ YouTube channels, filter to see their most popular content, and then develop content that hits the same mark.
Looking for a different tactic? Start from the bottom of your competitor’s most popular list. Find the content they did not execute well and decide if that is an avenue your brand should try recreating to gain the lost traffic. Just because it didn’t work for them doesn’t mean it won’t work for you.
At the end of the day, it is best to see what your industry is succeeding in and starting from there. Perhaps DIY videos don’t do as well, but product showcases really shine, take that information and learn from it. This prevents you from wasting time and funds creating videos that are prone to flopping.
Branded Content
9. Show Off Your Fun Side
At the end of the day, there are no rules on what content you can and can’t create. With video, there are no limits because people aren’t always looking for informational content – many times viewers are logging into YouTube to be entertained.
It is also important to get over the idea that all content needs to be centred around your products. Generation Z is looking to find transparent brands they can trust, they are looking to bond with brands, and not just buy from them.
This is where branded content really comes into play.
Shopify’s highest viewed Facebook video has nothing to do with that and has everything to do with what people view on Facebook.
Doing this allows your brand to remain relevant in the consumer’s mind, build brand trust, and create an alternative pathway to engage with your audience.
In case you like to live by the numbers, views on branded video content have increased by 99% on YouTube as of June 2017.
10. Brand Storytelling lets People in Behind the Scenes
In addition to branded content, you can always dabble in brand storytelling.
Be it through making a silly face for your Snapchat account, sharing footage of user-generated content or a fun prank captured on video, companies are beginning to understand the effectiveness of letting a brand’s story come through.
Apple Music gave their Snapchat audience a great experience by taking them behind the scenes of their Beats 1 radio station studio through Snapchat.
Snapchat is really the most effective platform for this since the content is removed in 24 hours and users on Snapchat don’t enjoy being bombarded with ad-style content. They are looking for “behind the scenes” access, something that makes them feel connected to the brand.
Consumers like to be in the know, which can be achieved through sharing a quick snap story of a new product being released or a short work from home office tour. Either way, your audience will feel connected to your brand and will find value in following your accounts for this hidden gem content.
Tagging and Transcriptions
11. Meta Tags for the Benefit of Google Bots
Metadata is the information used to describe the content of a web page, document, file, or anything else that can be uploaded online (photos and videos).
In layman’s terms metadata is a short explanation or summary of what the content is all about. For video specifically, it is the text surrounding the video file that references and explains the video content – search engines like Google rely on video metadata to rank and display video results.
Web bots crawl your site, judging the quality of your content and ranking the suitability of your page content in answering a search query. Although Google is using hundreds of factors to determine which content should rank, two factors, in particular, seem to be more important than others—backlinks and text-based content.
Sadly these bots can’t watch videos and backlinks don’t fit in with video content either…
Does that mean these bots just surf by video content???
No, they simply read the text information associated with your video and judge the quality of your video based on that information; video title, video descriptions, and video tags.
Ensuring your descriptions and titles are detailed and accurate to the content displayed in the video, will benefit your SEO ranking as Google bots will now understand the quality of your video content. Don’t be afraid to use AI to your advantage here, with tools like a YouTube title generator to get the creative juices flowing.
Having a high ranking SERP placement will help to drive traffic to your site since the majority of search engine users don’t click past page one; this can lead to SERP dominance.
12. Transcriptions Increase the Value of Your Information
Looking to increase your video rank on Google? Why not provide a video transcription 🤷
BOOM! You have easily increased your keyword opportunity.
Since SERP ranking and traffic go hand in hand, you want to prepare yourself with every keyword avenue. By including a transcription of your video, you are effectively giving Google bots all of the information you’re sharing vocally that they aren’t able to hear.
Along with keywords, you have also unlocked an entire script of backlinking and internal linking opportunities.
Transcriptions will also benefit those working in a loud space, those with impairments, those who don’t have English as a first language, and those who prefer using CTRL+F to search for specific content instead of watching a full-length video.
You can either hire someone to transcribe your videos in-house, outsource it, or use an online tool like Happy Scribe to transcribe YouTube videos.
13.Captions Create Inclusivity for Those Viewing without Sound
Adding captions to your videos may not sound like a distribution tactic, but it can vastly improve your video’s reach.
Captioning is a broad term spanning from closed captions to built-in captions indicating key facts or topic change.
Privy, is doing a fantastic job here of using captions to highlight their main point. Even if you were to watch this clip without sound, the takeaways are written out clearly to ensure no viewer is missing out.
Captions help make your video content more accessible to viewers who choose to watch without sound or are hard of hearing; you can also leverage captioning and offer multiple language options to create international reach. Plus, there’s plenty of free video editing tools on the market you can use to pull it off.
Beyond increasing viewership accessibility, captions help people focus on and retain the information with ease. Making them especially beneficial when the goal of your video is education.
14. Built-in CTA’s and Links Push Prospects Through Your Funnel
Gone are the days of YouTube’s annotations.
That feature was discontinued in 2017 after YouTube realized those pop-ups were not optimized for mobile devices and many users were engaging with annotations simply to close the obstructive text windows.
With the discontinuation of annotations came the rise of mobile-first designed end screens and cards.
These end screens allow you to have the ability to link another video or playlist – if using YouTube, you can set the recommended video to be picked by YouTube’s algorithm to best fit the user. As well you can have an end screen call to action to subscribe to your channel – or visit your website. Venngage chose to utilize their end screen to promote a related video as well as a call to action to subscribe to their channel.
Good to Know: YouTube gives you the option to select “best for viewer”, which will recommend a video from your channel based on suitable for that specific viewer, based on their YouTube usage, retaining the viewer on your channel.
Having built-in cards act as a call to action, during video playback, along the top right-hand side of your videos. These can be timed to pop out at any time during video playback, allowing you to link content from your video to an outside source. This could be to your newsletter sign up, homepage, service page, etc. HubSpot chooses to highlight their academy during this video since the viewers are interested in learning about business strategy.
Let’s say you’re discussing content marketing, a service your company offers, this would be the perfect time to have a card pop open linking to your content marketing services page.
Wrapping Up
Time to summarize the key points:
✅Video content belongs on all of your social media channels
✅Redistribution leads to greater results than distribution alone
✅Remix trending content to create new pieces of content surrounding the topic
✅Take inspiration from your competition
✅Don’t forget to transcribe your videos and include captions
If that checklist was your favorite part of this whole blog we have another one for you and it is even better. Go ahead and check out our free checklist covering 100+ Strategic Content Distribution Tactics For 12 Different Channels.
Now it is time to get your producer’s cap on, gather great footage, create stellar video content, and distribute it until everyone and their mother has seen your video.
