Videos have become a large part of brands’ digital marketing strategies. Spinx Web Design predicts online videos will soon be able to attract 90% of online traffic, which explains so many brands’ desires to create the next viral vid. If you’re incorporating video into your marketing strategy, or just beginning to create a brand YouTube channel, there are a few simple steps you can take to improve your video’s visibility.
- Create a transcript of your video. Creating a transcript ensures that hearing impaired individuals will be able to enjoy your video, without using captions that might be distracting for other viewers. Although YouTube/Google attempt to generate transcripts for viewers who choose closed captioning, their attempt will not be as accurate as yours. Even better? A closed captioning transcript will actually help boost your SEO.
- Create annotations within the video. Although you can’t use annotations to direct people outside of YouTube, they ensure that you can directly link to more of your own video content. The Gregory Brothers (the guys and gal behind AutoTune the News and Songify This) know how to make the most of the annotation function. They link to other videos, original videos by their unintentional singers and even use them to highlight outside links listed in the video description.
- Keep it short and sweet. Research shows that for videos under 5 minutes, nearly 20% of watchers will abandon a video within the first 10 seconds, 33% within 30 seconds, and 44% within 60 seconds. Keep this in mind when crafting media and keep it as concise as possible.
- Create a sitemap for your video. If you’re worried about users being able to find your video content on Google, or improving SEO for your videos, then you need to make sure you have a sitemap for your video. This XML document will tell Google about your video and its content without waiting to automatically crawl through your video page.
- Add a logo or brand-related watermark to your video. Brand awareness is essential when trying to gain new customers or clients. Including your company logo helps build that brand awareness. It also helps give credit where credit is due, in case your video actually does go viral and lesser accounts begin to steal and repost the material.
Not convinced that video can help boost your brand? Find out how video boosts mobile ad engagement in our report.
