Web video is everywhere. More than 24 hours of video content are added to YouTube every minute.Thousands of videos are streaming on Hulu and NetFlix. As internet speed increases, the amount of time people spend consuming video content also increases. One in four Americans watches a video online every day; why should they watch your video over something else?
Sticking out in this cluttered environment is increasingly difficult. Here are a few helpful ways to ensure your web video project gets seen.
Placement.
Choose the platform that makes the most sense for your audience. Does your video need to live on YouTube or would it be better on Hulu or Blip.TV? There are several different platforms to host video content, and developing a strategy that utilizes the various strengths of these platforms can increase your views.
Secondly, if the video is going to live on your website, make sure you give it prime real estate. Don’t bury the video two or three clicks deep, make it prominent.
What’s in a name?
How important is it for your content to show up in search engines? The title of your video should reflect what people are searching for, and not just the name of the video. For example, our video “Revolution: TCU Football 2011” contains SEO friendly terms to make it more likely to appear in search engines. We knew that people trying to find the video would search for terms like “tcu football video” and “tcu football 2011,” so we optimized the video name and meta data specifically for that. If we had simply named the video “TCU Revolution,” it would have been much more difficult to find via search.
Utilize your existing fans.
If you have a presence on Facebook or Twitter, let your fans do the leg work for you. Depending on your social media following, you may have an army of fans just waiting to be asked to help. Turn them into marketers by encouraging them to share your video with everyone they can. Not only will this increase your video views, but it may improve your overall SEO by generating inbound links.
