How To Host, Publish, And Promote Your Videos

By now, you should know how important video marketing is to your business. You've also got a good understanding of the types of stories you can tell, and the tools you need to produce your videos in order to give them a professional look and feel.

With that in mind, you’ve shot, edited, and pieced together your footage with the hope of enhancing brand awareness and driving leads. 
Great! Now what?

Unfortunately, this is where video marketing efforts go off the rails. So much focus goes into preparing a good video that industrial marketers don’t consider what to do with it once it’s made. With that in mind, it's important to have a plan for hosting, publishing, and promoting your videos.

Where To Host Your Videos

Let's start here. In order to publish and promote your video, you first need to make it publicly available. There are several popular hosting sites, including:

• YouTube: YouTube is by far the largest and most popular video hosting platform on the planet. YouTube is very simple and straightforward to use. Given its popularity, it works exceedingly well across different devices and at different bandwidths, so your videos will never suffer. Plus, because it is part of the Google networks, it provides some added search engine optimization benefits. However, customization is limited, and you have very little control of what happens after your video is complete.
• Wistia: Wistia is a popular tool for marketing professionals, as it allows greater control over how and where your video is played. It's great for embedding on your website, and the platform offers robust analytics, including video heat maps and lead generation tools. On the downside, however, some of the better features of Wistia will cost you about $100 a month.
• Vimeo: Originally launched as a competitor to YouTube, Vimeo has evolved to become the video platform for creative professionals. The aesthetics of Vimeo's player is impressive and user friendly, and the community is very active and helpful. However, Vimeo users expect a lot of polish and production value, and that isn't always ideal for industrial companies.

Optimize Your Video Thumbnail

No matter which platform you choose, you want to pay careful attention to the thumbnail image of your video. 

The video thumbnail is easily the most important factor to drive a visitor to play or not play a video. One of the greatest driving forces of using video marketing is to prove to your viewers that you’re more than just a corporate logo and add a human element.

Something to remember when choosing an image for a thumbnail is that people relate to other people. We recommend making the thumbnail to your video a smiling human making direct eye-contact with viewers to increase the number of plays your video will receive.

Where To Publish Your Videos

Where should you publish your videos? The better question is, where shouldn't you?

You want to publish your videos in as many places as possible. Here are some ideas:

Create A Blog Post About It
Videos on blogs are proven to increase engagement and time on page. Use them to complement your written posts.
Be sure to post regularly. Search engines reward sites that post regular content, so publishing marketing videos on a regular basis will help you in your SEO efforts.

Post The Video On Social Media
You should use video on your social media channels as frequently as possible. Here are some reasons why:

• A Facebook video receives 135% more organic reach than a Facebook photo
• Videos are six times more likely to be retweeted than photos on Twitter

Incorporate Videos In Your Email Marketing
Adding video to your emails can boost engagement of that email significantly. According to Wistia, there was a 300% lift in click-through-rate CTR when using a video thumbnail over a plain image in an email.

Incorporating video into email marketing is not only easy, it can give you enhanced visibility into your marketing efforts and audiences. You can use videos to gather metrics, learn viewer behavior data, and translate that information into lead scoring and workflows.

Promoting Your Videos
Buyers consume millions of hours of video every day. However, more and more companies are producing videos as well. That means you have some competition, and relying on organic views and engagement alone won't always produce the best results.

Fortunately, a little bit of money can go a long way in ensuring your video reaches your intended audience. You can get started -- and get results -- with social media video ads and YouTube advertising for just a few Euros a day.

However, just like with any pay-per-click advertising, you want to follow established best practices in order to ensure you don't blow your budget. This involves a lot of testing, specific targeting, and well-defined audiences.