Are your videos getting you results?

Are your videos getting you results? If you’re creating videos that just aren’t gaining the reach and popularity you think they deserve, maybe there are some things you could improve to make them pop a bit more—whether it’s in the actual creation of the video or the sharing process afterwards. These are our Nine tips for making sure your videos grab more attention.

1. Not Planning Beforehand

Particularly if you’re jumping on a live video on Periscope or Facebook Live, or recording one for later play, neglecting to plan beforehand is a terrible idea. You don’t want to be stuck on camera without anything to say, and then end up rambling—or, even worse, just saying nothing of value. Before you turn the camera on, plan out what you’re going to say. This might be a rough outline, especially if you know your subject well, or it might be a full script—whatever is going to make you more comfortable. Bonus tip: Practise what you’re going to say to a mirror and friend before you hit the record button. Once you say it out loud a few times, you’ll know whether you need to edit it or make adjustments.

2. Being Too Salesy

Nobody enjoys salesy videos, I bet you don’t, so why would you create salesy videos for others to watch? Instead, focus on delivering useful, valuable, and actionable content to your viewers and you’ll get much further. If you absolutely have to pitch, at least do it at the end, briefly, after you’ve given them all the valuable content. Your audience will thank you for it.

3. Posting Inconsistently

One of the most vital things you can do is build up trust with your audience, but you can’t do that if your video posting schedule is all over the place. To combat this, create a content plan and then do your best to stick to it. Map out the videos you’re going to create, probably at least a month in advance, and what topics they’ll be on.

4. Ignoring Mobile

More than ninety per cent of people watching videos are on mobile. Yes, that’s a lot. So make sure you don’t forget to optimise your videos for mobile, particularly if you’re trying to reach a millennial audience. Make sure your content looks good on a small device and that your provider has facilities to play on Mobiles, If your video isn’t optimised, people will just keep scrolling past it.

5. Ignoring Social Media

If you’re not sharing your videos on social media, now’s the time to start. More videos are now watched on Facebook than YouTube, People frequently share videos they like, and more sharing = more exposure for you and your video. As well as sharing your video on social media yourself, make sure the video is easily shareable by others. You can even include the social media share links within the content itself.

6. Focussing On Viral

If you focus on creating great content that people love and want to share, you may find yourself with a viral hit. But if you focus on the virality and lose sight of the rest, you’re unlikely to end up with anything but hits-and-misses. Plus, even though viral videos are great for brand exposure, the better plan is to create a steady stream of highly useful videos that your audience will love and keep coming back for. You’ll build a community of loyal viewers, which is priceless.

7. Ignoring Your Viewers

Recent research has found that viewers enjoy video much more when they are able to interact with it. Allow your viewers to comment on their experience to ensure you’ll be able to produce a better video for them to enjoy next time

8. Neglecting The Follow-up

I know how it is—you create something you think is great, and then because of whatever the reason, you drop the follow-up But what’s the point of creating something that only a few people will see, because you haven’t put in the work after creating it? That’s a waste of time and good content. When your video is ready, share it out to all your social media. Put it on your website. Send it out to your email subscribers. Do whatever you can think of to get it out there. Look out for our article on 25 ways to host and share a video. Once you’ve figured out what works well for sharing and hosting your videos, make those steps into a checklist that you go through every time you create a video—that way, you’ll never forget a platform and you’ll be more likely to actually complete the process. Another thing to remember even after you’ve shared your video is to track the analytics. What do people enjoy? Where are they watching? What time are they watching? If you can track this data, you’ll be able to create better videos and enhance the sharing process.

9. Video SEO

The term Video SEO is used to describe optimizing video content for search engine traffic. The goal when working with video SEO is to have your video content appear in video search engines as well as in the organic search results for major search engines. It’s important to direct traffic to your site and not to your video hosting provider. See our article on Video SEO here

So are your videos getting you results? Those are our nine tips for hot to gaining more traction with your videos. Do you have a tip that we missed? Share it with us in the comments.

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