Podcast: Play in new window
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Not all video hosting platforms or sharing methods are created equal. When you decide to post videos on social media, you need to plan ahead for a few things:
- Make a social-media-friendly version of your video
- Share differently on different platforms
- Link back to your site
If all you’ve been doing is sharing links to your full-length videos on YouTube, just…just stop. Here’s why.
1. MAKE A SOCIAL-MEDIA-FRIENDLY VERSION
Keep it short.
Some sites like Twitter can’t always upload long videos, and viewer attention spans will taper off anyway.
Include captions or graphic text.
Lots of sites autoplay without sound, like Twitter and Facebook. Don’t let your message get lost because of that.
2. SHARE DIFFERENTLY ON DIFFERENT PLATFORMS
Don’t just push a YouTube link everywhere. That used to be the best option, but now social media platforms prefer to push their own hosting.
If you push Youtube, your post won’t even get autoplayed on most platforms anymore.
Even if YouTube videos do autoplay on your platform of choice, there will probably be a hint of a lag– and that may be just enough for people to lose interest and scroll away.
As of March 2018 (just a few weeks after this podcast episode was released), LinkedIn announced the release of native video for their own platform– whereas before, YouTube was the only option. Now you can upload directly to your business pages. However, that actually isn’t the ideal location for your video.
Personal LinkedIn accounts get far more attention and engagement than business pages.
A better LinkedIn practice is to have an individual person to upload the video on their personal feed, and tag the company in the Linkedin-hosted video. People in their network will be far more likely to like, comment, or watch for longer periods to see what their friends have been watching.
3. LINK TO YOUR SITE
Again, try not to send people to YouTube. We’ve already talked plenty about why that shouldn’t be your primary hosting platform, anyway.
Wherever you upload the video on social media, be sure to post a call-to-action with it.
Include a link for people interested in learning more, and connect it to a longer-form version of the video on your website. Have a blog or a landing page with more information for them, and host the video there using a platform with tracking analytics that won’t distract your viewers.
Yes, this is a lot of work.
But the point is to get people to visit your site… and then stay there.
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