How to Get More People to Watch Your Videos

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Embedding video onto your website can increase the amount of time visitors spend there, but too often, videos miss the mark and not enough people watch them. When used effectively on landing pages, internet marketing videos can increase conversion rates significantly.

So what are some things you should be doing to ensure people will want to watch your video?

Grab Your Visitors’ Attention

When people visit your site, having a video on the landing page is a great first step. But if the freeze-frame of the video—or splash screen—isn’t compelling, people aren’t going to click play.  They also won’t know it’s a video unless the play button is prominent.

Choose a screen to show something interesting about the video, something that will make visitors want to click play. Come up with a tagline or another interesting way to title the video, something that will pique interest.

Make sure that your video has a visible play button—not just the one that pops up when someone’s mouse hovers over the video.

This lets people know it’s a video right away. Make sure that there’s a bit of introduction copy, as well—even just a sentence or two, to let people know what they can expect to see or learn by watching the video.

Make the Content Interesting

People don’t want to feel like they’re watching an advertisement—there’s a reason that YouTube allows users to click “Skip Ad,” and why so many people choose to do so. Make sure your video isn’t too much like a commercial.

Also, make sure that your video doesn’t cover information that too many other videos also cover. Popular topics are often made into videos for obvious reasons, but that also means that there will be a lot of competition between your video and everyone else’s.

You also have to take into account your audience’s attention span.

Think about how many times you have clicked off of a video after noticing it was, for example, five minutes or longer. People don’t want to invest a lot of time into watching videos, and a long video is less likely to be watched than one that’s short and to the point.

Share the Video With Multiple Outlets

Sharing your videos is key to getting more people to see them. However, posting them only to your company’s website or Facebook page is a surefire way to reach a very limited audience—your social media strategy should be a bit more complex.

You should share the video on other outlets, either social media or otherwise, and you can use email marketing to promote the video to your subscribers. If you do that, however, make sure that it’s not just sent as a mass email to everyone—create personalized messages, but don’t send it to the entire email list every time you make a video.

Don’t Spam

This can come off as a bit spammy and cause people to become irritated.  Instead, only send selected videos out—you can include a link to the rest of your published videos as well as a call to action so that people can watch the other videos if they feel so inclined.

Overall, the ways to get more people to see your videos are simple: get visitors’ attention with a great screen-grab and a highly visible play button, make the content interesting and not too advertorial while also including a call-to-action, and finally, share the video with people who will likely be interested in the content.

Written By Solomon Thimothy

Solomon Thimothy is co-founder of OneIMS. He began his career in marketing over ten years ago with a focus on helping businesses grow their online presence and thrive in a digital world. Follow him on twitter at http://twitter.com/sthimothy

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