Video marketing is currently one of the most successful promotion mediums for brands to engage with online. As the popularity of online video has skyrocketed in recent years, marketers and brands have learned to harness its power. While video marketing can work very well as a campaign in itself, one of the best ways to share your brand’s video is via social media as part of a comprehensive campaign.
Sharing platform
Social media serves as an online space where brands can foster a community of loyal fans and followers while also providing an ideal platform from which to share engaging and relevant content. As social media becomes the primary online activity – it becomes even more crucial for brands to properly utilise social networks as part of their digital marketing strategy. While casual engagement is of course very important in social media, sharing content is often even more vital for brands. Sharing content via social media channels increases its visibility which in turn influences traffic and engagement on a brand’s other channels, which can include their website, blog or video outlet. Brands that have cultivated a social network following will of course benefit the most as content can be seen and re-shared by more users.
Videos go viral
Online videos are one of the most shared content pieces on the web. The most recent statistics indicate that more than 180 million US Internet users watched 36.6 billion online content videos during May 2012. And while Africa’s numbers may differ from the US, on an international level that there has been significant growth of mobile video. In 2011, Strategy Analytics cited 108 billion mobile videos viewed worldwide; in 2012 that number has pretty much doubled to 280 billion views. As more people in Africa gain access to smart phones and the Internet, it is almost certain that the numbers for video views will continue to inflate. Due to its sheer popularity, videos are more likely than any other medium to go ‘viral’. This means that they are shared via multiple social networks, thereby gaining popularity through a snow-ball like effect.
Social content and SEO
Videos shared via your brand’s social network is not just good for brand awareness, it can also significantly boost your SEO , or search engine optimization. Posting a video on YouTube for instance (which is regularly indexed by Google), allows you to fill in appropriate keywords associated with your brand as well as links to your company website. This will greatly increase the chances of your video popping up at the top of a search results page when users search for the keywords you included in your video’s description. And, if people can find your videos they are likely to find a way to your website.
