Think of the most popular online social platforms today – Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube – they’re all embracing video. As a B2B marketer, you also need to think in terms of online video and how it can be used most effectively to tell your company or brand’s story online. Here are three things to keep in mind as you go about making online video part of your B2B marketing toolkit.
#1: Re-purpose video across different social networks and online platforms
Fortunately, there are some great vendors out there who can help you make sense of all the video options available today. Companies like Pixability can help you find the best way to leverage YouTube and they’ll help that same video travel across the walled gardens of the most popular social networks. Pixability can also help you run very targeted YouTube ad campaigns, based on the preferences of your audience:
Being able to re-purpose your video content is key. Sometimes, all it takes is an embed code to take a YouTube video and add it to your corporate blog. But what if your marketing team just shot a lot of great video footage at your latest company-sponsored conference, and you want a way to get that content out into the marketplace quickly?
Chances are, you don’t have a video editing team at your beck and call, so you’ll want some type of editing tool that will help you quickly convert all that video into short online videos that are optimized for sharing online. That’s where companies like Buto.TV can help you engage, retain and build audiences using online video. It’s as easy as uploading videos into Buto.TV, where you can edit meta-data, create playlists and then embed specific videos into your website.
#2: Collect detailed metrics on audience behavior
One common mistake that B2B sales teams make is failing to track any advanced metrics for their online video. The metrics may be limited to just the “number of views,” but even that may fail to account for how many times a video was clicked on from inside an email newsletter or a corporate blog.
You need to produce detailed metrics that can help you determine what’s working, and what’s not. You’ll learn how to message that audience, and see which geographic or demographic groups are doing the best. And, most importantly, you’ll be able to track “engagement,” not just “impressions.”
#3: Experiment with different video formats
With each new iteration of social networking platforms, we’re learning how online video can be used in different ways and different formats. Take the example of Snapchat – before this social network came along, the idea of creating video content that “disappeared” after being viewed would have seemed insane. Why go to all the trouble of creating proprietary content if it could only be viewed once by someone?
But Snapchat’s focus on the ephemeral is what changed everything. It put a premium on content that was raw, unscripted and unfiltered. That type of content that was crafted specifically for a certain person or a limited audience was the perfect antidote to everything the Internet was becoming.
That’s why it’s important to experiment with different video formats, to see what goes over with your audience. It will help you tell a narrative for your company or brand in a way that’s authentic and engaging. And, best of all, you might discover an audience or demographic for your content that you’d never thought of before.
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Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.