“Grab” “Engage” and “Hold” Your Audience
After a brief hiatus we are back! And we’re serving up our next post in our series on harnessing the power of online video in your online marketing.
In the previous article we talked about some of the ways you can “grab” viewers by optimizing your video in your online marketing. Now I’m going to give you some more tips to make your videos as effective as possible.
“Engage” your audience
Google tracks how many people have viewed and showed interest in your video. They track commenting, sharing and likes. Therefore you want to work hard to keep your audience as engaged as possible. Encourage them to like and comment on the videos and be sure to interact with them in the comments section. One way to further push commenting is to team up with other video makers to create a “response group” whereby you comment and interact with their videos and they in turn do the same with yours.
Always strive to be unique, set yourself apart from the rest of the herd. And please please PLEASE keep your videos to a reasonable length. A major difference between the “winner” videos and the “loser” videos is length. You could be sharing some amazing information, but if you drone on and on for 5, 10, 15 mins your audience will either start skipping through the video or leaving altogether. Either way they will definitely not be looking for more of your information in the future. A good rule of thumb is to keep your videos to 1-2 mins if you can. And if you are doing a video that is more “educational” in nature keep it around 3-5 minutes depending on how engaged your audience is.
Energy = engagement
It takes a LOT of effort keep people engaged nowadays. So you will need to “amp it up” if you are truly going to hold the attention of your audience. Try to push your enthusiasm to the edge of where you feel comfortable and then bump it up another 3 notches. Friends of mine in the cinematography business say that the camera sucks out about 60% of your on screen energy and presence. Therefore you need to make a conscious effort to push your enthusiasm while in front of the camera.
“Hold” viewers Through Consistency
The next step is to create a consistent schedule for your videos. Why have TV shows worked so well for the past few decades? Its because they keep up a consistent schedule and their viewers are more likely to tune in because they know that there is always fresh new content. This isn’t always easy to do, which is why being organized and maintaining a schedule is vital. It can be as simple as using a spreadsheet to plan out the next few weeks of videos. I encourage my clients to plan and shoot a bunch of videos in one day so they always have a buffer of videos post over the next few days and weeks. This kind of planning and consistency will do wonders for your online video marketing.
Now go get your camera!
Now its time to stop thinking about doing a video and just do it! Remember to apply what we have discussed. You want to “grab” the audience with promotion and optimization, you want to “engage” them with killer content and interaction. and you want to”hold” onto them with consistency and usefulness.
Next we will talk about how to take these videos and use them effectively reach your online marketing goals.
