You’ve worked hard trying to make video a part of your marketing mix, but things aren’t going as you planned. The first thing to do is to make sure you’re not making any of these nine common video marketing mistakes.
Video Marketing Mistakes
1. Making Your Video Too Promotional
When you make your video you do want to promote your business or product in some way. But, you are not making a commercial. You’re making a video that provides information to your audience, as well as perhaps incentive to want to buy from you. Promote for less than 10 or 20 seconds at the end of the video, but make the rest of the video non-promotional.
2. Making Poor Quality Videos
Your video does not have to be a television production; however, if you want to become very popular with the potential of having your videos “go viral” then you should make the highest quality video that you’re able to make. In addition, seek to make them better each time as you learn more about lighting quality, sound and video editing.
3. Not Putting Your Video Where People See It
It might sound like a great idea to only put videos on your own website, due to branding concerns. But this is not going to build an audience very quickly - especially if your website is not super popular yet. Even popular shows post videos to other places like YouTube, Vimeo and other video sharing sites, to get more views and attract new audiences.
4. Not Knowing Who Your Audience Is
Before you make a first video it’s imperative that you know exactly who your audience is. If you aren’t sure who you’re talking to, you will not be able to make your topics resonate with them so that you can more viewers. Knowing your audience enables you to know what they need to know.
5. Not Keeping Your Topic Narrow
Each video should be about a very narrow topic so you can keep them between three and five minutes long. Once in a while it’s okay to go over that, for example if you’re teaching someone how to do something step-by-step with screen sharing, but very rarely. If you’re just talking, the shorter and more to the point your video is, the better.
6. Making the Video Too Long
Discussed briefly above, videos that are too long are boring. Even if your topic is interesting, making the video too long gets boring. People are in a hurry to get the information they need and don’t have time to sit around forever waiting for you to get to the point. If you want people to engage with you, make your videos short and to the point.
7. Focusing Too Much on Going Viral
As you make your videos you are of course going to think about and try to plan for them going viral, but you cannot only focus on that. The most important aspect of your video is the message contained in it. You can do all you can to plan for it to go viral by being ready for the onslaught of traffic and more. But, you must still focus on the content instead of the idea it might go viral.
8. Uploading Only at One Place
The great thing about videos is that, at least for now, you do not have to worry about duplicate content. Post your video on YouTube, your website, and other video sharing sites is a good idea. The more places you can post it, the better. Enable video editing, and encourage people to share.
9. Not Promoting Your Video Once Posted
When you post a video, you should promote it. Promote it more than one time, too. Promote it on more than one social media account. Be sure to always comment back when people leave comments for you. You can promote via your blog, social media accounts and more.
If you turn these mistakes around, you’ll find that your videos become more popular, get more comments, and are shared more often.