As a follow up to our last post, I wanted to give a tip about how to extend the reach of your video content. This may seem like a no-brainer, or perhaps even unfashionable, but there is really no substitute for e-mail. We have seen the tendency within corporations to create a series of videos and then “post ’em to YouTube,” as if you were casting breadcrumbs on a duck filled pond. If you’re not in the pond where the ducks are, you are looking at a long, slow build to getting your video content seen and shared.
There is a parallel argument out there that “no one uses e-mail anymore.” I am loathe to even address this argument as it is demonstrably false. All the consumer trends indicate that we are using it more and it’s more pervasive in our lives than ever. Sure, there is texting and Twitter and other things that in certain instances may offer a better option than e-mail. But just think about how big a role e-mail plays in your own life.
There are lots of reputable, reliable e-mail marketing services out there that you can sign up with and they offer lots of wonderful features for not a ton of money. (We have used ConstantContact with great success, but there are others.) Tracking open rates, stats, good looking HTML templates or the option to create your own, if you’re so bold. As a business owner, you probably have a pretty solid e-mail list and you probably do a good job of communicating with your customers already. Adding video to an e-mail makes it that much more likely to be opened and maybe even forwarded. So along with the “post it to YouTube” strategy, I would take a long hard look at e-mail marketing, too.
The lesson we try and hammer home on this blog is that in this ever fragmented world of content creation and distribution, you can no longer force people to come to your content. You need to deploy it to where the audiences are.
