How to get more video views

The overwhelming popularity of video content makes it a wonderful format to add to your marketing mix. It’s a great way to add visual content to your new ecommerce website design and offers an engaging, tried-and-tested way to obtain visitor interest. However, as with any type of content, from blog posts to social media updates, success is determined by exposure. The more traffic you can get to your video, the more likely a conversion such as a click through, a comment, a like, a share or sign-up is. So, how do you get more video views to justify your investment in this content type? Read on for our easy to implement suggestions…

1. Always, always provide a transcript Whenever you upload a video, to whatever platform – whether that be your own business website, YouTube or even Facebook – it’s imperative that you provide a transcript at the same time. A transcript is essentially a text version of your video so it makes it much more accessible, both for audiences and search engine spiders. As a Google crawler can’t understand video, the transcript gives it valuable context and ranking signals. This in turn helps with search visibility for your video, which can lead to more views. For regular audience members too, a transcript provides vital information about the video, especially for those who watch without sound or have accessibility issues. 2. Make your videos short rather than long Research suggests that shorter videos are more popular than longer ones so, keep this in mind when shooting and editing your content. You want your video to be long enough to be entertaining and informative but not so long that it turns the audience off. The sweet spot is under five minutes or so with a couple of minutes being optimal. If you haven’t had much success with your videos thus far, try experimenting with making them shorter and monitor the impact on video views. 3. Choose a compelling thumbnail When you upload to YouTube, you have the option to select the thumbnail that shows to browsers. Much like the images you upload to accompany your social media posts, you want the thumbnail you choose for your videos to be as compelling and eye-catching as possible as this will determine whether someone stops to watch your video. Research shows that custom thumbnails result in greater video views so this is a crucial component to get right.4.Make it easy to find, load and play
You’ll want to upload your video content to your business website – but how you do this and how the page performs can also influence views. As we know, page speed is all-important both to Google and to impatient web users so, choosing a compressed file format and optimising the page your video is published on for quick loading is a vital first step. Get this right and you remove the threat of the user losing interest as the page loads and bouncing off your site.
You also need to ensure that once loaded, the video is easy to play and watch, especially for those using a mobile device. Don’t forget, this page should also have a copy of the video transcript to make it easier for Google to index and your users to find.