Amplifying Video Content With Social Media To Improve Discoverability

How can you opti­mize the social ampli­fi­ca­tion of your videos?

Greg Jarboe By Greg Jarboe from SEO-PR. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Anoth­er one of the sev­en ways to improve your video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy is to use social media to improve your content’s dis­cov­er­abil­i­ty and inter­act with your audi­ence on mul­ti­ple plat­forms. Online video is an inher­ent­ly social medi­um. Peo­ple are drawn to online video and web series because they can inter­act with the cre­ators in ways that they can’t on tele­vi­sion. So, how do you opti­mize the social ampli­fi­ca­tion of your con­tent?


You can begin by apply­ing the 80–20 rule, which is also known as the Pare­to prin­ci­ple. The prin­ci­ple was named after Ital­ian econ­o­mist Vil­fre­do Pare­to, who observed in 1906 that 80 per­cent of the land in Italy was owned by 20 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion. Two weeks ago, this rule-of-thumb was cor­rob­o­rat­ed by mar­ket­ing tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny Unruly, which pub­lished a report that found 17.9 per­cent inter­net users share videos with their social net­works more than once a week. Accord­ing to Unruly, these “super-shar­ers” account for 82.4 per­cent of all video shares.

How do you iden­ti­fy the “super-shar­ers” in your audi­ence?

Well, they are very like­ly to have a Google account, which gives them access to many YouTube fea­tures, includ­ing the abil­i­ty to “Like” your video and “Sub­scribe” to your chan­nel. They are also very like­ly to have used their Google account to cre­ate a YouTube chan­nel, which enables them to leave com­ments. In oth­er words, these “super-shar­ers” are very like­ly to be ful­ly vest­ed mem­bers of the YouTube com­mu­ni­ty.

Com­mu­ni­ties will hap­pen with or with­out you on YouTube. So, make sure that you’re the one lead­ing the dis­cus­sion in a fruit­ful direc­tion in order to build a com­mu­ni­ty around your con­tent.

  • Devel­op rela­tion­ships with top con­trib­u­tors:
    • Respond to fre­quent com­menters, and share insid­er news and updates with them.
    • Respond to com­ments in the first few hours after you pub­lish a video because these com­menters are your most loy­al fans.
  • Rec­og­nize your com­mu­ni­ty:
    • Wher­ev­er pos­si­ble, include your com­mu­ni­ty in your videos.
    • Give them shout-outs by name.
    • Read their com­ments for the audi­ence.
    • Offer fan mer­chan­dise or exclu­sive con­tent shared through unlist­ed videos.
  • Engage your com­mu­ni­ty on and off YouTube:
    • Do some research on which social plat­forms is your com­mu­ni­ty using and jump into the con­ver­sa­tion on those net­works.

The Unruly report on “super shar­ers” also showed that the video ecosys­tem has frag­ment­ed. While the major­i­ty of video shares (59.4 per­cent) world­wide take place on Face­book, view­ers share across a mul­ti­tude of plat­forms, includ­ing Twit­ter (13.8 per­cent), Google+ (9.3 per­cent), Tum­blr (5.7 per­cent) and Pin­ter­est (3.9 per­cent). So, use mul­ti­ple social media plat­forms to find and engage your audi­ence.

Final­ly, share your con­tent with rel­e­vant blogs and web­sites, as well as embed it in your press releas­es. A lot of view­ers encounter videos on oth­er sites, and web­sites and blogs are always look­ing for great con­tent to fea­ture. Make it easy for them! Reach out with your most bril­liant videos.

  • Get the word out:
    • Cre­ate a com­pre­hen­sive list of sites, blogs, online influ­encers and niche online com­mu­ni­ties that are rel­e­vant to your con­tent.
    • Pitch new videos to your blog roll. Be strate­gic: Top­i­cal con­tent is typ­i­cal­ly most attrac­tive to these sites.
    • If you’ve cre­at­ed a video playlist for a tent-pole event, share it with blogs, who often want groups of videos about trend­ing top­ics.
  • Build rela­tion­ships:
    • Use the traf­fic sources and play­back loca­tion reports in YouTube Ana­lyt­ics to find sites that are dri­ving high lev­els of engaged views.
    • Share new videos with those sites and blogs first, and let them know they’re get­ting the inside scoop.
    • Build rela­tion­ships with blog edi­tors. Thank them when they repost and only share videos that you hon­est­ly think they’d want to share with their audi­ence.
  • Track your brand:
    • Know where peo­ple are talk­ing about you. Set Google Alerts for your chan­nel name, show names, char­ac­ter names and any oth­er key­words spe­cif­ic to your chan­nel.

For exam­ple, Yell, the inter­na­tion­al direc­to­ries busi­ness, hired my firm back in March 2009 to help pro­mote the launch of stand­alone TV ads for its UK ser­vice based on the sig­na­ture tune of cult Inter­net car­toon char­ac­ter Mag­i­cal Trevor. Mag­i­cal Trevor is the cre­ation of ani­ma­tor Jon­ti “Wee­bl” Pick­er­ing, whose dis­tinc­tive style and ani­mat­ed char­ac­ters have a world­wide fol­low­ing on the Inter­net. The com­mer­cial was pro­duced through Tomboy Films, which rep­re­sents Jonti’s work for com­mer­cials.

Yell’s pub­lic rela­tions depart­ment han­dled the tra­di­tion­al media rela­tions and gen­er­at­ed sto­ries in Mar­ket­ing Week, Mad.co.uk, and Mar­ket­ing. The TV cam­paign, devel­oped by cre­ative com­mu­ni­ca­tions agency Rapi­er, broke on March 20 and ran for a month, with two 10-sec­ond vari­ants run­ning for a fur­ther two months to the end of May across major ter­res­tri­al, satel­lite, and cable chan­nels. It was sup­port­ed by 40-sec­ond radio ads. There was also a cam­paign page where vis­i­tors could see the ads, down­load a ring­tone of the theme tune, and par­tic­i­pate in a fun poll gaug­ing whether they love or hate the ad. Final­ly, it includ­ed eight videos on Yell’s 118247 Direc­to­ry Heav­en chan­nel on YouTube.

My firm embed­ded “Yell 118 247 Direc­to­ry Heav­en TV ad by Wee­bl,” the 30-sec­ond TV ad, into an opti­mized press release, which was dis­trib­uted March 22 on PRWeb.

We also used PRWeb’s Tweet­It fea­ture to auto­mat­i­cal­ly share the press release through Twit­ter at the same time it was dis­trib­uted through PRWeb. We also con­duct­ed a blog out­reach and social media mar­ket­ing cam­paign. “Yell 118 247 Direc­to­ry Heav­en TV ad by Wee­bl” end­ed up being embed­ded in blogs like Funkadel­ic Adver­tis­ing, C64Glen, Wel­come to my night­mare, and Your Face is an Advert on March 22, 2009, and it was embed­ded in the Scram­bled eggs and mashed bananas blog two days lat­er.

As of April 30, 2009, “Yell 118 247 Direc­to­ry Heav­en TV ad by Wee­bl,” had more than 220,000 views. (It now has almost 329,000 views.)

On April 16, 2009, Camille Alar­con of Mar­ket­ing Week report­ed, “Yell, the inter­na­tion­al direc­to­ries busi­ness, is extend­ing the adver­tis­ing cam­paign for its direc­to­ry enquiries ser­vice 118 24 7, after record­ing a 70 per­cent increase in call vol­umes to its UK call cen­tres.”


Are you ampli­fy­ing your brand’s video con­tent with social media? What results are you see­ing?

Greg Jarboe

Written by Greg Jarboe

President, SEO-PR

Greg Jarboe is President and co-founder of SEO-PR, an award-winning content marketing agency that was founded in 2003. He’s the author of YouTube and Video Marketing and also a contributor to The Art of SEO, Strategic Digital Marketing, Complete B2B Online Marketing, and Enchantment. He’s profiled in the book Online Marketing Heroes, a frequent speaker at industry conferences, and writes for Tubular Insights and The SEM Post. He’s an executive education instructor at the Rutgers Business School and the Video and Content Marketing faculty chair at Simplilearn.

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