Don't bank on luck to create your audience; here are steps to get you closer to a guaranteed video viewership.
Since the beginning of web time, the marketing and PR industry has focused on driving traffic to website destinations. Web video changes the game; instead of driving audiences to destinations, we push the video-driven messages into a pre-existing crowd. From YouTube to MySpace, Dailymotion to Metacafe, video creators push a constant stream of content to these sites.
The problem that now exists is that the most popular distributed marketing strategy is luck -- hoping your video has what it takes to be distributed virally within an existing crowd.
Pursuing this common "luck" strategy consists of putting a video out there and then using various tricks of the trade to attract an audience to it -- contextual tags, seeding etc. But getting your video to catch on virally is still luck. Why does one singing hamster become a huge hit while a cat playing piano languishes unseen? If there's actually a formula, it's probably locked up with the Coca Cola recipe.
Web video producers and distributors should not invest in luck (though they should monetize the heck out of it); they should invest in building a strong, reliable audience that looks forward to seeing the next video. Think of a TV show producer that has built a recognizable brand and a network of viewers on different cable and satellite systems (yes, while web video may trash television, there's a lot to be learned from TV in terms of building audiences). This way you can now sell the advertiser your content and your audience, the latter of which being what they really want. It's one thing to say to an advertiser you have great content for the brand, it's quite another to say that you also have approximately 1 million people waiting to see your next video series.
The value to the advertiser is that you can deliver an audience where the audience exists, instead of having to pull that audience into a central site like YouTube. In other words, instead of investing in a destination for the video, you are going to distribute the video, along with the commercial, to an existing network of communities waiting to watch that next episode.
1.) Build online communities for your videos
The strategy is to build online communities focusing on your video content in a network of third party sites that already have larger communities.
Step 1: Understand the ecosystem of communities of web video viewers
First, understand the different online communities that can be used to build an audience. While video sites are the most obvious, it's important to understand the differences among them. Yahoo has a general, consumer friendly audience (PG rated) while Metacafe and Break can get a big and rough audience in that male 18-35 kind of way. Forums are great for how-to/DIY videos, while blogs can be particularly fruitful for news-oriented videos. Making a series about politics? Then get in touch with political video bloggers and see who has communities that might be interested in your content. Again, know the different networks and their audiences…then target.
Step 2: Not all communities are equal. Learn which have the right focus for your video content.
Next, identify the appropriate online communities out there. If you are a raunchy guy-video producer you might look at Heavy, Break and Metacafe. If you steer toward higher end video entertainment, you might target Dailymotion and Veoh. How-to producers might target Expertvillage and DIY channels on YouTube. Facebook can also be used by forming a group and then marketing that group to Facebook members (virally and with Facebook ads).
2.) Program your channels
All online communities have some form of channel programming function. MySpace has pages, Facebook has groups, Veoh has channels and so on. These online channels are programmed much like channels on TV. Don’t just form a channel for all your videos and dump them in. Group your videos into similar editorial types and open a channel for each type. Each channel can then be marketed to the appropriate audience. For example, home DIY videos might be targeted at a suburban audience, while your raunchy jokes are more appropriate for the college crowd. Have a channel for each (lest you bore the college crowd and turn off some conservative suburban viewers).
"With our client RiverWired, our relationships with the editors at the top video sites were vital in developing our audience," says William Allen, managing partner at New York-based interactive agency Industry. "Being able to make those phone calls really helped our client stand out from the crowd."
Next, launch your channels with a new video (yes, although you don't have an audience yet, you can build one). The video has to be marketed within each third party site. Without going into the how-tos, this means pitching the editorial staff (Dailymotion and Veoh), kicking off online discussions (you’ll find lively ones on Metacafe) and joining groups on sites like YouTube.
3.) Drive the conversation
Like television, people like to discuss the videos they see online. There is often a correlation between the online discussion and the growth of video views. Unlike TV, where we would have to break into the office water cooler room to initiate a discussion, we can initiate and carry on a discussion with viewers right by the video.
Conversation -- whether in the form of comments, related forums or blogs -- can indeed drive more video views.
On just about any site, comments drive traffic. We posted a video on Break called "Larry" which was a football stadium type joke. We did this right before the Super Bowl and started with a related comment. For the first few hours we made sure to carry on the conversation with anyone interested; this approach led to 3,000 views right out of the cage. Last Christmas, we carried on a snarky conversation around a video called "Killer Santa" (it was a joke, really) and ended up with over 40,000 views and a number of honors at Metacafe. The lesson? The conversation is part of the entertainment. People want to see the video being discussed even if they don’t post comments themselves… and the comments themselves were entertaining.
Ephraim Cohen is managing partner at The Fortex Group.