webdev Following on from my blog article the other day about Video SEO – I’ll be explaining a few principles about another very exciting area of video marketing –video seeding.
Everyone talks about viral video – but the reality is very different to just sticking a video up on YouTube and hoping for the best. I’ve talked at some length on this blog about the amount of video uploaded each hour of each day – suffice it to say – its A LOT.
Video seeding encapsulates a couple of very different methodologies that allow for your video to be seen by a great number of people. They are tried and tested linear routes to video success online which only use totally white hat methods – I’ll mention black hat and why you should avoid it later.
Blogger outreach
The first methodology involves using the power of influencers online. Now if you’ve spent time with any marketer involved with social or digital media – you’ll have heard of the concept of influencers. These are bloggers/social media enthusiasts who have a lot of followers and are influential within their area of expertise – and anything that they share is likely to be shared amongst their followers.
Blogger outreach as a service involves the marketing agency having a big rolodex of relevant contacts within the industry that you wish to target. Your wonderful, engaging video is produced – and is (for a fee) shared between the bloggers who are relevant to your industry – thus it is seen far and wide. Blogger outreach marketing agencies will normally have metrics and analytics to enable you to see your videos progress across the blogs and further out into the internet.
This is the method frequently used by major corporations to seed out content- examples of which include T-mobile and VW. Cost could be an issue for organisations without the spending cloud of a blue chip.
YouTube video seeding
YouTube video seeding is a different beast. Video seeding on YouTube involves seeding your video over multiple (legitimate) accounts on the site – then cleverly manipulating the YouTube “hit parade” to ensure that your video beats the many thousands of videos put up on there every day.
Advantages of going down this route are multiple. It is more effective per view than the blogger outreach approach. YouTube also count a “view” as the viewer watching between 60-80% of the video – where as blog outreach might only count for the click – and no proper viewing.
Shysters
It is worth being cautious when it comes to video seeding. There are lot of shysters will promise you a good deal of views for what seems like very little money. These people can justify this easily in the blog outreach route – as they can very easily set up a few blogs which no one ever sees – and fib about the results. YouTube may seem like a tougher site to fool – but using automated programmes – less than truthful companies can get you lots of video views without anyone actually seeing the video. Both ways will not be appreciated by either Google or YouTube and you run the risk of being penalised or banned!
Be sure to use a professional company that only uses white hat methods – like us!:)
